My breastfeeding journey as a first-time mom did not go the way I had envisioned. Not in the slightest. When I was pregnant I would have dreams about breastfeeding my baby and it being this magical bonding experience that was just blissful. That couldn’t be further from what actually happened. (At least in the beginning.)
I want to share my story because even though my story is on the rarer side of things, I want others to know if they’ve been through this that they aren’t alone. I also want there to be awareness that despite your every effort, sometimes exclusively breastfeeding is just not possible. And that that’s okay.
I was very unprepared for the possibility of not being able to exclusively breastfeed my son and because of that I was devastated when it happened. All of the research I did before breastfeeding told me that if I just tried hard enough, I could do it.
But as you will see, I tried absolutely everything I possibly could for months and months – even going on medication – and I was never able to exclusively breastfeed. When this was all happening to me, I literally thought it was the worst thing that could happen to me as a new mom. I also thought I was the only one in the world who couldn’t exclusively breastfeed. But it turned out to teach me the most important lesson I’ve learned as a mom so far. Let me share with you what happened.
So let’s start from the beginning- I knew how important it was to have skin to skin right after Shane was born and how important it was to get him to latch within the first hour. That was my goal before I gave birth. I was able to have skin to skin for the first two hours but latching didn’t go quite as planned.
After I gave birth I was still laying flat on my back and was being stitched up for the entire first hour. Shane was awesome and was rooting around and was as alert as ever, trying to latch. The problem was I couldn’t get him to latch laying flat on my back. It just hurt so badly because I couldn’t get him on right. So once I was able to sit up straight I thought things would go better. Unfortunately it still hurt really badly. I asked the nurses for help and they tried a bit but couldn’t get him on right either. They told me to wait until we got over to the Mother Baby room because those nurses would be able to be more helpful. I didn’t get over to the Mother Baby room until 3 hours after giving birth.
Even with “the nurses who could help better”, latching was still so, so painful. He never latched on in the hospital – or during the first three weeks actually – when it was not excruciating. So for my entire hospital stay, every time I fed him I was almost in tears because it was so painful and by day two my nipples were on the verge of bleeding. I was in a lot of pain and feeling pretty upset about how things were going because I pictured things going smoothly and breastfeeding to be this beautiful, bonding experience.
I had the lactation consultant come in to try to help and make sure everything was going well twice while in the hospital. She said his latch looked perfect but still checked him for a tongue tie. She thought it was fine and even had another lactation consultant take a look. They both said his latch was good and also had no tongue tie. What I never understood was why in the world I was in so much pain if everything was “perfect”. I was told in my breastfeeding class that I should not have toe-curling pain if he was latched on right. But that is exactly what type of pain I had during the whole experience.
I even explained to them that I was in so much pain that I would physically shake when it was getting closer to the time to feed him out of fear of the pain. They told me everything was fine and normal.
So we left the hospital with no advice on how to fix this and I went home to try to continue to breastfeed Shane. We got home with barely 10 hours of sleep in me over the course of four days and shaking in fear for each feed.
As you can imagine, being at home didn’t change this situation at all. I was still in so much pain and feeding wasn’t going well. One time when Shane woke up to eat I decided I just couldn’t bare the pain anymore. I decided to trying pumping instead. My lactation consultant in the hospital mentioned that if I was in too much pain I could always take a day or two of a break and pump instead to try to give my nipples time to heal.
Even though I really didn’t want to do this and was so fearful that Shane would start favoring the bottle, I had too. I literally couldn’t handle the pain anymore. So that’s what I did for about a day. The first bottle I gave him I was so sad and fearful that it might be the end of my breastfeeding journey. Thankfully it was not.
So the next day I decided that I really did not want to continue pumping and bottle feeding so I decided to research nipple shields because I heard these could help baby latch without the pain. I sent Tommy out and he bought me some. They were exactly what I needed and was able to get Shane back to breastfeeding with little to no pain! It was amazing! What I didn’t know however was that while using a nipple shield, you also had to pump three times a day to maintain your supply. So my supply started out low because of this.
What also went on during this time was that while we were bottle feeding Shane my breast milk, he would cry and cry after he finished his bottle. I decided that he was still hungry and after debating heavily and calling and asking the pediatrician what we should do, I decided to give Shane some formula as well. In hindsight I believe this also had an effect on my milk supply too.
When we would bring him to the doctor’s for weight checks though, he still was gaining verrrry slowly. This made me feel even worse and like I wasn’t doing enough and wasn’t making enough. He was technically gaining a healthy amount, it was just on the low end, but all I could hear was that I wasn’t enough.
Thinking back on this time, I’m so sad for myself and desperately wish I knew back then that it didn’t matter how much milk I did or didn’t make for my son, that I was a good mom because I loved and cared for him. If you happen to be reading this going through a similar situation, please know that you are exactly who your baby needs. Even if you make no milk for your baby. Even if you decide to stop breastfeeding just because you hate it. You are enough because God chose you to be their mom. You are exactly who your baby needs. Breastmilk or not.
So we continued to stumble through the first month, seeing two different lactation consultants – one being the very unhelpful consultant I had in the hospital. I left her office in tears because she was so unhelpful.
I later decided to try a private LC who was much more helpful. She encouraged me to just keep trying and to enjoy my baby, that I was doing all I could and that that was enough. But even through her words, I couldn’t believe it because everything I read or heard before I had Shane was that if you aren’t exclusively breastfeeding then you aren’t doing what is best for them. I wanted to so badly exclusively breastfeed him, but I just couldn’t. It wasn’t in the cards for me.
After a month or two of triple feeding Shane around the clock, I was so weary and disappointed that nothing was working. I was finally able to wean him off of the nipple shields, which did help my supply go up just a bit, but never to the point of not needing to supplement.
Around the time when Shane was seven weeks old we took him to a pediatric dentist who was certified in tongue and lip ties. It was the last thing I could think of that could help me get my supply up. We drove about an hour to see her and she confirmed my fears — Shane had a stage 4 tongue and lip ties, plus cheek ties. We had them lasered in hopes that it would help with breastfeeding but also because the doctor told us there could be many other side effects of them as he grew, such as speech impairment.
Unfortunately it did not help get my supply up anymore even though we do believe it was the right thing to do still. At this point I was still pumping a few times a day in hopes that eventually something would work. At the advice of one of our pediatricians, we went to see another lactation consultant who was supposed to be the best of the best. We decided that this would be our last ditch effort. I wanted to be able to say that I tried everything possible to give Shane the best.
Off we went to see our third lactation consultant, who we ended up loving. She saw and confirmed that Shane had bad tongue ties. Even though at this point, they had been corrected, she could tell by the shape of his tongue that his had been bad. She also confirmed that he had a weak suck.
Her suggestion was very positive and said that she would be able to get me up to a full supply, with the help of medication. She had used it many times before and seen a lot of success with it. She told me she would send me some information on it and that I could look it over and let her know if I wanted her to write me a prescription for it.
I won’t go into the details of the pros and cons of it because that could be a whole post of itself but it is called Domperidone and it is banned in the US. Although it is used heavily in Canada and other places around the world for lactation.
After a long, long, long time of researching and debating, I decided to go on the medication but on a super low dose. It wasn’t guaranteed to work, especially not at the dose that I decided to use but I decided it would be the last thing I tried before saying I did everything I could.
I don’t remember exactly when I started it or how long I was on it for but it didn’t work for me the way that I was hoping. At this point too I had been trying to up my supply for almost three months and was getting very tired of pumping after nursing.
I started getting super worried that the side effects of the medicine were going to start to affect me so I decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. It wasn’t working anyway and it was worrying me too much. I decided to wean off it as slowly as possible because there was a chance I could lose the supply I did have. I was making about 2/3 of what Shane drank in a day so I desperately wanted to continue nursing him as much as I could.
It took a long time and was super scary and stressful but I successfully got off Domperidone without losing any milk! I was and still am so so thankful. I also did not have any side effects of the medication, thank God!
I don’t exactly remember when in this journey it happened but I also developed thrush and ended up going to my OB to get medication. As they do at every appointment, they have you fill out a questionnaire to determine your risk for postpartum depression. The doctor I saw for the appointment told me that I had a higher risk for postpartum depression and asked what was going on or if I was alright.
After this appointment it all hit me that I didn’t want this to always be a struggle. I realized that I needed to come to a place of acceptance and stop killing myself trying to exclusively breastfeed.
We had rented a scale that told me how much milk Shane got when he nursed so I decided to give it a break and was intending to return the scale. I didn’t end up returning the scale then but had a break from it and decided to work on trying to accept that this is just the way things were going to be. I wasn’t going to be able to exclusively breastfeed Shane.
I know now that I put myself through way too much and that this all wasn’t worth the stress but back then I had this belief that if I didn’t exclusively breastfeed then I wasn’t the best mom for Shane. It kills me to realize that this is what I was believing and I wish someone had gotten through to me before I had Shane so that I would have been able to enjoy him more and stress less.
So after deciding that I had to accept things as they were, I wouldn’t say everything was perfect after that. I still struggled quite a bit emotionally but I at least was on the right path to accepting it. Things did get a little better after this.
For the rest of his first year I nursed him I was incredibly thankful that I was able to still be nursing him, but would have occasional feelings of not being enough or being upset that things had to be this way. But over time I accepted things to be the way they were and knew that I was doing the best that I could.
Once Shane turned one I continued to nurse him and was able to enjoy our nursing relationship a lot more because there wasn’t this pressure of worrying about if he was getting enough milk. We had a lot of precious memories and it really did become a special bonding experience that I always dreamed it would be.
I nursed him until his second birthday (literally the last time he nursed was on his birthday) and I’m so very thankful I was able to make it that far.
Out of all of this I learned my most important lesson I’ve learned so far about being a mom. Being a mom isn’t about doing things perfectly. We will never get things perfect. But I learned that that’s not what makes a good mom or not. Being a good mom is all about how much you love and care about your baby. If you are doing the best you can, you are more than enough for your baby. And for that I am so thankful.