I am a very Type A personality person and I tend to
overthink things and freak out when they don’t go my way. A great combo for a first time mom right?
When you’re pregnant everyone always tells you how hard breastfeeding is going
to be. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the phrases “for something so
natural breastfeeding really is hard” and “don’t beat yourself up if
breastfeeding doesn’t work out for you." We went to pretty much every class
Baylor Frisco offered for parents, and one of those classes was a breastfeeding
class. I left there feeling like I was well equipped for the struggles and
situations that might arise when breastfeeding. I went into labor on my own on
my son’s due date (type A like mom?) but ended up having a C-section after 2
hours of pushing because he started to show signs of distress. The thought of a
C-section didn’t scare me nearly as much as the possibility of being a
“breastfeeding failure.” When I was in
recovery, I was told to let my son’s nurse know before I was going to feed him
so she could help me and check his blood sugar levels afterwards. He was a big baby and was struggling to keep
his blood sugar up. After a while, Noah
started rooting around and getting hungry.
I’m really not sure how many times we paged the nurse or how long we
waited for her to show up, but it was a long time. My recovery nurse was worthless and unable to
help me latch the baby because breastfeeding wasn’t her “thing.” The more time went by, the more upset my
husband got that nobody was there to help us with the “first latch.” Since only one person could be in the recovery
room with me, my husband traded spots with my mom and she came in to try to
help me. She told me to just “put him on
there!” Low and behold, he knew just
what to do and was a breastfeeding pro from the start! My night nurse always commented about how Noah
had the best latch she had seen and he was such a natural.
I was relieved. We
didn’t have any latch issues and after some close monitoring we got his blood
sugar levels under control. All I had
left to conquer was this dreaded engorgement that everyone always talked about.
I left the hospital un-engorged. I sat around at home waiting for it to happen.
A week went by and still no engorgement.
Another week went by and still nothing. All I could think of was, “These people are
crazy! Breastfeeding is the easiest
thing ever!”
We continued having a great breastfeeding relationship, but
then the time came for me to go back to work. I was so terrified that I wouldn’t be able to
produce enough to keep him on breast milk. A couple of mornings I called my mom crying
because milk had been wasted or spilled. I’m now on my second week back at work and
things are going okay. I can pump enough
for him, but I absolutely hate having to pump. It is such a pain and I feel isolated from my
coworkers because I feel like I’m always pumping. Noah isn’t a huge fan of the
bottle, so he eats enough to get by during the day and makes up for it at
night. I’m hoping that with time he will
adjust too.
My biggest piece of advice for new moms is not to worry
about what other people tell you breastfeeding should be. Make it your own and enjoy the special time
with your little one.
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