Before my son was born, I knew I was going to breast-feed. I was swayed by the physical benefits and the financial benefits. :)
My hospital offered a breast-feeding class so my husband and I took it together. It was only two hours long and we "practiced" with dolls. But, I still got good information. The most helpful thing was that the lactation consultant teaching the class really broke down a lot of the myths and bad advice out there. I think many moms get off track with bad advice from people they trust or expect to know the answer (like a mom, sister or pediatrician).
When my son was born at 42 weeks, he weighed 8 pounds and 5 ounces. I put him to the breast immediately but he was not at all interested. He didn't root around or anything. Some babies do! I have seen videos of a brand new baby squirming up to mom's breast and latching on. It is amazing. (I didn't have any pain medication or anything and he was alert, just not hungry).
The staff tried to help during my 20-hour stay after the birth. My nurses were OK and we were able to get him to latch on and suck a bit. The lactation consultants that they sent to my room, though, were terribly unhelpful! They seemed very rushed, as if they had 10 moms waiting after me or something. One spent two minutes with us and said that things were OK and left, leaving me with many unanswered questions. The other lactation consultant was not much better, even though she spent 10 minutes with me. She spent most of that time working on positioning.
This is when I realized that I would always recommend to a new breast-feeding mom that she should bring a nursing pillow with her if she plans to use one. Why? Because I couldn't duplicate the positioning once I got home because I didn't have the same pillows and stuff! I didn't know how to position him if the pillows weren't exactly the same.
Baby and I were given the green light to go home at 7 p.m. I was able to get him to latch on a bit once we got home but he still didn't care much. We actually called the pediatrician around 9 p.m. because he wasn't latching well. While we were on the phone with him, he did latch on and nursed for about three minutes. It was a long night for all of us but we made it.
The next morning we had a pediatrician appointment. I told him how I was still super overwhelmed, confused and didn't think baby was doing a good job. So, he sent me over to the hospital for a one-on-one with a lactation consultant. That was so helpful! My pediatrician wanted us to get a supplemental nursing system (SNS) but the lactation consultant didn't think that was a good idea or necessary.
My husband, baby and I spent an hour and a half with the lactation consultant in a comfy, private room. We worked on positioning (where I learned that I should have bought a My Brest Friend instead of a Boppy). We worked on his latch and how to encourage him to latch well.
My husband learned so much and was so helpful and encouraging.
We went back to the lactation consultant two days later just to see if everything was going well. She thought everything looked really good.
Breast-feeding is a "natural" thing to do but it is learned. Even though we could do it, it wasn't easy and still took a lot of work.
Over the next few weeks, I really struggled with it. Bottle feeding was never something I considered though. I wanted to make this work and I knew I could. Actually, I wasn't convinced of that but everyone told me it would get better. I don't know how many times I called my sister-in-law and asked her if it got easier! I admit that there were times that I cried before a feeding because I just didn't want to do it. It is a lot of work. Feedings were about every two hours and lasted about 30-40 minutes. That's a lot.
Some of my tears were because my nipples hurt. It turns out that I had thrush. As soon as I treated it, I felt so much better! I really was considering pumping full time because of the nipple pain. Fate worked with us because I sent my husband to get a pump but they were all rented out. So, that forced me to keep at breast-feeding.
