My (Difficult) Breastfeeding Journey

Trials and tribulations and being okay.

I wanted to take a little break from writing my usual fiction and articles about writing to talk about my breastfeeding experience. I write this article in part to thank all the other brave women out there talking about breastfeeding and its challenges. Those articles (and of course, my super supportive family) are what got me through my own difficult experience and I wanted to add my own voice to the narrative.

Breast is best.

If you have had a child in the last, oh say, ten to twenty years or so, you probably would have heard this slogan or at least, the intent behind it. There is no disputing the benefits of breastfeeding, from the antibodies, other proteins and immune cells that gets passed on in human milk to the close bonding experience during the act of breastfeeding. I savour the moments where my child looks up at me sleepily, grins, then goes back to breastfeeding.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.

I should start from the beginning. I had a difficult delivery. My baby required the aid of forceps and I had an episiotomy as well as postpartum hemorrhage. Needless to say, it was a bit of a traumatic experience, though probably more so for my husband than me, given how drugged up I was by then.. Since the alternative was C-section which would have taken much longer to heal from, I was pretty happy with how things went. However, that meant I wasn’t able to feed my child for very long in those first moments of his life. And that led to problems in my milk supply.

The problem was compounded when my child also had small mouth and was tongue-tied, but I didn’t find that out until much later.

Instead, during my stay in the hospital, I powered through. Having a much higher pain-tolerance than most people, I soldiered on, feeding my son from my breasts (because that’s what all the nurses pushed for) while applying heaps and heaps of lanolin cream. I kept going even when putting on a shirt became painful. I kept going even when my nipples began to scab.

Meanwhile, my relationship with breastfeeding got worse and worse. I began to dread each feeding. I watched the clock like a hawk every time my baby was on the breast. I began associating breastfeeding with pain. I began wondering if it was just me, that every woman goes through this pain and I just wasn’t tough enough to grit through the pain. I felt that I was failing my child, failing as a mother.

And then things got worse. My baby had jaundice and the pediatrician at the hospital told me I had to push way more milk through my baby’s system. I quailed on the inside. More? I was barely coping as was. The pain was beginning to become intolerable. I was, unknown to me at the time, getting bitten because my child’s mouth was small and his tongue had very little maneuverability.

Finally, we succumbed to topping up with donor milk. That was perhaps, the first reprieved I got. The second was when one of the nurses introduced me to pumping and it hurt way less. A tiny voice of hope whispered. “Maybe that’s what breastfeeding is supposed to feel like?”

As any parent will tell you the first days home from the hospital was a blur. After a few days, my community nurse visited me and identified that my baby was not gaining enough weight. My husband went out and bought our first case of formula milk. He was and is a kind man, one that told me on a daily basis that it didn’t matter as long as our child was eating enough. I heard what he said and understood logically but my heart was still sinking.

Actually, I was crushed. I had gritted through all that pain, only to come up short. The nurse quickly referred me to a lactation clinic and that first visit was probably what saved me from spiraling down into full postpartum depression.

My doctor told me it was not my fault. She told me to stop breastfeeding and let my nipples heal, to stick to pumping. She prescribed a topical cream stronger than lanolin. She recommended a tiny procedure to fix the the tongue-tied condition which we did. She told me it was okay to supplement with formula. She set expectations that that may be the path forward and that it was okay.

It was okay.

I waited until my nipples healed. When it got too painful to breastfeed, I would rest and pump and feed my baby what I pumped. Gradually, it got better as my baby’s mouth, along with the rest of his body, got larger and it was no longer painful to breastfeed. I no longer associated feeding my child with pain.

It got better.

Today, at almost 5 months, I am breastfeeding and supplementing with formula. My child is growing up strong. I’ve talked to many mothers who are doing the same. Now I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Switching between breastfeeding and bottles have its risk. Many babies refuse the breast after a while (around 3 to 4 months, my doctor told me) because the bottle flows so much better. It is a constant risk but there are mitigating strategies. For instance, we switch-fed, changing which side we held the baby often in one feeding. We used the slowest flow nipple. There are others but you can google if you are interested.

So if you are reading this and going through what I went through, I want you to take the following points away:

• Breastfeeding can hurt like hell. It is not normal. Get help. Don’t grit through the pain.
• Getting the baby fed and gaining weight is what is most important. Don’t worry about the rest.
• Work with your professional health care practitioners to design a plan that works for you. Don’t worry about what people say online (including me, what worked for me may not work for you.)

Like the community nurse and my lactation consultant told me: Remember, whatever you decide, it’s got to work for you.