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Uncategorized | August 21, 2013

The Breastfeeding Diaries: Jessica from The Reinvention of Jessica

Hi, my name is Jessica, and I blog at The Reinvention of Jessica.  I am mom to Jack, my 10 month old son, and wife to Dennis, my husband of 12 years.  Through my breastfeeding journey, I have become quite the lactavist and advocate for mother’s rights.  I am lucky to have the support of my husband and both sides of of our families and know that is part of the reason I have been successful with breastfeeding. Here is our story.
 
Before I ever even thought about having a baby, I knew I was going to breastfeed.  I was a breastfed baby and most of my cousins were breastfed babies, so from a young age I was familiar with the concept of breastfeeding.  There was never a doubt in my mind that this was something I was going to do.  I had friends who bottle fed their babies, and after seeing what a hassle that can be, I was even more dedicated to the idea of breastfeeding.  It was natural.  It was easier than bottle feeding.  It was free.  It was best for baby.  Sign me up.
I had a hard time getting pregnant.  It took eighteen months of trying and help from a fertility doctor for me to finally conceive.  During this time I was doing lots of research about everything baby, different parenting styles, what pregnancy was like, different birth options, the benefits of breastfeeding; you name it and I probably researched it.  I loved reading stories about overcoming infertility.  I loved reading birth stories.  I loved reading breastfeeding stories.  But I never once actually did any research about how to breastfeed.  I didn’t think I needed to learn how.  It was the most natural thing in the world.  I assumed it would be easy to do.  I mean, how else would humans have survived (before formula) if we couldn’t breastfeed our babies?  I was rather cocky about my assumed ability to intuitively breastfeed.
Other than horrible morning sickness I had a fairly uneventful pregnancy.  I was healthy and active, and had no complications whatsoever.  I was planning to labor and deliver at a birth center with a midwife instead of at a hospital with a doctor.  The start of my pregnancy was so medicalized that I really wanted a more gentle and natural approach to my prenatal care and birth.  I was planning a natural, unmedicated delivery in a birth pool.  I pictured having the baby and getting immediate skin to skin contact to bond and naturally initiate breastfeeding.  So you can imagine my surprise when my water broke almost seven weeks before my due date and I ended up delivering my son, Jack, in a hospital.
Instead of getting immediate skin to skin contact, a mob of doctors triaged Jack in the delivery room to make sure everything was okay.  I don’t know how long they took to assess him, but thankfully, he was healthy and strong and needed no interventions to breathe.  Despite this, they whisked him away to the NICU before I had a chance to even really see him.  A nurse brought him to my bedside for a moment before they left, but not long enough for me to even process what was happening.  It was almost 10 hours later before I was allowed to leave my room and go see him.
When I was being checked into the hospital, the doctors told me I might not be able to immediately breastfeed.  They explained all the possible complications the baby could have and what interventions might be necessary, and breastfeeding just didn’t fit in with all the possible tubes and wires and miscellaneous machines the baby might need to be on.  They assured me I would be provided with a breast pump so my milk supply would come in and lactation consultants were on call to help us breastfeed when the baby was strong enough.  They told me the baby would be on an NG tube for feeding and gave me the option of using donor breast milk instead of formula.  I was so happy to be given the option of donor milk instead of formula!
Several hours after I delivered Jack,  I was moved from labor and delivery to my hospital room.  My night nurse was terrible.  She asked me if I was planning on breastfeeding and when I told her yes she said a lactation consultant would be with me in the morning to teach me how to use the breast pump.  She made it sound like I needed to wait for an LC to teach me how to use the pump.  Because I didn’t do any research about the ins and outs of breastfeeding I didn’t know I needed to start pumping right away in order to have my milk come in.  I was too overwhelmed and exhausted to think clearly, but I remember thinking it was odd that I wasn’t pumping.  I figured the nurse would know best and tried to get a little rest.  The next morning, at shift change, my day nurse came in to check on me and asked where my pumped colostrum was.  When I told her I was waiting for the LC to teach me how to use the pump, she got me set up immediately and told me I didn’t have to wait for an LC to get started.  Apparently, the nurses are supposed to teach pumping, but the night nurse was too lazy to be bothered with it.  I knew enough to know I was treading on shaky ground to establish a milk supply this long after delivery.  I pumped for half an hour and got three drops of colostrum.  I was devastated.  The nurse came back in and said that was a good start and cheered me on.  She told me to go see my baby and to come back and pump again in 2-3 hours.  So I went down to the NICU and finally met my son.

Jack was in the NICU for 17 days.  He started out on a CPAP machine as a precaution and was getting all his feedings through the feeding tube.  I was pumping like crazy, every 90 minutes around the clock, and he was being fed every 3 hours.  I was so panicked about my milk supply.  I knew how much milk the nurses were giving him and I just wasn’t keeping up.  I would pump 15 mL and they would give him 25 mL; I would pump 20 mL and they would give him 30 mL.  My nipples were being rubbed raw by the pump and I was in extreme pain every time I pumped.  My back hurt from trying to hold the flanges to my breasts to maintain suction.  It took me 30 minutes or more to pump.  I felt like I was constantly hooked up to that machine.  The hospital had WiFi and I spent hours online looking up anything and everything about establishing a milk supply, pumping, and breastfeeding.  Jack had a private room and I was able to stay with him 24/7.  If I wasn’t pumping or researching, I was doing skin to skin and taking power naps in between everything.  I have never been so exhausted in my life.  I have never been so stressed out in my life.  I have never been more determined to be successful at something in my life.

A week went by and I still hadn’t seen a lactation consultant.  My supply still wasn’t catching up to what Jack was being given and I was incredibly frustrated with the lack of support I was getting from the hospital staff.  The doctors wouldn’t even let me try to breastfeed despite Jack’s ability to suck on my finger.  They claimed he didn’t have a suck/swallow/breathe reflex yet.  I don’t know why I listened to them and didn’t just try to breastfeed on my own.  Jack had a different nurse every day and every night and no one was giving me consistent advice or information about what was going on.  One nurse would tell me to pump more, one nurse would tell me to pump less, one nurse didn’t understand why we weren’t at least trying to latch on, one nurse assured me bottle feeding would be fine.  Finally, Jack got a nurse that actually talked to me and asked me what I wanted.  She supported my drive to breastfeed and immediately got an LC to see me.

The LC immediately got down to business.  She showed me how to hold Jack and to let him open his mouth wide and then try to latch him on.  Even after a week I was hoping it would come to us naturally and be an easy thing to do.  But it was terribly awkward and difficult.  I had never handled a newborn before Jack and no one told me just how floppy their heads can be; I kept thinking I was going to break him.  There were tubes and wires in the way and I didn’t seem to have enough hands to hold him, hold my breast, keep the wires at bay, and actually manage to get my nipple in his mouth.  The LC was incredibly patient with us and finally gave us a nipple shield to try.  The shield helped, but she didn’t really give me any instructions on how to adequately use it.  She left and we awkwardly continued to try to latch on.  She told me practice makes perfect, so practice we did.  And we were awful at it.

The next day a different LC came to see us and taught us some different holds (yay for the football hold!), and we practiced latching even more.  And we were slightly less awful at it.  The doctors were only letting me try to latch him twice a day and only after pumping first.  This was called non-nutritive nursing, and seemed so counter-intuitive.  But that’s what we did.  The next day yet another LC came and showed me some better pumping techniques and how to hand express.  That day was a game changer.  It was the first time I didn’t feel completely engorged after pumping and within 12 hours, my milk supply finally caught up to and surpassed what Jack was being fed.  He was now 100% on my milk and I was starting to gain my confidence.

A few days after that, daylight savings time ended.  When the clocks were switched, all the babies in the NICU had to wait 4 hours between their midnight feeding and 3 am feeding instead of just 3 hours.  This is when I decided to take matters into my own hands.  Jack was expecting food in his tummy after 3 hours and I wasn’t about to sit by his side and listen to him cry for an hour just so the hospital staff could stay on their schedule.  As soon as he started to cry from hunger, I got him, latched him on, and for the first time, actually fed him directly from the tap.  We still weren’t very good at latching, and I think he slept just as much, if not more than he nursed, but we were finally doing it!  I wasn’t terribly worried about how much he was actually getting from me because I knew the nurse would be in soon to feed him through his tube.

It still took us a couple of days to eliminate his tube feedings.  We still weren’t very good at nursing; it took forever to get him latched, it took forever for him to eat, and the doctors were concerned about his lack of adequate weight gain, but he seemed happy and was having plenty of wet diapers, so we were finally released from the hospital.

The next three months were the hardest three months of my life.  Our pediatrician was also worried about Jack’s slow weight gain (he wasn’t even back up to his birth weight when we were released from the hospital), but knew how determined I was to not supplement so let us keep trying.  By this time, I had become fairly well versed on the ins and outs of breastfeeding and understood supply and demand and how supplementing can negatively affect supply.  After working so hard to have my milk come in and to actually breastfeed, I wasn’t willing to let anything negatively affect that.  The pediatrician had us come in every two weeks for weigh-ins, and finally, at his 6 week check-up, Jack weighed more than his birth weight and our doctor felt like we didn’t even need to consider supplementing.

I was so worried that we would have to supplement that I nursed Jack pretty much around the clock.  He was a slow eater, sometimes taking 45-60+ minutes on each breast.  He would sleep for 60-90 minutes and we would be back to nursing.  I slept on the couch with him because it was easier to put on the nipple shield and latch him on before he got into full blown hunger melt down that way.  It was so exhausting, but I was so happy that we were actually breastfeeding.  I hated the nipple shield; it was a pain in the butt to use, but every time I tried to latch Jack without it, it didn’t work.  No one ever told me that a nipple shield can negatively affect milk supply, so we probably used it much longer than we should have.

I went back to work one day a week when Jack was 6 weeks old, so I continued to pump and freeze my milk.  I noticed at about 3 months that I wasn’t able to pump as much milk and immediately got worried and started researching nipple shields and latching techniques.  My suspicions were confirmed, so I decided to stop using the shield pretty much cold turkey.  And it was awful.  Jack had never learned how to properly latch; the shield allowed for a lazy, shallow latch, so when I threw out the shield, he wasn’t latching correctly and nursing hurt.  A lot.  Way more than I knew it should.  Again, I consulted the internet, and we figured out how to properly latch.  At long last, we were breastfeeding without any assistance of any kind.

Our story continues, but that pretty much tells how we began our journey.  Jack is now 10 months old and thriving!  He’s a great nurser and it only takes him 3-5 minutes on each side to get a full belly.  I know that we were extremely lucky to get to this point.  Although our hospital was supposedly breast friendly, we had to overcome so many obstacles to get to where we are today.  There were many times I thought about giving up and just bottle feeding, but breastfeeding was too important to me (I can be crazy stubborn).  I wish I had done more research from the beginning; my over-sure attitude hurt my chances of successfully breastfeeding, but I quickly caught up with all the information that was out there.

My advice to other mothers is to do your research.  Learn everything you can about breastfeeding while you are pregnant.  Take a class, read a book, look up things on the internet.  Don’t hesitate to reach out for support.  Call a lactation consultant or Le Leche League if you need help.  Breastfeeding is tough work.  It can be surprisingly awkward at first, and you may feel like you’re in over your head.  Not every baby latches right away or is in a position to get to try to latch immediately.  Breastfeeding is a skill both mother and baby have to learn and practice.  Find other breastfeeding mothers online or in your community for support. If breastfeeding is important to you, don’t give up.  Be stubborn and stick up for yourself and your baby.  Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t (other than for medical reasons).  You can do it!!!  And if for some reason you can’t, you’re not a failure!!!  If you bottle feed or formula feed or breastfeed, you are a wonderful mom doing the best for your baby, yourself, and your family.  I think we all need to support each other, no matter what position we end up in.

 Make sure you catch up with the rest of the Breastfeeding Diaries at the top of my navigation bar! And if you would like your breastfeeding story featured, please email me at thegirlintheredshoes @ gmail.


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Comments

  1. Christina @ This Woman Cooks! says

    August 21, 2013 at 1:20 pm

    What a story! Jessica, I was so emotional as I read, I can't imagine how difficult and frustrating it must have been in the beginning. You are so strong and determined, your son is so lucky to have you as his mother!

  2. bev says

    August 22, 2013 at 12:00 am

    It is amazing what a determined mother can do! It is so sad that you did not consistently get the support you needed from the hospital staff but fortunately you sought information and support from other sources. Congratulations.

Uncategorized | July 10, 2013

The Breastfeeding Diaries: Jessica from Little Baby Garvin

Hi everyone! I’m Jessica from Little Baby Garvin. I live in Atlanta, GA with my husband & our sixteen month old daughter, Harper Eve. I work from home as a Marketing Director for a digital media agency based in Florida & make chalkboard art on the side. Having fun is the name of our game! 🙂 This is our breastfeeding story.

Before Harper was born, I had every intention of breastfeeding as long as I could. We took classes, read books, talked to our experienced friends, we were ready to roll. I had a scheduled c-section (because Harper was breech, you can read her birth story here), and immediately after the surgery was over, we were wheeled to recovery where the nurses assisted in getting her latched for the first time. I felt like things were going well, we were bonding, she was getting colostrum & I didn’t feel much pain. After about 24 hours in the hospital, it seemed like things weren’t really progressing with her latch, we met with a lactation consultant & eventually ended up feeding her a little bit from a plastic spoon. We continued to get help from our nurses & two other lactation consultants while we were in the hospital, but Harper just couldn’t latch properly. On day 3, she had lost over a pound & our nurse told us that it was time to supplement with some formula. I was totally against it. I vaguely remember wanting to rip my husband’s head off when the nurses finally talked us into it & he got to bottle feed her for the first time.

Long story short, the lactation consultants recommended using a nipple shield as a temporary solution. It seemed to help with her latch for the most part, but apparently does not allow for proper milk stimulation, so it required pumping after each feeding. 10-15 minutes of breastfeeding on each side with the shield plus 10-15 minutes of pumping after. Then I could feed Harper the rest of the pumped milk after or save it for the next feeding.
I purchased the Medela Pump in Style Advanced before she was born, so we were lucky to have it waiting for us when we got home since we used a hospital one during our stay. It was well worth the money!

Our feeding routine eventually looked something like this:
Breastfeed with nipple shield – 20 min.
Pump (both sides at once) – 10-15 min.
Cry because I hardly produced any milk – 2 min (sometimes 2 hours)
Bottlefeed with rest of milk – 10 min.
Wash Pump Parts & nipple shield for next round – 10 min.
Contemplate putting all pump parts down the garbage disposal & running the actual pump over with my car – 30 seconds (sometimes longer)
Repeat 2 hours later.
We quickly learned that this was just not really working. I kept trying to get her to latch, we met with another lactation consultant to try to wean from the shield & I was not producing enough milk, so I was sometimes supplementing with formula. She also spit up EVERYTHING, like projectile liquid the second she was done eating, all over herself/us/earth. Then, she starting to refuse breastfeeding all together since it was just so much easier to drink from the bottle. Finally, we made the executive decision that if I had to pump ANYWAY, we might as well just go that route & stop forcing it. From that point on (Harper was almost a month old), I went to exclusively pumping. At this point, she was eating every 3 hours (spitting it all up immediately after), with usually one (sometimes two) 4 oz. bottles of formula in the mix to supplement.
I was on maternity leave for 8 weeks, but then I worked from home. Sounds great right? It was nearly impossible to actually work all day, while feeding+pumping+washing took almost an hour, every three hours. I also HATED the actual pumping process. It was painful & so inconvenient. Not to mention, Harper was sleeping through the night at five weeks, but I couldn’t get through the night without waking up in pain with clogged milk ducts, so I still had to wake up once or twice in the night to pump. The only thing worse than waking up to your crying baby is waking up just to stick your boobs in a vacuum. I longed to just be able to just nurse when she was hungry & be done with it.

Eventually I got the hang of it & was able to produce enough milk, but the spitting up just kept going. It was tough to work so hard to pump that milk & then watch her spit it up all over the couch. The doctors kept telling us that as long as she was gaining weight & not crying when she spit up that she was fine. BUT she was grumpy/cranky/gassy all the time. I tried cutting a million things out of my diet, switched bottles eight hundred times, paci, no paci, different positions, etc. Our doctor gave us a sample of Similac Sensitive Formula at one of the appointments & told us to try that as her supplement for a little while. We were skeptical, but willing to try anything at that point.

And whaddaya know. She didn’t barf it up. We tried it again the next day, happy baby, no spit up. Then we gave her two bottles of it, then three & I swear. to. God. she was a whole different baby. To this day, I will never know what it was about breastmilk or other formulas that her tummy couldn’t handle, but that sensitive formula did the trick. I kept trying to force for her to keep having breastmilk, but eventually realized it was more for me & less for her. Around five months, we finally decided to call it quits. I kept pumping for a little while JUST in case we changed our minds, slowly decreasing pumping sessions by one every other day. We soon had a freezer full of breastmilk popsicles & a baby totally content with never drinking it again. It was time to say goodbye to the pump.


Tips for Exclusively Pumping:

  • EAT. A LOT. Especially healthy fats. The reason I struggled so much in the beginning with milk production was that I didn’t eat enough. Who has time for eating with a newborn?! My best friend, Whitney (champion breastfeeder & pumping badass) came to visit me when Harper was a little over a month old & the first thing she told me was to go have a cheeseburger! After having her at my house & pumping together for a week, I was producing almost 2oz more milk per pumping session! I started keeping bananas & granola bars in my beside table to eat in the middle of the night when I woke up to pump.
  • Never skip a pumping session. Not only do you have to pump every time the baby eats, but also in between sometimes in order to keep your supply up & to relieve yourself. It sucks. It’s the hardest part is the self discipline not to sleep through it.
  • Invest in lots of extra pump parts & a good washing station. Since all of the pieces need thoroughly washed/sanitized, it’s worth the money to get a few hundred extras so you aren’t forced to wash between each use. I’ve also read that you can put pump parts in the fridge between feedings, would have been good to know the first time around.
  • Stay hydrated.
  • Don’t kill yourself over having to supplement every now & again. You are doing your very best as a mama to give your baby every bit of your milk that you can, the stress of breastfeeding can take such a toll on your relationship with your baby (and husband), that a little formula here & there can be just what you need to get back in the game.
  • Despite elaborate plans, nothing ever goes the way you want it to. I ultimately had to do what was best for us & stop worrying about what everyone else would think. I was terrified to tell other moms that I wasn’t breastfeeding her or thinking about who was watching & judging me in restaurants as I made a formula bottle for her.
I know there are probably a million other things we should have/could have done, but I know that I gave it my best & Harper turned out just fine. She has always been an extremely healthy baby & she is a great eater.
I love this little girl more than life itself. All I ever want to do is make the best decisions that I can for her, and in this situation, I think we did. I look forward to giving it another shot with baby number two, someday.
I also look forward to putting my pump in a bonfire after it’s all said & done.
Be sure to catch up with the rest of the Breastfeeding Diaries series at the top of my navigation bar!


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Comments

  1. Courtney B says

    July 10, 2013 at 12:50 pm

    I seriously LOVE this series! I wish I would have discovered it during the first few weeks of having my baby. I think it would have helped me regain my sanity a lot sooner 🙂

  2. Katy @ Ping and Pal says

    July 10, 2013 at 1:02 pm

    I would love to share my breastfeeding story with you! My little Annabelle is 7 months old and I'm still breastfeeding her and working full time. (Katyrichmond@live.com)

  3. E Hayes says

    July 10, 2013 at 1:24 pm

    Love that you shared Jessica's story… it seems like I know a lot people who face EP and issues with babies just not agreeing with breastmilk- I WAS ONE OF THEM!

  4. Colleen Sullivan says

    July 10, 2013 at 2:19 pm

    I loved reading about Jessica's story! It is SUCH a struggle to feel good about the choices we make as parents — there is always something to cause us stress — and this series is a great way to not feel "alone" in our parenting choices, because it seems like no matter what we've been though, someone else experiencing the same thing!

  5. Carolyn says

    July 10, 2013 at 2:23 pm

    This is such an HONEST story!! I love this, even if it's not an ideal story. Thanks for sharing Jessica!

  6. Sara says

    July 10, 2013 at 5:58 pm

    I exclusively pumped too. Not the way I wanted it to go, but you do what you have to do. Thank you for sharing your story!

  7. Katy says

    July 11, 2013 at 2:08 am

    I almost skipped this story today and am so glad I didn't. I just had a baby two and a half weeks ago and had planned on exclusively breastfeeding. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned and we are now exclusively bottle feeding with formula. It was nice to read Jessica's story and know that I am not alone in not having a picture-perfect breastfeeding story. Congratulations to her for pumping and doing what was best for her and her family! Jessica – you have a beautiful baby!

  8. ..:danielle:.. says

    July 11, 2013 at 3:36 pm

    all of this sounds very familiar to what i am going through, minus the inability to latch. i am just not producing enough to make Henry full so i am pumping after he eats in order to keep my supply up. Henry is not sleeping through the night so i am up anyway (so i dont have to wake up to pump) but it does take more time and its annoying. but in the end i know it will be worth it. thanks for all the tips, very helpful! your baby is absolutely gorgeous!

  9. Gina says

    July 11, 2013 at 5:20 pm

    Great story! I too had to use a shield and it worked for 2 months then we exclusively pumped for 5 1/2 months. Laughed at your comment "the only thing worse than waking up to your crying baby is waking up to stick your boobs in a vacuum." So true

  10. Sarah @ Life, Love & Dinner says

    July 11, 2013 at 8:26 pm

    What a great story! I love this series! And that baby is the cutest thing!!

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