how to feed a baby

Congratulations, you had a baby!  Planning on breastfeeding?  Perfect!  It's the most natural form of feeding your newborn!  Your body knows just what to do!  Your baby knows exactly how to do it!  Your milk will come when it's called!  Hallelujah, you got through labor and now you're smooth sailing through infancy as your perfect body perfectly perfects the perfect art of perfect food for your perfect baby who is perfectly able to tell you when he/she needs your perfect food for their perfect life!

Ahem.

For those mamas out there who experienced breastfeeding like the above explanation, I envy you, because that is certainly not how it happened for me.  And for the first few weeks after I had NC, I had convinced myself that I was the only new mama in the world who had trouble breastfeeding and that for some reason, I was just ill-equipped.

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I want this to be a safe place for us to discuss the real issues facing us as human beings, and today, as new mamas.  Not all of my posts will be this "graphic", but today, that's just how the cookie crumbled.  

So without further ado…How to Feed a Baby in 5 Easy Steps

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1- Pump it up.  

For me, my milk didn't come rushing in to save the day.  I had to work for it.  No one had ever told me that even with the baby doing her best to stimulate you and your milk to come a callin', you still might need some extra help.  So, this thing became my best friend from day one.  I abused this thing, and had a very volatile relationship with it.  We had ups, and lots of downs, but at the end of the day, it was a very productive relationship.  And after a month or so, there was no need to use this thing ever again--everything got good and settled with just NC doing the work.  But at the beginning, it was a life-saver.  Even though I wanted to burn it at a stake most of the time.

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2- Put a shield on it.

Part of NC's problem was that I wasn't shaped in the most opportune way for her to be able to latch on and get to work.  Again, if breastfeeding is so natural, shouldn't my body be ready to go?  Not necessarily.  I decided to use a nipple shield to try and make things easier for NC and to try and help re-shape things on my side of the deal to make everything as "normal" as possible.  Like the pump, I had a love-hate relationship with this thing too.  It made the beginning possible, then became somewhat of a hindrance, and then, through a lot of fear and struggle, it became unnecessary.  Thank god.  

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3- Take it to the milk bank.

So, I was pumping around the clock, and NC was trying her hardest to help me out using the nipple shield, but when the milk still wasn't efficient, she still needed something to eat while my body slowly got the message to shape up.  Enter the miraculous world of donor milk.  It was very important to me to breastfeed exclusively, and when the roadblocks started from the very first minute, it was very easy to get super discouraged.  And even with the donor milk, I still felt like a failure most of time because I couldn't do it all on my own.  The fact is that when I needed help, I had an entire community of women around me that I had never met who had given of themselves to help me and NC succeed.  It was the most amazing way to help me feel like even in the darkest of times, I was doing my best to give my daughter the very best.

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4- SNS: don't ask, just do it.

It's called a Supplemental Nursing System (SNS) and talk about a love-hate relationship.  This was the most time-consuming, awkward, unnatural thing ever.  However.  This is what helped me to continue to "breastfeed" NC using donor milk, while at the same time stimulating my body to produce my own milk.  I won't go into too many more details here because it is pretty intense but let's just say, again, a god send and at times a curse and always a struggle.  But at the end of the day, something I could throw out and erase from my memory as best as I could.  Point:  it was necessary in success.

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5- Meet with a lactation specialist (a.k.a. angel from heaven).

After two weeks of the pumping, nipple shield, and SNS, I thought we were smooth sailing.  We had stopped using the SNS and I wasn't having to pump 12 million times a day.  My milk was in and NC was eating and we were golden.  Or so I thought.  Fast forward through a week of NC screaming all day and all night unless she was on my boob.  We were ready to do anything--chiropractic sessions. cranial sacral therapy. maybe it's a dairy allergy? maybe she has colic? maybe she just hates us? maybe she's possessed?  Until I finally got my butt off the couch and went to see the lactation specialist at the hospital.  Again, I felt like I was admitting defeat--right when I thought I had this breastfeeding thing down, I'm going to ask for help again, so afraid to hear what she might say.  It certainly wasn't an easy visit--turns out NC hadn't been transferring milk from me for whatever reason and she was screaming because she was just hungry.  I felt like the worst mom of all time.  The lactation consultant assured me that this too would pass.  In one session she was able to get NC to latch without the shield, something I thought was pretty much impossible at that point, and we had worked out a plan of attack to get NC back on track gaining weight, eating well, and being happy.  I left that appointment with NC happy and awake, at the SAME TIME, for the first time, pretty much ever.  The next week was a blur--it was back to pumping every two hours, nursing and giving NC pumped milk in a bottle (oh man, that was the lowest of the low.  Giving my 3 week old a bottle??  My baby I wanted to breastfeed?  Nipple confusion!  The end of the earth as we know it!  Death to bunnies and puppies!  Seriously, and completely unwarranted and unnecessarily, I was a basket case.) to make sure she was totally full, no sleep, lots of tears, and lots of exclamations of defeat.  But then, like the calm after the storm, it was all over.  NC was breastfeeding and she was full and she was fat and she was happy.  My milk was in and overcompensating for the first few weeks that is slacked off in class.  We were doing it.  And I had the lactation specialist FROM GOD to thank for helping me figure it all out.

So there you have it.  How to feed a baby the totally natural normal easy biological way.  A.K.A. my journey through hell and back.  And now, 6 months later, we are breastfeeding exclusively.  And NC is such a fan, that she has boycotted bottles completely.  But that's a whole other post for a whole new lifetime...

So, was it worth it?  Yes.  Would do I it all again?  If those are the cards I am dealt, yes.  But man, I hope I get a better hand.  Isn't there an easier way?  Of course.  Well now I'm never going to try to breastfeed!  I'm terrified!  My intention is not to scare you.  Instead, I want you to know that when you try, if it is hard, you are not alone, and you are not a failure, and you are not a bad mom.  I think through it all, I wish I would have known all of these things were a possibility just so I didn't think I was the only one.  

Tell me, my dear internet cosmos--what were your experiences feeding your new baby?  What advice can you give other new mamas?  What do you wish you had been told or given to help you feel empowered? 

Here's where we support each other.  Please comment anonymously if you would like.  We don't need to have names to be able to relate to each other and feel connected.

XOXO

-mel