Hellobee

This is a guest post by Laura of The Zhukeepers. Laura was one of the first bloggers for Weddingbee as Mrs. Bluebell (way back in 2006!).  We’ve had some great times together, and have remained friends over the years.  Today she shares her amazing breastfeeding journey with Hellobee!

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Since I have several pregnant friends now, and have been talking a lot about breastfeeding with, um, like everyone, I just wanted to take a minute to share our story. In a lot of ways, we are a great success story (still breastfeeding strong and loving it at 9+ months!), but our first few weeks were pretty much a disaster, and there were many times that we almost maybe could have quit. So I wanted to show that just because breastfeeding doesn’t work perfectly all on its own from day 1, doesn’t mean you can’t have a wonderful time at it eventually!

This is an insanely long story, which touches on jaundice, dehydration, formula feeding, pumping, nipple confusion, poor latching, painful nursing, cracked and bleeding nipples, staph infections, tongue ties, frenulectomies, nursing a baby with teeth, lactation consultants, and, ultimately, loving loving loving the time we spend nursing. This is the story of our nursing experience, focusing mainly on the first 3 weeks.

At the Hospital

When my son Sam was born, they placed him on my chest, and he (we thought) latched right on for a few seconds! The doctor and nurses and my doula all exclaimed how great he was doing! And I was told repeatedly that he doesn’t actually need nourishment from the breast for the first couple days, so it wasn’t an issue that he just latched for a couple sucks at a time. “Wow! I guess we’ll have an easy time breastfeeding!” we thought. HA!

Latching on for the first time moments after being born (with our doula Stacey & my OB)

By the next morning, he still had only sucked a couple times each session. Everyone repeated that it was really just practice at this point, that he only needed a few drops of colostrum, that he was doing great and didn’t need to nurse much more than that until my milk really came in. Awesome! Everything was going so perfectly!

By that night, he still hadn’t latched on any longer, and was starting to cry more. He did those stereotypical hungry newborn faces and rooted around, but when I tried to feed him, he would only nurse for a second or two, then start rooting again and continue to act hungry. Several nurses tried giving me advice for improving his latch, and when he was inconsolable late that night, a nurse manually expressed some colostrum into a tiny cup and fed it to him from the cup. I was starting to get the sense that everything wasn’t going perfectly anymore, but everyone was still very encouraging. I was told to keep trying and to show up for the free nursing class the next morning.

In the class, Sam screamed and screamed and screamed and refused to even attempt to latch on. Up until this point, we had never heard him scream, so it was a bit disconcerting, as well as extremely disruptive to the class. The teacher (a lactation consultant) asked me to try and comfort him for a minute so she could instruct all of the other mothers with their peaceful little snacking babies, then came over to give us some special attention. Every time I attempted to put him to the breast, he screamed and writhed as if in pain, yet at the same time he repeatedly made hungry gestures, getting increasingly frustrated. The teacher suggested a nipple shield (like a silicone sombrero) to help him get the hang of it. After she showed me how to use it, Sam nursed for maybe 15 seconds straight – a new record – so we thought maybe this would solve the problem. She said that while I didn’t have flat or inverted nipples, some babies needed the assistance of a nipple shield to figure out how to nurse. Sam still acted hungry afterwards, but seemed to be improving, so we still planned to check out of the hospital that afternoon.

This is a sad baby face

A bit later, Mr. Z randomly saw the woman who taught our birthing class and gave us our hospital tour. She was also a lactation consultant, so Mr. Z asked her to come in and meet the baby… and maybe give a little advice if she was free for a few minutes! She asked about 3 questions and then started basically freaking out trying to get a nurse in there immediately because “This mama needs help breastfeeding!!!!” She was late for another appointment so she could only help for a minute, but her level of concern made us a lot more worried. By the time a nurse showed up, she was kind of annoyed that our teacher had buzzed her like a hundred times, so she was more interested in calming down the situation than actually helping. She gave me a bit of the same routine latch advice I’d heard several times before and that was that. We decided to go ahead and check out of the hospital and try nursing with the nipple shield some more (since I’d only tried it a couple times since that morning’s class) and see how that worked. We could always call a lactation consultant later if we needed to.

When the doctor came to review our final checkout info about 36 hours after Sam was born, she casually mentioned that he had a bit of jaundice and said we should take him to the pediatrician within the next day or two for a follow up. She told us that we were technically checking out a little early (Sam was born at 1:00 AM, so we only stayed “one night” according to the hospital, even though we slept two actual nights there), and she didn’t think it was necessary to stay longer if we wanted to go home. But since the peak time for jaundice hadn’t hit yet, we’d just need to keep an eye on it. This was said basically in passing as we were leaving and had already packed up the room, so we just said “okay!” and planned to swing by the pediatrician the next day.

Heading Home from the Hospital for the First Time

Jaundice and Dehydration

When we went to the pediatrician the next day, he said the jaundice was looking worse, and he was concerned enough to send us for another blood test – back at the hospital we’d just checked out of! I have to tell you, taking your 2 day old baby back to the hospital the day after you check out is not something anyone wants to do,especially since no one at the outpatient lab had any idea how to do a heel prick on such a tiny baby.  It took several people and many bloody needles before they were able to extract enough blood for the test. We were pretty infuriated at their incompetence, but later found out the reason why it had been so difficult. The results came in a couple hours after we returned home, and the pediatrician called to say they were bad enough that we’d have to head back to the hospital immediately and check Sam back in for jaundice treatment!

After we got set up in our tiny curtained chamber in the pediatric ward (we later found out we could have been checked back into the postpartum ward, which was 100000x more comfortable, but we didn’t know to ask), they started immediately drawing more blood. And OH MY GOD this was the most traumatic thing ever. My poor little 2 day old baby could not stop screaming as they mutilated him over and over and over again! The heel pricks weren’t working so they ended up taking it from his wrist, but his feet and both arms were black and blue with bruises and a hundred bloody pinpricks before we checked out. It turned out that the reason it was so difficult is because in addition to having bad jaundice, he was also extremely dehydrated.

Jaundice sucks.

Shortly after we checked into the pediatric ward, they insisted I give him a bottle of formula. I sputtered and said, “Wait, what, really? This is the only option??” astonished that my dreams of exclusively breastfeeding were getting tossed aside less than 48 hours after my son was born. They firmly explained that bilirubin, the substance which at elevated levels causes jaundice, can be eliminated in 2 basic ways – via light treatment (which we were also doing) and by excreting it via urine and feces. Since Sam didn’t have enough input (from breastmilk), he wasn’t creating enough output (pee/poop) to escort the bilirubin out. And, aside from that, they needed to measure the exact number of milliliters of his input and output, which meant knowing exactly how much he was eating (and saving his diapers to weigh as well). The only other way to get him hydrated, and therefore increase his output, was to put him on a central IV, which we were warned was “the worst case scenario” in a baby this young. Distraught, but caring far more about his health than our ideals, we gave him his first bottle of formula.

Around this time, the first round of blood tests came back, and, surprise! He was so badly dehydrated he needed the central IV line anyway!!! (NOTE TO DOCTORS: DO NOT TELL PARENTS THAT SOMETHING IS THE “WORST CASE SCENARIO” FOR THEIR NEWBORN UNLESS YOU ARE SURE YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO RECOMMEND IT FIVE MINUTES LATER.) They completely mutilated both arms trying to get the IV line in, and finally someone put two and two together and said that the reason they were having so much trouble drawing his blood was that it was much thicker than it should be due to the dehydration. That made us feel a teensy bit better in that everyone wasn’t just totally incompetent and torturing our baby for no reason, but also made us feel a million times worse that Sam had gotten so badly dehydrated in the first place.

Sleeping off the Central IV Blues

This is when the first “I am a total failure as a mother” phase started. Because seriously, what is the single most basic thing a mother is supposed to provide for her child? Nourishment. And apparently Sam had received so little of it in his first 2 days, his blood had thickened so severely that it couldn’t be drawn into a needle in the standard method, and he wasn’t peeing or pooping anywhere near what he should be because he simply didn’t have anything in his system that he could excrete. Needless to say, as much as I wanted to be able to breastfeed Sam at this point, we considered the formula a godsend – at least there was another way that we could provide for our baby, even if it wasn’t in the way we had hoped originally.

Pumped Breastmilk and Formula

A few hours after getting settled into the pediatric ward, I felt my milk coming in. It was frustrating to think of how now that I might have enough to actually begin providing nourishment for Sam, I no longer had the option since we had to measure all of his input! And then I had a brilliant flash of insight – um, if all we need is to know how much it is, couldn’t I just pump some milk and give that to him instead? When I asked, they said, “Oh, of course you can!” and instantly brought me a pump. Why did that not occur to anyone earlier? I am still pretty furious at the hospital for not presenting this as an option right off the bat. However, we had already given Sam a few bottles of formula, and it ended up that I couldn’t pump enough over the next few days for him anyway, so we occasionally supplemented with a bottle or two of formula.

Mr. Z giving Sam some pumped milk

Now, I’ll skip over the rest of the time in the hospital (several days of getting tugged back and forth by repeatedly being told we could be home soon and then getting the date pushed back – in which time several jaundiced babies checked in and then out of our room). By the time we checked out of the hospital, we were in a pretty good pumping rhythm, with only about one bottle of formula a day. I got totally addicted to measuring and recording everything he ate (and his diapers), which you’re supposed to do the first few days anyway, but after Sam’s time in the hospital, that was the one way I could even pretend to be in control of things. Plus, it was so so so good to see Sam eat for an extended period and then not be hungry afterwards!!

Needless to say, once we got home, and Sam was now about a week old, it was incredibly scary to go back to trying breastfeeding.

… to be continued.