Our Breastfeeding Odyssey, Or Persistence Pays Off – Part I

I'm still quite sick, so while I can't post something "new," I leave you with this huge post I wrote a while ago, it's just the first part of the story, actually :)
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I knew I wanted to breastfeed my son, so I attended the breastfeeding class offered by the hospital, I read about it, and waited for the baby to be born… I never, ever thought it would be so unbelievably hard for me to do it, though. I also didn’t know then just how much I desired or needed to breastfeed him and to what lengths I’d go to be able to succeed.

The trouble started already in the hospital. After Kelvin was born (in March 2002), even in his very alert first moments with us after the birth, it was not very easy to have him latch on to my breast. The only way it worked more or less was when the nurse literally shoved his head against my chest. He was a very sleepy baby and wouldn’t wake up to nurse at all. I tried hard, but he hardly ever latched on, the best position was side-lying, but I needed someone else to help push his head towards my breast, since in that position I couldn’t see his head very well. I had opted for going to a bedroom with a double bed for me and my husband instead of a hospital bed for me and couch/ bed for him, which was OK, but perhaps not so much on the second night. I won’t ever forgive myself or the nursery staff for what happened on that second night-early morning.

Since the baby was born over two weeks early, we were not as prepared as we should have been; we hadn’t brought home the crib we had ordered, since the store was an hour away. My mom had arrived a few days before with a huge bag full of baby clothes, blankets and everything else we’d need until the baby was one, but there was no dresser to put it away, so on that first day at the hospital, my husband left me alone to go buy a dresser for the baby’s things. He was exhausted when he came back to spend the night at the hospital with us, so around 4 am when the nurses came and suggested that they take the baby away so we could sleep, I agreed. At 7 am I woke up and wanted my baby. Poor hubby was sleeping soundly, though, and I didn’t want to bother him by talking to the nurses in the intercom, so I waited a little longer, since I thought they would know better and bring him to me. They didn’t, though!! It was past 8 o’clock when I finally got up and went to see where he was. I asked why they hadn’t brought him to me and they replied that it was because he was sleeping soundly and didn’t wake up. Of course you’re supposed to try and wake them at least every 3 hours for them to nurse when they’re newborns, and I can’t believe they didn’t bring him to me!! In his case, later I learned that his sleepiness and lethargic behavior were probably consequences of his jaundice. Anyway, we had scheduled the circumcision for that morning and they had told me that the baby shouldn’t nurse for one hour before and after that, so when I asked whether I should nurse him, they repeated that information and said that the doctor should be there any minute. Why did I listen to them? Why? The doctor didn’t arrive until ten a.m., he was circumcised around 12 and I finally tried to nurse him at 1 p.m. (When my second son was circumcised I found out that the not nursing for one hour after the surgery doesn’t actually exist!) – isn’t that unbelievable? Since 4 am without nursing? Thinking about that morning in the in the days (and even years) to come was sheer torture for me, I just couldn’t believe I had been so naïve and inexperienced and had not stood up for my son (one more reason why I definitely despise hospital births).

It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal if my son weren’t so jaundiced. No wonder that two days later when the doctor saw him she said he was dehydrated and asked me to supplement with formula. On our pre-birth visit with her she had already mentioned “finger-feeding” (with a dental-type syringe that has tubing on its tip) as a good way to supplement if needed in case the mother wants to breastfeed. His jaundice was pretty bad, though, the bilirrubin count went from 9 to 15.4 in a day (no doubt because of the over 8 hours without nursing), then to 19.5 in the next day (Wednesday). At 20-22 they usually hospitalize the baby, but they sent a bili-blanket (a blue light blanket, that goes around the baby – the light breaks down the bilirrubin that is excreted in the urine and feces, that’s why hydration is so important) to our house immediately. Even though my milk came in on Tuesday, and I was so uncomfortably engorged that I had to sleep with ice packs on my breasts that night, the baby still wasn’t latching on and nursing effectively, and I felt extremely worried.

On Wednesday night, the day the bilirrubin peaked, when we came home from the university clinic and started using the bili-blanket which was delivered on that same evening, I experienced the most heartbreaking moment of my life as a mother until the present. This moment came to define the significance of breastfeeding to my mothering experience. It changed me forever and made me acutely sensitive to other mothers’ breastfeeding troubles. As instructed by the pediatrician, we started to supplement by “finger-feeding” formula to our baby with the syringe, and late that night, while my husband fed him, I tried to use a cheap electric breast pump that my friend had sent me the day before – I later learned that those are no good, but I didn’t know it then. When no milk came out, I despaired. I didn’t know better, so I thought that I had no more milk, that I wouldn’t ever be able to breastfeed my son, and I cried my heart out. I cried and cried, huge heaving sobs that shook my whole body, and my husband, who was extremely concerned that if the jaundice didn’t get better our son would have to be hospitalized (the hospital being 45 minutes away – a big, “scary” teaching hospital, not the small one where I had given birth) joined me. I think we wept together for over half an hour. I just couldn’t stop crying – I had never felt so helpless in my life. Now I know that my despair was definitely enhanced by the hormonal drop, and part of the so-called post-partum “blues,” but those moments of utter despair will remain etched my memory forever. I think I have never felt such profound sadness and despair.

In the morning, things didn’t look so grim – they usually don’t when the sun is shining and it’s a bright new day. We went to the doctor for blood tests again, and the bilirrubin count was high, but not too bad (18.5). For you to have an idea, my son was so “lethargic” that he wouldn’t cry when they cut his heels to get blood for the tests. He even slept through it once!! All he did was sleep that first week – we tried every suggestion in the book to wake him up to nurse (stripping him naked, splashing cold water on him), but nothing really worked – this is one of the side effects of the Jaundice.

Nothing seemed too daunting to me now, after I had been confronted with the dark faces of fear and despair on that Wednesday night. I kept trying to have him latch on, with little success. I found out about Medela’s Supplemental Nursing System (SNS scroll down the link to see it) thanks to a picture on Dr. Sears's The Baby Book (I’ll be always thankful to him for that), which we showed to our pediatrician on Thursday. She called the lactation consultant at the hospital who responded that she had it, and that she could sell it to us. We decided to wait until Saturday morning when the hospital had a free lactation clinic. The lactation consultant was great – she saw that we were pretty desperate and actually gave us the SNS for free, and we rented a breast pump immediately. From then on I pumped day and night for one whole month, thankfully we only had to use formula for one more day and from then on my son only had my milk – even though he wasn’t latching on to my breasts. We tried to use the SNS but were unsuccessful, so we kept finger feeding him with the syringe.

To be continued…