My Breastfeeding Story Part 2

In CategoryBreastfeeding
ByLisa
Breastfeeding has always been very important to me. When I tell my breastfeeding stories I always think of them chronologically.  I had a unique experience with each of my three children.
 
This will be a three part series.  One post per child!
 
Peanut
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My second son was born 11/5/06 is a much different story than my first son.  I had Placenta Previa again and was admitted to the hospital at 33 weeks.  He was delivered via emergency C-section at 35 weeks after I started hemorrhaging and spent 9 days in the NICU.  I started asking for a pump in recovery.  The nurses kept telling me it was too soon to pump. I finally got the pump about 8 hours later after trying to get out of bed to go find the pump myself.  There were no IBCLC’s available since he was born on a Friday night.  I went online and learned online how to hand express colostrum.  After much work I finally collected some colostrum.  I was so excited to even get that small amount for my baby and sent my husband to the NICU with it and the nurse told him it wasn’t enough AND THREW IT AWAY.  I later learned the nurse was a “floater”.  I was devastated.  My poor husband was afraid to come back and tell me what had happened.  I cried and started expressing again.I pumped every two hours. When I was released on 11/7/07 my husband drove me straight to a place to rent a hospital grade pump and my baby received my milk first through a feeding tube.  He then progressed to bottles.  At this point I was too tired, scared and emotional to fight for an alternative feeding method.  When he was released from the hospital he would not latch.  I would try to nurse him and then pump while my husband gave him a bottle every two to three hours.

When he was about 2 months old I had enough. I was tried of pumping and nursing him.  I despised the pump.  One day I called my hubby at work and told him I was done with bottles.  I drove him to the doctor to be weighed and spent the next two days forcing him to only nurse.  He cried, I cried and he finally got it and we got a good latch.  I did have some help from an LC but I think it just clicked for him one day.  Once I got him latched he would get very impatient waiting for let down.  The LC came back and showed me the SNS system.  I could not use it; I did not have enough hands.  I instead filled a bottle and would dribble milk on the corner of his mouth and that calmed him until the let down happened.  I had to continue pumping some because I was producing WAY more than he ate.  I started pumping just enough to make me comfortable with the hope of adjusting my supply.  The next problem we had was his frustration at my super strong let down (from all the pumping).  I learned to take him off and let the milk spray into a towel and then re-latched him.

I am very proud to say that by the time he was 2 1/2 months old he was exclusively breastfed (from the tap).

I returned to work at 4 months and pumped once again while at work.  I nursed him on my lunch break and evenings, nights, and weekends.  I was only working 4 days at first and that helped.  He easily went back and forth between breast and bottle.  He also did some reverse cycling (nursing lots at night) which was fine with me since we co-sleep.

I am very proud that he had nothing but mother’s milk.  I worked very hard at this and it remains one of my biggest mothering accomplishments.

Peanut nursed until he weaned at about 3 1/2 years old!

William Nursing about 2 years old

William Nursing about 2 years old

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