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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Breastfeeding Drama (part 1 of 3)



One of the main reasons I chose to have a natural home birth was to maximize a solid start to a successful breastfeeding relationship with my baby.  Everything I read about the multitude of interventions that are common in hospital births seemed to point to the beginning of the end of breastfeeding for mothers and babies who were “drugged” during birth.  And since I didn’t trust myself to turn down interventions in a time as vulnerable as labor, I opted for a homebirth instead.
  
But as Albert Einstein once said, “information is not knowledge.” Did I seriously stake my entire birth and early postpartum experience on mere potentiality?  There is a chance of an unnecessary cesarean section at a hospital birth.  Hospital births are more likely to result in prolonged or even stalled labor. Mothers and babies who experience unmedicated birth tend to go on to have strong, successful breastfeeding relationships.  The epidural may lead to other, unwanted interventions.  None of these are universals or guarantees, yet they’re the pearls of wisdom I read about which convinced me to have a natural homebirth.

When I finally held Natalia in my arms for the first time, I did not think any of the crunchy poetics I had read about from other natural birth moms.  I did not think for one second that it was worth it, or that I’d do it all again if I had to.  It was over; that’s all that mattered.  Now my daughter was here, and I just remember thinking how tiny she was.  There was a definite disconnect between her presence and the manner of her arrival.  Other than giving me bragging rights, I did not feel particularly empowered by the natural birth.  And as I’d learn over the following days and weeks, the experience did not naturally (pun intended) lead to establishing a smooth breastfeeding relationship, either.

As it would turn out, while my little girl’s being small (5 pounds, 10 ounces) may have been beneficially for me during birth, it would prove a stumbling block to establishing a good latch.  Her mouth just seemed to be too small to take in the appropriate amount of the areola, nibbling instead on the nipple itself.  Furthermore, having come a couple of weeks earlier than expected, she fell into a category no one mentioned before – near-term baby.  As such, her rooting motions were quite jerky, and her sucking not very well coordinated.  Add to that a mom traumatized by early nipple damage (yes, even without teeth, my little crocodile managed to munch a piece of my nipple right off!).  The result: an inability to boldly and quickly maximize the few nanoseconds baby’s mouth stays open before attempting to suckle, and painfully sore nipples are bound to happen. 

Although everyone not directly involved with La Leche League claimed that a painful beginning (days? weeks? months?) was part of the deal, I had a hard time believing that my threshold for pain was that much lower than all of these other moms’. The nipple damage traumatized me quite a bit. It was the last straw on a heap of a week’s worth of painful nursing sessions.  Contrary to what I knew had to happen once I began lactating, I was so afraid of anything coming anywhere near my damaged breast that I neither nursed nor expressed any milk from it for 12 hours.  When the scab came off in the bath, I was able to attempt to express milk using the manual pump I had “just in case”. But because my milk had just started coming in the day before, I spent two hours in all sorts of crazy positions, trying to maximize the amount I got with the help of gravity, yielding just enough for one feeding – by miniature bulb syringe – before realizing that I simply could not keep up with my little one’s needs.

Utterly disappointed in myself for my inability to nourish my child the way nature intended, I had to succumb to allowing formula into the picture.  We had received some formula samples in the mail which I had gathered to donate, since formula did not fit into the ideal I was trying to establish in my early days of parenting.  But now I was so thankful that there was a way I could feed my baby, even if it was no thanks to me.  Oscar, bless his heart, offered to take the entire night shift (since this became a possibility with the introduction of formula into the picture) so that I could sleep and thereby try to recuperate a bit from the day’s drama.

Go to Part 2.

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