Saturday 28 April 2012

My Love-Hate Relationship with Breastfeeding

Before you have your first child literally everyone has some pearls of wisdom for you. Mostly they are about how little sleep you're going to get, (sleep when the baby sleeps, snarf, snarf), and how your life is never going to be the same (8pm bedtimes for the win). What noone prepares you for is how hard breastfeeding is going to be.

I actually think I've had a pretty easy time of it compared to many women. I didn't have a really painful time feeding him. I didn't have cracked and bleeding nipples. My Little Monster didn't have tongue tie or problems with latching.

So why has it been so hard? Hmm.


For the first 8 weeks or so I had oversupply / overactive letdown issues. A good supply is a great thing but the overactive letdown would cause my Little Monster to unlatch, coughing and spluttering. He had a lot of discomfort in the early weeks and this was amongst the things we angsted about while trying to find a solution since an oversupply can cause babies issues with gas, explosive nappy filling and irritability. There's some great info on oversupply at LLLI.

And then there was the undersupply...something I truly don't understand. How can you get both? Most women's supply dwindles in the afternoon/evening but mine is just ridiculous. Most of the afternoon I just can't satisfy Little Monster's need to feed. He feeds until I'm empty, gets grumpy and latches on again 45 minutes later which exhausts both of us, makes it difficult to go out anywhere and fills me with guilt that I'm unable to feed my son sufficiently. This makes the bedtime feeds stressful because I constantly question whether I have enough milk to satisfy him.

On top of this, I'm not hugely keen on breastfeeding in public. Some people have great success at it and can do it discreetly. I have Little Monster who feeds so loudly that even the breastfeeding specialist joked about how I wouldn't be able to feed him in public. Seriously, he makes all these loud grunting and groaning noises which sound frankly *weird* when coming from my son at my breast. Which all means that I have to make sure that Little Monster is tanked up before I leave the house and, even so, his appetite means that he's normally crying for food before I can get back home again.

I haven't really touched on the 'love' part of the relationship. I didn't expect how close I would feel to Little Monster through breastfeeding and how much he would love it compared to bottles. Everytime his big pools of blue look up at me while he's feeding I decide that I will cope with it for just one more day. My next goal is the three month mark which is coming up soon. What will month four bring?

8 comments:

  1. I remember those days... not being able to leave the house after three in the afternoon. We found some morning groups to go to, tried to do bits of chores (shopping) while we were out, then spent afternoons in the nursing chair with a good book! I was frustrated at first, but eventually got to enjoy that time as I could generally sit down and rest/read during the feeding time and it ended up being one of the most relaxing times in the day. It did get better and as he grew, he could go longer between feeds and those afternoon/evening cluster feeding sessions disappeared unless he was in the middle of a growth spurt... then they went away altogether.

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    1. That sounds kinda nice :) I never seem to have a hand free while nursing...not sure why, everyone else seems to manage! Thanks for stopping by. x

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  2. Breastfeeding can be much more difficult than you expect it to be, well done for feeding this long, you're doing brilliantly! He will be able to go longer between feeds soon (although you'll probably still end up with the long before bedtime feed!).

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    1. Thank you :) It is so difficult to know when to stop isn't it? Every day that you really struggle with it, you want to stop but at the same time you know you'd be sad if you did. Thanks for dropping in X

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  3. one lovely thing is the first time my little one looked up and smiled in the middle of feeding - there are good things. In hindsight I should probably have given up feeding when it was so painful I was crying through feeds. It gradually got better and more second nature and less frequent. It's probably best not to know exactly how hard breast feeding will otherwise lots of people would never think of doing it. Well done for keeping going this long.

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  4. I was giving up each month but ended up stopping at 14 months. It got easier as time passed but I also had a noisy eater - he would squeal the moment he realised milk was on it's way - so couldn't venture out around feeding times. Congrats on getting so far. It's not easy x

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    1. Thank you. I think one thing I've decided over the last few days is not to keep beating myself up about my milk supply. I've been stressing out about eating and drinking enough as my supply has been poor. I will breast feed as much as I can but if there just isn't enough and we have to top up with formula...I'm not going to let it stress me so much anymore.

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