This Breastfeeding Journey

Before I ever got pregnant I would have told anyone who asked me that I would NEVER breastfeed. Something about it bothered me. Not other people doing it - I just couldn't imagine MYSELF doing it. I was young, and I'm not really sure why I felt that way. But the minute I found out I was pregnant with Lily, my whole view on it changed. Suddenly it was about what was healthiest for my baby - funny how becoming a mother changes you.

Clay and I took a half day class just on breastfeeding. I read books. We got a pump for when I went back to work, and we bought all the supplies we could possibly need. I thought I was ready and that I knew everything.

Lily was born, and the nurse initially got her to latch, but after that, we had tons of problems. We had to use special sugar water in the hospital to get her to latch, and once we ran out of that at home we went back to having problems. I ended up using a special shield that tricked her into thinking she was drinking from a bottle so that she would nurse. By one month, she still hadn't hit her birth weight, and we had to supplement. The pediatrician wanted me to pump for 24 hours to see how much milk I had - it wasn't enough. So we nursed and supplemented. At 6 weeks, I had to have my gallbladder out. After that and returning to work, I would pump 6 times a day and only get 2 ounces for an entire day's worth of effort. At 3 months, she refused to nurse anymore. There was just nothing there, and she didn't want to participate. I decided if she wouldn't nurse, that I was done pumping, because the result wasn't worth the effort. Elise was an AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING friend who pumped extra to give me milk for her up until Lily was a year old.

For the next 3 years I told myself that next time I would get this right. I didn't know what I had done wrong, but I was convinced that somehow I would fix it the next time.

Then Penny was born. At first I though she was nursing well, and I was so relieved. Within the first couple days she was pulling off a lot, and I was having problems keeping her latched. My lactation consultant (LC) visited me in the hospital to see how it was going. The first thing she said was that she had looked at my medical history and saw that I had PCOS and wanted to warn me that it could cause milk supply issues. I filed it away in the back of my mind. I couldn't think about that. I was going to get this right, and that information wasn't what I wanted to hear. She taught us several tricks to get Penny to latch, and I became convinced that I was just bad at this and needed practice. By the time I went home, I was in pain. LOTS AND LOTS OF PAIN. There were cracks and bleeding. I would cry every time I would feed her. I just knew I was doing it wrong somehow, because they tell you it's not supposed to hurt. 

We walked into Penny's 1 week appointment, and despite the pain and latching issues, I was proud of myself. I had exclusively breastfed her for a whole week, and I was excited to see her weight. 

They put her on the scale and she had lost an entire pound. My heart sank. I cried to Clay, "I just want to be able to feed my babies."

Clay and I made an appointment with lactation. My LC got her to latch painlessly, despite the bloody state I was in. Because if the latch is truly right, it really DOESN'T hurt. That's when I was even more convinced that it was all my fault. 

The LC told me to pump for 24 hours to see how much milk I could get. 

That again. 

I knew that drill from last time, and I was worried.

So I pumped, and I got 12 ounces for the day, and I had to supplement with 6 ounces of formula that day. I called her and she told me that I should go back to nursing and just pump after each time to increase my supply and then I could supplement with my own pumped milk.

Except I couldn't go back to nursing. Penny wouldn't latch and she screamed at me the whole time I tried to feed her. I cried and cried. Clay rubbed my shoulders, because maybe I was too tense with the pain of it for her to latch. Nothing worked, and I was heartbroken. I knew I must be completely incompetent, and so I decided to go to pumping and giving her a bottle.

The next day, a very sweet friend of mine texted me and asked how I was doing and said she prayed for me that nursing was going well. I replied that unfortunately it was not. I happened to run into her that afternoon and she told me her daughter had a lip tie and so they had also had nursing issues. It was another piece of information I filed away in my mind and didn't really think about.

That night my mom came over, and while she was giving Penny a bottle, she noticed that she kept collapsing the bottle in her mouth and was having a lot of trouble drinking from it. I told her that was normal for Penny, and I didn't understand why she couldn't nurse or ever drink from a bottle right. That's when the lip tie thing popped into my head. I looked in her mouth, and go figure - she had one, and it was a class IV, the most severe kind.

The next morning I checked Lily's mouth, and she had one too. This was such a relief, because after 3 years of beating myself up, I finally knew what had gone wrong with feeding Lily.

We went to have Penny's weight checked at 2 weeks, and she had gained weight from the bottle feeding. The pediatrician documented all her eating issues and checked her mouth. He noted that she had a lot of trouble sucking properly. Her top lip would turn bright red when drinking from a bottle, and the lip tie was obviously a problem. Then we were off to the ENT. I had read that if the lip tie is corrected, that a baby could latch properly afterwards. I also knew that since she couldn't suck properly that it caused my milk supply to drop, and that if we got her lip fixed that everything else would resolve itself.

The ENT noted that her lip tie was very tight and he clipped it with scissors. The next day she still wouldn't latch. It turns out that she had learned how to suck a certain way, and just because she COULD now move her lip properly, didn't mean she knew that and WOULD. For the next 4 weeks I exclusively pumped and bottle fed. Every 2 hours, no matter what, I pumped. For the first week, I woke up even at night to pump, but that was too exhausting and I ended up changing it to only waking up when she did. At this point, I was doing a special hour long pumping session every night, taking several supplements, and even a prescription medication to increase my supply. I was only getting 18 ounces of milk a day - still not enough, since at this point she was eating 24 a day. I figured since a baby is more effective than a pump, that if I could just nurse her that I could make more milk.

I had heard a chiropractor could help, so we figured we would try anything. If you have never taken a baby to a chiropractor, you should. They do not adjust the same way as with adults. They just use a fingertip to apply slight pressure. I watched Penny completely relax on the table during her visit - I could literally see that it helped her in some way. 

The next day she latched with a shield, and so for the last couple weeks I have been able to nurse her every feeding, and then supplement with formula or milk I pump in the evening when she is asleep. After awhile of that I went to do a second weighted feed with my LC to see exactly how much milk she was getting from me. She wasn't getting any more than before. Once again what I thought would be a fix was not. I went straight to my mom and fell apart in the school's office. Why was I such a failure? She assured me it was not for lack of trying. She said, "You have gone above and beyond and at some point you have to learn to be okay with that."

A few days ago, while I was pondering my supply, I realized that the first week of pumping I had increased from 12 to 18 ounces, but that in the following 5 weeks after that, I had not increased at all, no matter what I tried. Then I remembered the LC telling me about PCOS effecting supply. I pulled out the paper she gave me and started doing research. It turns out that PCOS can sometimes cause Insufficient Glandular Tissue (IGT) - meaning you just don't have enough of the right kind of tissue in your breasts to be able to make enough milk. I fit a whole lot of the symptoms. With each pregnancy, you can potentially grow more tissue, so it explained why I have more milk with Penny, but still not enough. 

Realizing I most likely have IGT has been bittersweet. I am having to mourn the reality that I am just not going to make enough milk for my baby, no matter how hard I try. There really is nothing left to try that I have not already. But there is a relief in that I can stop killing myself every day by trying so hard to attain something that is impossible.

I am still learning to be okay with the situation, but I'm sure that will be a process. Moving forward I am still nursing her every feeding and supplementing after with either formula, my own pumped milk, or donor milk from some very sweet ladies. I still plan to give her what I can, because of how beneficial it is for her. Clay, Lily, and I all had a cold that lasted 2 weeks and we all felt miserable, but Penny was healthy, despite being in such close contact with me, because I was able to pass all of my antibodies onto her through my milk. I can continue to give her that benefit, even if I only can provide 1/2 to 2/3 of her milk needs each day. Just like all things related to parenting, I just want to give her the best.

God has blessed me with several amazing people through this. My LC was so awesome and so supportive, and she never tried to push an agenda on me. No matter how many times I asked my mom what I should do, she never gave me an answer - ha! She knows me, and she knows I have to try my absolute hardest or I will never feel good about myself, and she has simply been there to hold my hand while I worked it all out for myself. Elise and Alexandria have listened to every time I have hit a snag and talked me through different things to try and given constant encouragement. There are a couple amazing ladies who have given Penny some of their own milk - this kind of generosity completely blows my mind. And Clay, my sweet, sweet husband. He has watched all of my emotions, handled it all so well, and been constantly supportive of any decision I might make.