My breastfeeding experience (The Breastfeeding Debate)

Member Name: Mels

Product:	The Breastfeeding Debate
Date:	23/10/00 (198 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Best for your baby, free

Disadvantages: for some it can be difficult to master

Throughout my pregnancy I was adamant that I was going to breastfeed my baby. I thought that breastfeeding would come naturally and be fairly simple to do.

Straight after the birth of my daughter the midwife tried to latch her on, but it did take a few attempts and I put it down to tiredness from the birth. During our stay in hospital she hardly fed at all, and the midwives said that it was normal and that I should try to latch her on to feed as often as I could. When she did feed, she was fine and I thought that I have mastered it.

However, when I came home from hospital the problems started. My milk came in on the third day and I was told that I would feel a bit uncomfortable for a few days until the feeding settled down.

I had buckets of milk, far too much and was very engorged. So much so, I couldn’t latch her on to feed. I told the midwife who came in the morning, and she just laughed and said I could feed twins with the amount of milk I had! I asked whether it would be best to express some milk, and she told me that this would be wrong thing to do, as I would make even more milk! This didn’t help my situation at all, I couldn’t latch my baby on as I was so full, and she was obviously starving! She wanted to feed very frequently, every hour in fact, but she wouldn’t latch on for long at each feed. No matter what I tried she would just suck for a couple of minutes and then pull away. Looking back I think I had too much milk and was probably choking her!!

My milk eventually settled down, but my baby’s erratic feeding pattern didn’t, and the problems seemed to get worse, not better. In the end at each feed she would latch on and then if the milk didn’t come straight away, she would pull away and just scream. This seemed to happen at every feed, and I was at the end of my tether and just didn’t know what to do. My husband did his best to help, and see if she was positi
oned wrongly, but nothing seemed to help. I tried nipple shields and nipple shells to no avail. My midwives didn’t do much to help, and just said things would settle down, but after 4 weeks I had enough. At every feed Alex would end up screaming and I would be in floods of tears with frustration. I couldn’t go anywhere, as I knew that I would have to try and feed her, and she would probably scream the place down.

In the end my husband suggested that we give her a bottle of formula, which I wasn’t happy about, but I didn’t have a choice really. She took to the bottle straight away and was much more contented after that.

I was extremely disappointed with myself as I really wanted to breastfeed, and felt guilty when I saw other mum’s breastfeeding successfully. I just told myself that I had given her the best start that I could. Health professionals do say that even if you breastfeed your baby for the first 3 days of life, it is better than not breastfeeding at all, as the first milk that you produce is full of antibodies to protect your baby from infections etc.

I wish that I had more support at the time, as I have since ready opinions on Dooyoo about various breastfeeding organisations such as the NCT and La Leache that can help if you have problems with breastfeeding.

It hasn’t put me off breastfeeding again in the future, but if it doesn’t work out again, I won’t get myself wound up about it. Every baby is different so hopefully things might work out next time.

I hope that I haven’t put any expectant mothers off breastfeeding, as that was not my intention at all. All I was highlighting is that not every mother or baby takes to breastfeeding. For some it comes naturally straight away, some might take a few days or weeks, and some don’t take to it at all. The best I can advice is to get as much help as possible if problems arise, and if all else fails tr
ansfer them to the bottle. It didn’t do my daughter any harm; she didn’t have colic or lots of illnesses, and is now a happy contented toddler.

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