I want to document my breastfeeding journey with my second baby. You really forget all the small details and I wanted to capture them. I also hope that some of the things I share help other women with their breastfeeding journey.
A little background information… My baby was born 3 weeks early with an induction (preclampsia). I was worried that because of this, we would have difficulty breastfeeding, that he would be jaundiced, and that he would be very small, needing a nipple shield, having a sleepy baby that wouldn’t take a full feed, my milk would take forever to come in, etc. (Yes this is how my brain works, especially with all the anxiety of being pregnant and being diagnosed with preclampsia). All things that had a high likelihood of occurring based on my experience with my first baby (born at 40 weeks, jaundiced, and on the small side too). I will do a lot of comparisons to my first breastfeeding experience too. You can read about my first breastfeeding experience here.
After a long but relatively uneventful labor (24 hours – 12 for cervidil 12 on pitocin 5 minutes of pushing) he was born weighing only 5 lb 4 oz (not a huge surprise). I was able to hold him immediately after delivery and able to nurse within the first hour. Luckily, even though he was early and tiny, he didn’t need to stay in the NICU at all.
Even though I breastfed my first for a year, I still felt like I didn’t totally know what I was doing with a tiny newborn. Luckily, with a little help from the nurse (i.e. an extra hand) I was able to latch him, and he stayed on my breast for about 30 minutes.
This immediately made me more hopeful. I didn’t need a nipple shield. While in the hospital he would latch and actually eat before falling asleep. Pretty much any time he woke up, I put him on my breast. No schedule. I was determined for this to be a successful experience.
When we left the hospital he was jaundiced, but going through that with my first made it a little easier. I also knew we had a laid back and pro-breastfeeding pediatrician. The best way to get rid of jaundice is to eat, so that’s what we did. I also wanted to bring my milk in as soon as possible. We still had to have his blood tested on days 4, 5 and 6, for bilirubin, but it wasn’t rising above the threshold for bili-lights (my first had to get a bilibed the first week). My Pediatrician did ask us to give him a supplemental 4 oz on days 5-6 (the weekend) and I was able to pump 2 oz and give him 2 oz of formula (not the end of the world – which is how I felt with my first). I already had my pump at home so I tried pumping in between feeds. I would only get an ounce or less, but it was something.
By one week, his bili levels had gone down, my milk had come in, and he had gained back almost to his birth weight – woo hoo! I was producing milk, and he was efficiently drinking! I really couldn’t even tell my milk had come in – except for pumping seeing white milk, because I never felt engorged, and never leaked.
From there it was a learning curve for both of us, but having done it before helped me a lot. I knew what to expect and when not to worry about things.
He ate about every 3 hours on the dot, and I would set an alarm at night to feed every three hours, but he usually woke up anyway. Then at 3 weeks (his due date) he suddenly was more alert and did not like it. He started screaming ALL THE TIME if he wasn’t latched. So trying to keep my sanity, I kept him at the boob when he got upset (when it doubt, whip it out).
This was hard to get much of anything done. Carrying him around everywhere, sleeping in my arms during the day. It also was hard for me to do much for/with my toddler. That first month really is all about survival mode.
I had started to wonder if his colicky-ness was some kind of intolerance caused by something I was eating. I also went ahead and started trying to cut dairy out of my diet to see if it made much difference. I was focusing on the obvious forms of dairy (milk cheese butter) and not really searching ingredient labels for hidden dairy.
At his one month pediatrician appointment he had gained almost 2.5 pounds (which blew me away). And was back on the weight growth chart (he started out in the negatives – they don’t adjust it for early babies if they are only a few weeks early apparently). I guess all that eating was paying off.
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