Our breastfeeding journey
I’d NEVER even considered it wouldn’t be an option to breast feed. I skipped the free breast feeding classes, and, wanting a breast reduction all throughout my upper school years to lighten the load, didn’t go any further with it only because there was a possibility that the operation could have meant I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed. I started leaking milk, infact pouring milk, at 17 weeks into pregnancy, and I couldn’t wait to get that sweet golden nectar into my baby. I was destined to breastfeed. I imagined myself as the natural mumma, braless and braided hair, riding a horse through the wilderness, my babe latched on gulping down the nutrients she needed. Neither of us a care in the world.
I have carried such grief and inner turmoil these past few months for this wasn’t our story, and turns out it’s not for many either. I have flipped between feeling like the Judas, to making a Judas out of Hephzibah, feeling like I had been cheated. I didn’t even know it was possible to feel remorse towards someone so small and pure, but how hard could eating be? I beat myself up with the deep guilt that I was somehow failing and so was she, asking for her forgiveness as I put her down to sleep each night that I had let the stress, frustration and guilt creep into our day. How could I, maker of my own toothpaste and dry shampoo, allow a synthetic man made bottle to come between me and my baby?
Yet, I didn’t need another person to tell me that I should try a new type of shield, to watch another youtube video on latching or try a new position. I didn’t need to hear that I should just keep trying and persisting or try harder some more. I needed someone to release me, to tell me that formula wasn’t poison, that my baby wasn’t going to die, that I wasn’t any less of a mum for feeding her through those means, that I could pump for her and make it work. I needed permission to follow my own instincts on something that was massively affecting me emotionally and making me feel that I was losing a grip on any sense of anything at all. I wanted to scream to every one watching- ‘if I could breast feed I WOULD BE DOING IT!’.
After giving birth and whilst in hospital, everything went pretty text book in regards to feeding. Hephzibah b-lined for my nipple, army crawled up, and in the dreamiest of moments possible started sucking. I though i was the absolute boss! I had it down!
Then my milk started to come in…. and boy oh boy did my milk come in…Pamela Anderson eat your heart out. I mean boobs the size of beach balls and quadruple the size of Hephzibah’s head, I sometimes thought i’d lost her amongst the sheer mass of those guys. My milk coming in was not blissful AT ALL! In fact it was awful! I had an overwhelmingly high supply of milk. I remember back and forth calls to the midwife in a panic, longing for them to tell me it would stabilise. I would wake up drenched in milk, milky clothes, towels and muslins were all over our bedroom and our bedsheets were covered! I would have to change Hephzibah multiple times in the night alone because as I would try and latch her milk would just be pouring out over her, often all over her face because of the force of my let down. Whilst I was feeding on one side- Joseph (my hero of a husband) would hold a tuppaware or I would balance a tupperware under the other boob and it would almost entirely drain into it- usually around 7oz of milk or more! People suggested breast shells to me or breast pads to minimise the flow…but unless the breast shell was the size of my face there was no way it would even attempt to contain what was flowing out! I was so overwhelmed, not just with the milk, but with navigating being a mum and loving my baby girl, learning how to be a wife and friend in the midst of that, coping with the night sweats no one told me about or the sheer shock as I put a mirror to my lady parts and saw swelling the size of golfballs. I was feeling SO overwhelmed. I had so much milk we were just throwing it down the toilet. (Just a note here…I know there are mums who cannot produce milk at all, so this is in no way meant to sound boastful, it was actually the opposite. it was so traumatic. in hindsight I probably would not have thrown it down the toilet but there was SO much of it I had no idea what to do!). I remember crying thinking that I would never be able to breastfeed in public, let alone go out the house and feed anywhere without needing multiple changes of clothes. I remember just wanting a sense of normalcy in a time where it felt like feeding was dominating EVERYTHING.
At about month two my supply started to stabilise and I realised around this time that Hephzibah would feed for 5 minutes at a time tops. I remember going to a breast feeding class and STARING in disbelief and fascination at other mums around me with babies, their little humans just contentedly sucking away. Babies sucking for 10 minutes, 20 minutes…an hour?! Women who didn’t even need to even alter their boob or change their position to latch the baby on, and there was me hoisting my bursting breast full of milk off the floor (it seemed like) towards my tiny baby- so indiscrete. Because my milk was so forceful Hephzibah never sucked for comfort. She would get so frustrated in trying because she would get so much milk. As my milk stabilised and started to change, she would only drink for short periods because she had never learnt to draw in milk for herself (later confirmed by a specialist we saw). She had always just opened her mouth and had the milk pour in and so she hadn’t learn to work for it! The whole time she was feeding so briefly I was thinking it must be impossible for her to be getting enough milk but at the same time I had a VERY content baby! She rarely cried, and seemed satisfied with the small amounts. Yet, a dip in weight, and general anxiety around feeding for me, meant that on a trip to a feeding clinic, the health visitor suggested giving her bottles.
It was around this point that Hephzibah started rejecting feeding from me altogether. If I latched her on and I hadn’t let down she would freak out and not go back on for a long period of time. Breast feeding in general at this point was a NIGHTMARE and because she was so sporadic if she would feed or not, I was anxious every time before feeding her whether she would take milk or not, and I knew she could most probably sense my anxiety too. My whole entire day felt as if it was consumed and dictated by her feeding patterns. I couldn’t understand how she couldn’t be hungry…she was taking such low amounts of milk. I felt this enormous pressure for things to go as I had read and so my vision was firstly so narrow and I felt as if I was failing. I wanted to tell everyone how well breast feeding was going, I wanted to see my baby chubbing out and gaining rolls when instead everyone kept commenting on how small she was. I could tell emotionally I was all over the place, and the less and less she would feed from me I would sob and sob to Joseph, explaining the deep grief, rejection and the great disappointment I felt. I felt as if I was withholding something from her by not being able to feed and that we wouldn’t have as intimate a connection if I had been able to. At the same time, I felt so much shame, and felt so embarrassed to get a bottle out of a bag to feed. (side note again. I can understand this may read like I am ungrateful for the situation I was in. I am so grateful for being a mother and for my baby. I also want to be real as possible, and this was the truth about what I was feeling at the time.)
BOTTLE FEEDING
I had expected bottle feeding to come as a relief, but it seemed Hephzibah didn’t take to the bottle any better. Yet, because I was able to wedge the teat in her mouth more so than my nipple, she did drink more than she had been before, and she started to put weight back on. I spent so much time on google and forums trying to find mums who had been through a similar thing to know this season would end, we tried all teats, positions, milks and went multiple times to health visitors to get help. I was exclusively pumping at this time apart from one feed in the middle of the night where Hephzibah would still take from me.
At 12 weeks I went back to the clinic in desperation for help and I was told by a lactation consultant that Hephzibah had tongue tie and were referred for an appointment at Brighton hospital.
Even though I was confused why this hadn’t been picked up on earlier, I felt such hope that we would get to the appointment and everything would be sorted out and I would be able to breastfeed again! The appointment they gave me was about 8 weeks away and after a particularly awful week of feeding, almost boycotting milk altogether, in desperation we booked to go and get her tongue tie cut privately the following day.
The lady at the clinic told us everything I was explaining was classic tongue tie symptoms, but on looking was surprised to see the tongue tie was only so slight! She cut the tongue tie saying that it probably wouldn’t make much difference but told us that Hephzibah had a high palette, meaning she would struggle to create a latch and suction when feeding and also that she had poor tongue movement, which would explain why she wasn’t able to draw milk in. She suggested speech therapy or osteopathy.
We didn’t feel it was right to pursue either of those things. Things didn’t improve after seeing the lactation specialist and we were believing and praying for a feeding miracle repeatedly. I was still so tired and anxious when it came to feeding, one day she would only want to be fed lying on her back and another day, being rocked or on the stairs.
My health visitor came round after I called her saying something needed to change and I needed help. She told us that Hephzibah didn’t have high palette, that I had been given wrong advice, and suggested that I fed her milk off a spoon… (NOOOOOO) She said everything we were talking about suggested Hephzibah maybe just didn’t like milk and so she was eating only to survive.
I remember coming away from that so dis-heartened wondering how on earth I could keep up the momentum of feeding her each day. I wanted to feel so much joy when I woke up but I would dread having to feed her and my day was full of anxiety.
STARTING SOLIDS
It was then at around 5-6 months we started on solid foods. While everyone said this would take the pressure off, I still wanted her main nutrition to be coming from the milk, and feared a little that she would self wean early and completely go to solids! It took a little while, but at around 9 months in, the game completely changed and out of nowhere she suddenly started loving milk and eating!?! I have absolutely no idea why. Giving her a bottle no longer became stressful, and she would drink the milk so quickly I could hardly believe it! I did notice around this time that Hephzibah started to be using her tongue a lot more and it was as if she suddenly had learnt had to use her tongue to draw in milk!
At this stage I was still exclusively pumping for Hephzibah, and I decided to stop at 11 months, as my milk supply was dropping and I just felt it was time to do so…plus it felt like I wasn’t getting any free time as was always pumping or sterilising something!
I write this journey because too many times I replied to the question ‘how is motherhood?’ often loaded with excitement and fun, my mind running through the possibilities I could reply with and instead smiling sweetly and telling them it’s great when, deep down I felt for the majority of the first six months of having her that I was surviving, barely surviving, and longing for the days to pass away and skip to when the milk feeding days were over. I realise that I don’t necessarily want to give people a reply they’re looking for to appease them or make them feel comfortable, I often have, for fear of looking ungrateful, especially as I know others are longing for children- many facing battle so much greater. But, the truth is that I want a reality and whilst my story isn’t the case for everyone, I wanted to share because it is for some.
Something I have learned is this: While this feeding trauma felt like EVERYTHING it was also nothing. Even in the tiny bit of hindsight I have right now what I was facing seems so real, yet so minor. Hephzibah will grow like a tree, not because of what I pour into her anyway, but because her life is sustained by one so much greater. That is not to cast off the real pain I was feeling at the time, but to know this too shall pass.
No one knows your story, and journey and baby but you. My main job isn’t and wasn't to feed Hephzibah anyway, it’s to love her whatever that looks like…for me that looked like laying down this all consuming goal, and giant that was breastfeeding- that was causing so much pain.
For ages after I did struggle and do find it hard when I see a Mum breast feeding a baby as I’m still working through disappointment, but it’s sadder to think how quick I was to judge pre-baby those who fed their baby through a bottle, (breast milk or formula) thinking they were lazy or didn’t care about creating connection with their baby when they were in pain too.
If there’s anything I’ve learnt these past few months it’s that Mother’s are strong, hardcore and resilient, and i’m one of them, and i’m thankful.