No One Told Me Breastfeeding Would Be So Hard
The Surprises and Challenges of Breastfeeding
When I was pregnant with my son, I had this blissful image of how breastfeeding would go. I had watched countless birthing videos, and I was besotted by the images of newborns crawling their way up their mother’s belly and latching to the breast. Instead, my baby and I had a traumatic birth experience, and upon initial evaluation our midwife declared that my son had a potential tongue tie.
The first day, he was incredibly sleepy and barely latched. By the second day, I knew something was deeply wrong. My breasts were engorged, and my tiny son wasn’t able to latch. I immediately called the lactation consultant whose workshop I had attended during pregnancy, and she did a home visit (this was before COVID). After a thorough assessment, she confirmed that my son had a severe tongue tie and a less severe lip tie. This meant that his lips, tongue, and little mouth did not have enough flexibility to get strong purchase on the breast. The architecture of his mouth was just too tight (as, we would soon learn, was the rest of him: shoulders, neck, stomach, even his fingers were clenched in tiny fists).
Precisely one week into his life, my son endured tongue and lip tie releases performed by a pediatric dentist. I was not emotionally or psychologically prepared for this, or what came next. I was still bleeding, could barely walk, and had to pump every few hours to keep my milk supply up. After the tongue and lip releases, my husband and I were instructed to do a set of movements and stretches in our son’s mouth to make sure the skin didn’t simply redevelop in the old ways. This was excruciating for all of us, since it required jamming our fingers in his tiny mouth seven times a day (including once in the middle of the night) and running them under his lips and tongue while he screamed. We did this for six weeks—42 long days—while syringe feeding him together whenever he was hungry. It’s difficult to describe just how physically and mentally exhausting this was.
SURVIVING THE DARK MOMENTS
And after all this, breastfeeding still wasn’t happening. I started to spiral into a deep, dark vacuum. I could barely keep up with pumping to syringe feed my son, and I was taking him to numerous occupational therapy and chiropractor appointments. I kept hearing how my emotional experience was impacting our bond and his ability to breastfeed. I also had an oversupply issue. An intense let-down would practically drown my son whenever he did manage to latch. He would get on, take a few gulps, and then start choking from the flow. I felt so bad for him, and I felt guilty for not being able to accomplish what was theoretically supposed to be a natural act of nurturing.
I was exhausted, broken, discouraged, and overwhelmed to an extreme. I had some dark, dark moments and thoughts during those early months postpartum. We did finally get breastfeeding to work, but it was a hard six-month journey filled with a lot of tears and screaming (both mine and my son’s). I know there were periods when my husband was genuinely concerned for my well-being and reached out to my sisterhood circle for support. My tenacious personality ultimately pushed me through, but it came at a tremendous cost.
THE MANY FACTORS THAT AFFECT BREASTFEEDING
As you can imagine, I was shocked, dismayed, and profoundly disappointed when my breastfeeding experience was not at all what I had envisioned and hoped for. In fact, during pregnancy I hadn’t seen or read anything that reflected what my breastfeeding journey would turn out to be. It wasn’t until I had my son and talked with other mothers, facilitated groups, and worked with individual moms that I learned how my experience is actually the more common one. Yet we don’t hear stories like mine, and so birthing folx are consistently set up for disappointment and a deep sense of failure. Because an image is painted of what attachment looks like and how breast milk is essential for our baby’s well-being, we place this pressure on ourselves not to fail.
The truth is, we don’t live in a culture and society that openly embraces breastfeeding, so for many mothers and birthing folx our first exposure to breast/chest/body feeding is when we have our own baby. We aren’t educated about all the factors that can affect the experience, including:
whether our birth experience is traumatic, a hospital or home birth, a cesarean section or vaginal delivery
whether our baby has a tongue and/or lip tie
whether we have under or oversupply issues, or extremely painful let-downs
whether and when bottles and pacifiers are introduced
whether we get maternity/parental leave and for how long, and whether we have a safe, understanding workspace to pump in
whether we experience postpartum anxiety or depression
We aren’t told that oftentimes babies need help latching and learning how to stay on. Or that nighttime breast/chest/body feeding is essential not only to keep your supply up but also to help your baby gain weight consistently.
GAINING A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Whether it’s in the postpartum support groups I facilitate or as individual clients, I see many mothers who hold so much grief and disappointment around their breast/chest/body feeding journey. I know my experience was one of the hardest aspects of my postpartum experience. I also know that I will never put myself through that again. Before my breastfeeding experience I supported formula but was hard-headed about not considering it an option for me and my son. Now, on the other side with distance and hindsight, I would absolutely have given him formula, and in fact if I ever have another baby I will have formula handy from the jump. I know my breastfeeding journey was a particularly arduous one. My lactation consultant told me a few years later that she worries when moms like me come to her for help, meaning those with a fierce determination to make breastfeeding work at all costs, including their own well-being.
We need to have more open and honest conversations about breast/chest/body feeding that include the real challenges and hardships involved and the complex emotional experience associated with it. For so many moms there is a deep sense of failure and shame when it doesn’t work out or when they struggle through it. We need to acknowledge that the first few months of breast/chest/body feeding can be very hard, and that it may turn out to be one of the hardest things you ever do as a mother. We also need to support mothers and birthing folx in releasing any shame or guilt about supplementing with formula or feeding only formula. Above all, we need to prepare mothers and birthing folx for all the possible scenarios and make sure they are resourced to access help long before they need it.
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