Sarah's story

I wanted to share my nursing story with you in case it is helpful to you or anyone you know. Let us see, I am unscripted here, so… First let me tell you that I was very nervous becoming a mother. I knew that there would never be a good time and I had mixed emotions about, you know, of course I wanted children and on the other hand it is like "oh my gosh, my life is completely gonna change and I'm gonna be out of control." A little control freak. Anyway, I wanted to do the best for my baby so I did the Bradley Method classes. I did hypnosis in childbirth classes. I had a doula. I had a birth plan and I was basically the poster child for natural childbirth. Well, to make a very long story short, which probably could be the subject of another e-Book, I ended up with a C-section after 30 hours of labor. That is a whole story in and of itself, but I wanted to give you an idea of set the scene kind of for where I was when I started nursing. So, the birth experience did not exactly go as planned and I am completely exhausted after 30 hours of labor, which started at night and my son Yosef after a couple of days developed jaundice and because he was jaundiced I think he never learned to latch on properly. So, to make a long story short, we took him home and in a couple of days, thank God! Thank God, we had a postpartum doula because my husband actually experienced a flare-up of his Crohn's disease right after we took the baby home and that was his first flare-up in like 10 or 15 years. It must have been the stress and lack of sleep and I was exhausted and going through this huge change in my life. I did not have those idyllic music playing in the background, Disneyland moments of -- it was more like "Aahhh! What's happening?" I did not have that quintessential maternal experience in the first few days. I was okay with that because I knew that might happen actually because I read this book, Laughter and Tears: The Emotional Life of a New Mother. I did not have high expectations of my emotional experience. I just knew like whatever my feelings were, they were my feelings and of course I would love my baby because love comes from giving and the more you give, the more you develop attachment.

So, it was hard for me those first few weeks and thank God we had the postpartum doula because she noticed that my son had not had -- was not urinating enough, had like two sort of wet diapers in 24 hours and, you know, you used to have like six or something like that. If it were not for her honestly, I think we would have noticed too late because I was a space cadet because I was not sleeping and recovering for the surgery and everything, the nursing with hurting and everything, and my husband was battling his Crohn's disease at the same time. I was literally out of my mind. Anyway, we take him to the doctor. He is not gaining weight. They figured out he is not gaining weight. I think what happened in those first few days -- and this is the part I really wanted to share with you. What happened in those first few days was that -- I think they told me to pump first and I could not -- I do not know if it was the combination of exhaustion and not wanting to sit there with the pumps and I remember not being able to pump enough as well. We had one of those really like the best quality at the time, which was five years ago. It was one of those little briefcase pumps and everything. It was really very, very good. It was not hospital great, but it was the best you could buy at Toys "R" Us or something. It was like $200 or $300. I think I was not pumping enough and they were worried I was not making enough or whatever. I think what happened like I said was that because he was jaundiced, he was to weak to latch on properly, never quite learned to latch on properly. So, they told me to pump and the pump was not working, so they said what you can do if you are okay with using formula, you could either do with breast milk or with formula, and they gave me a syringe, a syringe with a plastic tube on the end and they showed me -- they attached it to my pinkie finger and allowed me to finger feed him and they said that this would not confuse the baby in terms of nipple confusion.

At this time, I was so exhausted and so emotional. I was so grateful that somebody else -- first of all, somebody else could see the baby and they said just do this for 24 hours and we will see where we are and then I remember going back and we tried nursing again and he still was not gaining weight and I was completely out of my mind at this point. I remember that -- okay, the day after the dehydration scare, we bring him back. He had had some formula at that point with the syringe feeding, but the next day we made an appointment with what my doula says, the postpartum doula says was the best lactation consultant in the city and she was. She is amazing! Her name is Vivian Condello. She is at Highland Hospital in Rochester. She is amazing if you ever need another resource. Anyway, I had this whole long meeting with her and she taught me to use the SNS device is that thin plastic tube that attaches to your breast. Well, as you may know, this is enough to drive any mother crazy. What happened was, and this is really the cracks of the story, I took the baby home and I sat down to nurse him and I was so exhausted and so overwrought and so crazy and you know you want to like weigh him every 2 seconds to see if he is gaining weight. I am sitting there and the SNS device is very slippery and it tends to pop out of the baby's mouth and I am sitting there, my husband want to lay down because his Crohn's is triggered by lack of sleep and I said okay I am going to nurse the baby. I was like, "Okay, okay, he's doing it, no, no, he's not, yes, yes, he's doing it, he's not, he's not." I was sitting there going up and down and my husband says try to detach, try not to get it, but you know your baby's life depends on him eating. So, I could not detach and I was so exhausted and so crazy. I was so going up and down with each suckle and I was sitting there in the chair. I remember the moment I was sitting there in my rocking chair with the baby, sitting there dreading the next feeding in three hours thinking, "Oh, my gosh, there's another one in three hours." At that moment, I just screamed for my husband and I screamed in such a way that he thought I had dropped the baby and the baby was, God forbid, was dead or something, like that was the desperation that came out of my voice. I cannot emphasize that enough. I remember he came running. He seriously thought that the baby was, God forbid, you know like dying or something and after he realized that I was just a crazy woman because my baby was not nursing, he said, "Don't ever do that again," as if I did it on purpose, which he knows I did, but it was just such a visceral reaction.

Anyway, so here comes the good part of the story. I called the lactation consultant and remember I had just been in her office a few hours before and saying, "Oh, my gosh. It isn't working. That's it, I'm done. I can't do this. I'm exhausted. I'm overwrought and I just want to -- I'm gonna bottle feed him and enjoy my baby and that's it," and she said, "Okay, okay, if that's what you wanna do and maybe you know, maybe you can bottle feed him and then maybe you can get him back, you know, nursing in a couple of weeks," because I was just so worried that he was not gaining weight. Then, during the course of the conversation, what came out and I remember exactly how it came out was that there was another option and the other option that worked really well for me was that I would hold the baby to nurse, to the breast to nurse, for as long as I wanted, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, just so he would have the experience of nursing even if his latching on was not perfect, even if we can only get it perfect for like 2 minutes, I would hold him to the breast and then I would finish with the finger feeding and for me it ended up being formula because I do not remember if I could not pump enough or I just physically make enough or I was just so exhausted I could not deal with another thing, which is equally is likely and maybe it was a combination of both, but I just said, "Okay, I'm not gonna give up on the nursing. I'm gonna compromise and give him some formula," and because I was able to do the nursing first and then do the finger feeding, I did not have to worry that he was going to suffer or that he was going to fail to thrive because he was not getting enough nutrition. So this way, we both got the experience with nursing and he got the nutrition and then in a week or so when he was stronger, we transitioned to full-time nursing. There was no nipple confusion because of the syringer, because we were using not the SNS device, but the syringe. The SNS device was just driving me crazy. It was like the last straw. I could not deal with making it work.

That was it! It was a compromise and you know, I know so many women -- I have a cousin who -- she is a midwife actually and she was completely unprepared for nursing. I mean she was surprised how unprepared she felt and she said she did the same thing with the routine with the -- everything, but nobody told her about the syringe option and she is like, "Why didn't anyone tell you?" She knocked herself out. Her nipples are bleeding, everything. I mean I had that, too, but this also gave me a little bit of recovery time. Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you because I find it when alternatives to nursing or supplements to nursing are discussed, the SNS device is often discussed, but the syringe finger feeding is not for some reason. It was just perfect for me and we transitioned to nursing in a couple of weeks and you know what? I always -- because I am not really very comfortable with nursing in public, my baby generally got a bottle of formula a day or sometimes two and you know? That is my compromise, I am not perfect, but at least he did get a lot of nursing in there and I did the same thing with my daughter and she did not have any nursing problems, thank God.