Valerie was here on Friday to further check Lydia out, and to measure her length, and get her foot prints, and cut the cord clamp off, and to give me instructions to follow for the first few days. She also brought a big pot of chicken soup. 🙂 Then she said she would be back on Sunday to check up on us and pick up her pot. Sunday came and went and she came by on Monday saying that she ended up delivering another baby on Sunday. Monday I mentioned how I have tried various holds but I am really having difficulty getting Lydia to latch on to the left side, and that means that I’m favoring the right side which in turn is making that side really really sore. She encouraged me to just keep trying. But by Tuesday it had gotten so bad that every time she cried because she was hungry I end up just holding her, crying because I want so badly to feed her, but I dreaded actually putting my breast to her face and I felt like I just can’t do it. After getting the kids to bed I decided to call Valerie and ask for some help. She came over and brought me some ‘comfrey compresses’ to keep in my bra to help my breasts heal. And she watched me latch Lydia on and she said that we’re doing that right. So maybe the pain is because Lydia’s mouth is just so small and hopefully as her mouth gets bigger I won’t be in so much pain. Last night though was the worst! I latched her on and nearly had a screaming fit because it hurt so bad. Kyle had never seen me act like that before, so he asked if she was just biting me. Through tears, I told him that she wasn’t biting just latching on. When I was done nursing her I passed her off to him so I could go take care of myself and that’s when she started spitting up blood. So after checking out my nipple I could tell that I had been bleeding while she was nursing and that she was spitting up MY blood. Since I knew it was my blood I didn’t freak out too much. But when she started coughing up blood clots I decided to give Valerie another call. And we decided that I just needed to give my breast a bit of a break and express the milk for Lydia.
Lydia is one week old now, and it’s been a really hard week for me. Not just physically hard, but emotionally hard as well. I know that being sore in the beginning is very normal. But I don’t think that being so sore that there is a horrible pain shooting throughout my whole body when she latches on is normal at all. It just breaks my heart. I want to nurse her. I have nursed my last 5 babies (I did have struggles with Dinah and Chloe but the first 3 were breastfed exclusively) and I know how enjoyable it is to sit and nurse them. Not to mention the fact that breastfeeding is FREE and formula costs a fortune! And breastfeeding is ready all the time and there are no dishes involved, whereas bottle feeding you have to go prepare the formula before you can feed the baby and then you have to wash the bottles. Breastfeeding, means that I can’t be away from my baby for long periods of time, but I hardly ever go anywhere without my baby anyways, so breastfeeding has always just been easier for me.
Dinah was my first baby that I had serious breastfeeding struggles with, but they didn’t start until she was between 2 and 4 months old. I just felt like my breasts weren’t filling with milk like I remember them doing with my other 3. I tried not to worry about it, since I knew that stressing out could slow down milk production. But when I took her in for her 4 month well baby check up and she weighed less than she did at her 2 month check up I KNEW something was wrong with my milk supply. The pediatrician told me she was “starving to death” and that we needed to switch to formula, NOW.
Like how Dinah is sucking on her whole hand? Ya, that stopped after we started supplementing with formula. That’s basically what she did when she was hungry. 🙁
When I was pregnant with Chloe I experienced some trouble with my left breast and ended up seeing a breast specialist and having ultrasounds and all that fun stuff. We found that I have a cyst in my left breast right behind the nipple. Looking back I find that interesting because I’ve always had trouble getting my babies to take that side. I just thought it was because it was shaped differently than the right side. Now I know that it’s shaped differently because there’s a cyst there! So when Chloe was born I knew there would be difficulties on that side. Then she ended up being in the hospital for the first week and I was going to the hospital every 6 hours to nurse her for every other feeding. The hospital took care of the feedings when I was home, and I pumped whatever milk I could so they could use that before giving her any formula
So for now I will just express and wait for this scab to heal. I just hope that my milk doesn’t dry up in the meantime.