Miriam's Nursing Story

Alexander was born on 2/16/97. During pregnancy I'd had dreams and fantasies about breastfeeding. I had read that it might not be totally easy, but I didn't expect it to be all that hard, either. Labor and Delivery was pretty textbook. I had an epidural. I didn't have any problems pushing. It lasted 12 hours. Alexander had an apgar of 9 and then 10, so he was tremendously healthy. He was so beautiful. The doctor put him on my belly right away and I got to hold him and love him and try to nurse a little. No immediate problems as far as we could tell. Then the doctors and nurses took him away to do a bunch of stuff. They tested his blood sugar because he was so big, 9lbs 2oz. It was borderline low. They insisted upon a bottle. My husband wasn't much help in dissuading them. I kept trying to argue it, but was exhausted and nobody was listening. I just gave it and figured we'd work it out later. Nursing in the hospital seemed to go reasonably well. Nurses kept encouraging me to try to nurse and I kept trying. Sometimes he'd push away. At one point I had 3 different "experts" in 3 hours coming in and giving me advice, wanting to see my technique. Each one said, "try a little longer" Then Alex started screaming and screaming. Eventually, one more person came in and said that he had eaten too much and that's why he was screaming. AGGGG! Prior to all of that I'd had a certain amount of confidence. I started calling around and telling people how I felt. I was crying and a total wreck from all of the "advice". "If you can see his dimples when he nurses you're not doing it right." "If his ear wiggles you ARE doing it right." None of this was any help to me. Eventually, I regained some of my confidence.

The day Alexander was to leave the hospital he was circumcized. This seemingly went well and didn't cause Alex to be particularly groggy. I was unhappy about it. I didn't want him to be cut. I didn't see any purpose in cutting into a healthy baby, but I also didn't want to fight with my husband about it. 48 hours after Alexander's birth I went home. I kept on trying to nurse throughout the day. I'm not sure how successful I was.

The next morning my milk came in. I had plenty of milk, it was gushing everywhere! I went around shirtless all morning while trying to nurse despite the fact that my MIL was staying with us to help out.

Our instructions regarding the circumcision were to remove the bandage the next morning. There were no instructions as to HOW to do this. I removed the bandage and Alex started bleeding. It was enough to scare us really badly. He was screaming. I was scared he would start bleeding again so I didn't put a diaper on him. Fortunately, the visiting nurse was due at any moment. My husband, Mark, was calling all around to try to find out what to do. The bleed was not enough to be dangerous. Just enough to scare us.

Just before the nurse arrived I was sitting with Alex still diaperless when he peed. I hadn't put any more A&D on him so of course this was painful. He screamed and screamed. I cried and cried. I don't know how many hours passed, but Alex didn't nurse for a long time while we were dealing with this. When the visiting nurse came she said the hospital should have told us to wait until she arrived and that she could remove the bandage. Either that or we should have been told to load the bandage with a&d.

The nurse said Alex was jaundiced and had to do a biliruben. She didn't do a good job and had to stick him twice. This led to more screaming. I was so sad and scared.

By the time it was time for Alex to nurse he was pretty frantic, but I seem to remember that he latched okay according to the visiting nurse. I couldn't get him to nurse for very long, however.

All week I persisted and worked and stressed and worried and by the end of the week I was exhausted, but I thought maybe we were starting to get a little bit better at this nursing thing. The jaundice seemed to be clearing up. Alex wasn't pooping. He did seem to be having wet diapers. He was doing a lot of screaming and my MIL did a lot of holding him so I could rest.

Then we had our first pediatric appointment. Alex had lost 15% of his body weight. He went from 9lbs 2oz to 7lbs 12oz. I thought I was going to lose my mind. I didn't want to bottle feed. The pediatrician insisted it was the best way. So...we did it. After 2 bottles Alex went on a nursing strike. He was pushing away from me and screaming. He wanted NOTHING to do with nursing. I was frantic, scared, devastated. I felt like SUCH a failure. I felt like Alexander hated me. I felt like and awful mother with a terrible burden of feeding a child and not being able to do it right. I wanted to throw this baby out in the street! I think it was friday afternoon. I had been trying all morning to get Alex to nurse. I hadn't had any breakfast. NOBODY had bothered to try to offer me anything. I guess we were all too caught up in trying to deal with Alex, but I suddenly realized that it was lunch time and I hadn't had breakfast and I really lost it. I had enough sense to hand the baby to Mark and ask him to take Alex away from me. Then I started screaming, really screaming. My MIL came up worried that something terrible had happened to Alexander. I screamed "GO AWAY!" In what I would imagine sounded like a crazed and demonic voice. There were a lot of things about my MIL that were driving me nuts anyway. Seeing her face, knowing that she was only worried about the baby and not me sent me into a rage.

After a few minutes of tantrum I calmed down and started saying the same thing over and over. Mark had been calling the OB and the Ped. They all said to stop nursing. I was determined not to give up even if it killed me. I was chanting over and over. "Call Carlita, Call Carlita". Carlita was our Lamaze teacher as well as the lactation consultant who had taught our breastfeeding class. She had given us her number in case we needed her after the baby was born. She was over within a couple of hours. I cried and cried all morning and continued to try to nurse.

Carlita...an angel from the heavens. She came to us and performed miracles. First she helped me get Alexander to nurse again. She said he was so hungry he was frantic and that he needed to be calmed down. She suggested something simple..."Put a finger in his mouth." You put the finger in so that the nail is toward the bottom of his mouth. She said that sucking a finger was very similar to sucking a breast. She said it would calm him down and then as soon as he was calm I was to bring him close to my breast, pull my finger out and pop my breast in. She sat with me and he nursed both sides for about 15 minutes each. I felt so much better. I'm glad that I have the type of personality that leads me to seek out the best resource in order to get help. I'm not a person who tries to go it alone. I am not afraid to ask for help once I know I really need it. Carlita didn't think that Alex had lost all that much weight and said the pediatrician jumped the gun. I felt really strongly that this was correct. When we'd visited the pediatrician I was feeling like we were JUST getting the hang of it a little bit.

The only payment Carlita ever requested was for the supplemental nursing system she brought to us. A supplemental nurser is this device that you can attach to a bottle. It has a long thin tube. The bottle should be held up high or taped to mom's shoulder. The long thin tube runs down mom's breast and is taped so that the end of the tube can go into the baby's mouth. Carlita suggested I pump after feedings and store the milk so that that could go in the supplemental nurser. So at every feeding Alex was getting some milk directly from me and a lot of milk from the supplemental nurser. We did this about 3 times total. By monday we were doing much better. We had another appointment with the pediatrician. Alex had gained about 9oz over the weekend! Hooray!

Nursing seemed to be doing better. We had good days and bad days. Alex never lost any more weight. It still took me a long time to figure out if Alex was getting anything to eat. His diapers seemed wet. He wasn't pooping much. The pediatrician had advised us to nurse every two hours when we realized that Alex had lost weight. She never said when I could stop doing that. It was exhausting.

When Alex was about 3 weeks old he got a terrible case of infant acne. He was just covered in it. Plus his belly was looking a little hollow and thin. I was still waking him to nurse every two hours. Alex was pushing away again. At first I didn't worry too much. Then I mentioned it to my MIL. Oh boy did she take THIS and run. All morning she kept going, "Oh, he looks so thin." "Oh, aren't you going to call the doctor?" It didn't take long for me to get really scared. I didn't call the doctor. I called Carlita. Carlita came over again. I was eating lunch and my MIL...I think she might have been upstairs holding Alex. Maybe he was sleeping. I cried and ate and told Carlita about what had being happening. Eventually, we went and got Alex. She took one look and said he looked very healthy to her. She said, when he's lying on his back that he might look a little thin, but to look at his face and arms. He was developing some nice little rolls of fat. She said that one reason he may have looked a little bit thin was that maybe he'd had a growth spurt and grew up instead of out. Carlita also said that I could stop nursing every 2 hours because Alex was probably well aware of when he needed to eat. She said the reason he was pushing away was because he didn't want to eat then. OHMYGOSH what a relief. Alex slept for 4 hours and I sat and relaxed and talked to Carlita and she waited with me for him to wake up. Carlita was there for ages. When Alex finally woke up he nursed happily and well and went back to sleep. Things were looking much brighter. Carlita suggested I should get out and see the world a little, so we stuck Alex in the stroller and took a little walk.

When Alexander was about 3 weeks old I started to notice that I had some pain in the upper right side of my abdomen. It wasn't severe, but sometimes it hurt when pressed or if I walked. I was also having terrible upper back pain. Then one night I suddenly was striken with intense abdominal pain. I thought I was dying. My husband said it was just gas. It WASN'T. I KNEW it wasn't. Eventually, I convinced him that going to the emergency room was a good idea. When we got there I was feeling much better. The hospital staff insisted I couldn't take Alexander back with me when I got called to be moved to an ER bed. The triage nurse already had said it was probably my gallbladder. I made an emergency call to my primary care physician's. I didn't get my usual doctor, but I got someone who was on call. He suggested I go home and soak in a hot tub. So that's what I did. The ER staff didn't want me to do that. They were very worried. The next day I did a follow up with my doctor who said it probably WAS my gallbladder and that I might or might not have to have surgery. I was scheduled for an abdominal US. Sure enough I had "many tiny mobile stones". I was JUST getting the hang of nursing and along comes THIS!

The doctor said I could probably go a while without having surgery so that's what I tried to do. I had a couple more gallbladder attacks and started calling around to get more info about what I should do. Eventually, I decided to consult a surgeon. He looked at my US results and said that I could probably wait 6 months, but that I might end up having emergency surgery and that if I did it that way it might be more extensive. I called my old trusted and favorite doctor from where I used to live up in Pennsylvania. He said, "have it out, it won't help you to keep it." So I decided to have it out. Once I knew I was going to HAVE to have it out I started pumping lots and lots of milk and freezing it. About a month before surgery I rented a hospital grade pump. It was a lactina. I could double pump. I could set the suction to be stronger or lighter. It was great. I pumped 30 bags of milk prior to surgery. I also pumped a little extra every day so that Mark could give Alex a bottle and get him used to the idea. I didn't start doing this until Alex was 6 weeks old. I was terrified Alex would stop nursing again. He did okay. He would take one bottle. He never took more than one prior to my surgery. That made him really angry.

Alexander was 3 months old when I finally had my surgery. Nursing was going pretty well by then. The weekend before surgery we went up to PA and then brought my MIL back to Maryland with us. While we were in PA I had one more gallbladder attack which I thought would kill me. I was scared to death I'd end up in emergency surgery. The attack subsided. I was due to have surgery two days later.

On the day of my surgery, Mark and Alex accompanied me to the hospital so that I could continue nursing him for as long as possible. Fortunately, the people who are NOT in the emergency room are great with nursing moms. They had put an IV in and were about to start antibiotics when they got the idea to stop and let me nurse one more time. After that, within 10 minutes I was in surgery and out cold. They let me have him with me until the LAST possible minute. I had laparoskopic surgery, so I was able to nurse again within a couple of days. Meanwhile, Alex took bottles like a champ. But, when he was able to nurse again he was THRILLED to bits and didn't miss a beat. I thought we were going to be fine and have no more problems.

It was around this time that suddenly Alex started crying while nursing and pulling away again. Fortunately, it wasn't a severe thing, but it did annoy me that we were still not having an easy time of it. I called Carlita and we talked. She suggested it might be yeast. We went to the Ped and got some yeast medicine and fortunately things improved right away. We had yeast for a long, long time, but it never slowed us down after that. We always knew what to do.

One minor thing that also gave us a problem at one point is that I changed deoderants. I don't remember how old Alex was when it happened. He wouldn't nurse all day. I was getting very worried and stressed. However, by the time this happened, I was getting to be a very good problem solver. I was thinking and working on the problem all day trying to discover what might have caused the change, ruling things out. I finally remembered that I'd changed deoderants. I washed the stuff off and Alex nursed enthusiatically within minutes after I did this. I went back to wearing my same old unscented that had served me well for so long.

Alexander is 2 now. When I first thought about nursing, I said I'd TRY to go for a year. When I achieved that goal I suddenly realized that a year is not a long time. I wasn't ready to give up what I'd worked SO hard to accomplish. Alexander was sick on his first birthday and was not taking ANYTHING but breastmilk. So, I adopted a wait and see attitude about it. I really couldn't see ending our nursing relationship if we both felt good about it. So, Alexander is STILL nursing. He is extremely happy and healthy and although I find nursing a toddler to be exasperating at times, it is still a wonderful experience. I love the relationship we have. I love those quiet nursing times.

I'm trying for a second baby now. I'm scared to death of the change that will happen in my relationship with Alexander. I plan to nurse through pregnancy and beyond. I worry that Alex will wean before he's really ready because my milk is going to change. Still, at this age, if he weans, it won't be the end of the world. I am planning to let him do it at his own pace. If that means weaning now, well, I'll get over it.

Yes, that is paint all over Alexander! Don't you just love the mischievous glint in his eyes? :) Toddler nursing is so much fun!

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Miriam's Story Callis4773@aol.com

Miriam's Story
Callis4773@aol.com