Most people view breastfeeding as one of the most natural things in human nature. However, what most people who haven’t done it don’t realize is that it is anything but “natural”. Neither first time mom nor baby have experience with breastfeeding and it can sometimes be awkward starting off. Even as a third time mom with over 46 months of breastfeeding experience, I’m having my struggles with Doodle. Every baby is so different and while each of my breastfeeding experiences have started of rocky, they were all complicated in different ways.
Honeybun was extremely sleepy her first few days of life due to the narcotics I received during my labor. The recovery nurse the last day I was in the hospital refused to complete the discharge papers after both Honeybun and I were cleared by our practitioners because the nurse felt Honeybun wasn’t nursing well and she genuinely thought I would let her starve if she didn’t nurse because I refused bottles and pacifiers while at the hospital. Honeybun was often too tired to eat and I had to wake her for every feeding using sometimes ridiculous tactics. I would also have to strip each of us naked each time to stimulate her with skin-to-skin which was very tedious when I was waking her every 2 hours and she fed for 30-40 minutes. Within a few days we were fine and our nursing journey continued for a year and a half.
Sugarplum has a tiny little mouth. She had trouble latching well because she wouldn’t open her mouth wide and destroyed my nipples. It was so painful at times that I would cry and at 5 days she was spitting up blood because my nipples were so cracked. We pushed on though and things, again, corrected themselves within a few weeks. I learned that no matter how frustrating or painful it was for both of us, if she wasn’t latched well, I had to take her off and try again. She nursed happily until she was 27 months.
While both of my nursing issues with the girls was something on their end, with Doodle it’s something on my end. As a third timer, I’ve developed an oversupply of milk as well as an extremely forceful let down. This causes Doodle to not need to really suck to get his milk, once my milk lets down he just has to just keep gulping to keep up with the natural flow. A lot of babies in this situation will choke and sputter but luckily that rarely happens with Doodle, usually only when he’s tired. The problem is though that he clicks (or clucks as some people describe it) which indicates he is releasing the latch with each swallow and therefore slides around on my breast which can sometimes cause a lot of soreness.
The problem, however, is much bigger than the clicking. It’s causing many other problems that we are slowly trying to work through though I’m confident we will make it through and have a long and happy nursing relationship as I did with my girls.
(More on the actual oversupply/let down issue in my next post).
