Breastfeeding... Experience (Short labor story too!)

These breastfeeding posts are going to come in two separate posts. One on my experience and one on opinion.

***Let me start by saying that this is all my opinion about what I think is best for my family. Each women, child, and family is different and will do what is best for their family situations.***

Lets start from the beginning. On April 4 I went to the hospital to be induced (which is a whole other story). Aaron and I got to the hospital at 2pm to find out I was already in labor. I figured as much because a few hours before I had my bloody show and figure that this induction would not be as planned. Since I was already having constant weak contracts but was still only dilated to 1 we skipped the cerdavil and went straight to a folley catheter to help me dilate. Well the folley did its job my contractions got intense...fast. Still no dilation....so they added pitocin to the mix. At this point I was dilated to 3 having contractions every 2 min for 4 min long. This continued until about 10pm and still only dilated to 5 and 80% effaced. Midnight rolls around and I get my epidural because things are taking forever. I get the epidural and sleep. I wake up at 6am and we break my water because still almost no progress. I sleep more. Fast forward to about 1pm...I start feeling again...by feeling I mean back labor and contractions...yep that's right I was the lucky one where the epidural stopped working. Still not ready to push I get through this very last part of active labor by breathing and encouraging words from my hubby and nurse. 2:20pm....its time to push....2:47pm Parson Dean Jones is born! The one thing that went planned in Parson's birth was pushing...er breathing Parson out...I attribute his fast arrival to the way that I pushed/breathed birth.

Anywho...he cried and was weighed, a whopping 9.5 pounds and 22 inches long. He was a lot bigger than any was anticipating since at the end of my pregnancy I was measuring small/normal. Then the scary part happened, as I am nursing Parson for the first time my nurse comes over and says they need to see Parson again. My thoughts are why? Then I see it...the nurse picked up the white phone calling the NICU nurses down. But why? My baby cried, is huge and is eating fine. But his blood sugar is low...really low. They want the sugar levels to be at 40 and Parson was at 41. Since babies lose weight usually at the hospital this was a concern. They finished cleaning/sewing me up and said it was time to get Parson up to the NICU for further evaluation.

His sugar kept dropping low...really dangerously low and he stopped nursing well. I nursed him in the NICU as best as I could but since my milk had not come in, they had to supplement with formula. This is where things get harder as far as breast feeding is concerned. Parson had nipple confusion like crazy. I was nursing him the best I could, they would test his sugar and if it was not high enough we would have to give formula. On top of all of this he was jondice so we had to keep that in mind to. Since the nursing was not giving Parson the nutrition that he needed, I started to pump to help my milk come in while supplementing him with formula. After a few days we got his sugar under control and we were able to go home....with to my dismay again with a formula fed baby.

Here is a pic of our sweet boy in the NICU...he was the largest baby in care in the NICU nursery :)

After one day of being home my milk came in and we could get rid of this formula that was hurting my new baby boys belly. Challenge one conquered...no more formula. But now I was exclusively pumping. Breastfeeding is hard... exclusively pumping is exhausting. Since my milk came in Parsons blood sugar got to a healthy point and he gained back the over a pound he lost at the hospital in just a week.

Now that I had a healthy baby...I so wanted him to learn to nurse. Because I was pumping and not nursing it was very hard for my body to regulate how much milk to make and what to put in the milk because Parson's saliva was not meeting my breast to send my body the signals it needed. This all added up to me not producing enough milk for Parson a few weeks into his life. So again we were back to supplementing. I went to my OB and she gave me a prescription for Reglan, told me to drink tons of water, mothers milk tea, to eat oatmeal.

Thankfully, when Parson was about 4 weeks old...he (well we) figured out how to nurse. Praise God! Challenge two conquered. Now on to challenge three....production. After about a week of following my doctors instructions we were 100% breastfed, no bottles, no formula and we have been 100% exclusively breastfed since Parson was 5 weeks old and we are still going strong at 10 months!

Overall breastfeeding has been one of the hardest and most rewarding decisions I have ever made. The bond that Parson and I have is something that can not be replaced or built by anything other than breastfeeding. It has been the cure for so many things including the baby blues and offering comforts to sickness, shots, and teething. The experience that I have had breastfeeding has been wonderful and I will most definitely breastfeed all of our future children.

So that's my experience with breastfeeding. The next post will include my reasons, opinions, and advice on breastfeeding.

Patty