I never in my life thought I would be one of those women who get emotional about breastfeeding. When I was pregnant with my son, I figured I’d try it. If it didn’t work out, that’s fine, I’d quit. It didn’t work out, so I did quit. This time I wanted to try harder. So during my recent pregnancy, I read all I could about breastfeeding. I even bought LLL’s book about it. “The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding”. Still things were very technical in my brain. Figuring out positions, signs of thrush, knowing how to tell if she was getting enough to eat.
Once my daughter was born, I attempted to breastfeed her 30 minutes later. She did as well as a brand new baby could. We worked at it every 2-3 hours in the hospital, if I could get her awake to eat. The day we were leaving the hospital, I noticed we were doing a lot better. Her latch was getting better and it didn’t hurt so badly. And then my milk came in. You’d think this would be a good thing, but my breast got so engorged that I couldn’t even express any milk out with my hand pump. And poor Abby couldn’t latch on. We went to her 2 day weight check and I was devastated to find that she had lost over 10% of her body weight. I felt like such a failure. I cried my eyes out all day. I wanted to do this so bad. I wanted that bonding time with my little girl. I wanted her to have the best from me.
My husband called the lactation consultant. She came over and tried to work with me and my daughter, but to no avail. My breasts were just too full. I ended up having to supplement with formula. My daughter’s health is more important to me than the closeness that breastfeeding would bring. My husband saw how pained I was that I couldn’t breastfeed and how pained I was from the engorgement. He loaded our 3 year old son into the car and drove all the way to Ramstein, just to buy me a 300 dollar electric breast pump. I’m so blessed to have a man that cares so much about me. I now am able to pump enough that we don’t have to supplement. For once I feel so special, because I am giving my daughter something no one else can.
The other day we were at the car wash. Abby was in her car seat and starting to get severely upset. She was hungry. My heart sank as I realized the bottle we’d brought with us had long since left the safe-to-eat period. I fought back tears, as I thought about how I wished I could just bring her to my breast and feed her. I have the milk right there, but she has almost no patience in latching since we’ve had to give her bottles. I decided to take her out of her car seat anyway. I figured maybe I could let some of my milk leak into her mouth and that would sate her until we were able to leave. For about 10 minutes I offered her my breast. She fussed and tried so hard to latch on. I was started to get a little frustrated until out of no where she just latched on perfectly. It didn’t hurt at all. I looked down at her in amazement and was praying that she would stay on there. She did and she drank for a good 15 minutes until she fell asleep. She looked so beautiful and content there. I haven’t felt that good about myself for such a long time. I can’t even put into words how it made me feel to be able to do that for my little girl, when it counted. I couldn’t stop talking about it all day. It’s amazing how children can change you, even when it’s your second.