Eva's Story

This week we’ll hear from Eva. Eva recounts her breastfeeding journey - the highs and the lows. She speaks very rawly about her experience and remind us all to give ourselves grace in all moments where we feel lost or defeated.. Breastfeeding is not easy. Heck, parenthood is not easy, but we try. We do the best we can. That is normal. That is beautiful. As always, we hope you enjoy her story! Please reach out to The Breastfeeding Center if you are in need of support.

My Baby Wouldn't Nurse

Near the end of an otherwise healthy pregnancy, I got sick. After an emergency induction and sixty hours in the hospital before giving birth, I was one exhausted mama holding one healthy -- and very hungry -- baby boy. He wanted to nurse right away. But no matter how hard he tried, latching and crying and chomping until my nipples were bleeding and bruised, no milk was coming. We were given formula at the hospital, with advice to try nursing again after my supply had come in. But after two days of bottle-feeding, my baby no longer knew how to nurse. He'd try to latch on, only to slide right off and start crying. Soon my breasts became painfully engorged, and I was a wreck.

I came to the Breastfeeding Center with my four-day-old baby in tow. The lactation consultant helped me deal with the emergency first -- introducing me to a breast pump to treat the engorgement -- and then talked to me about the importance of establishing a milk supply, pumping multiple times a day until my baby could nurse on his own. She also introduced the concept of paced feeding, slowing the flow of milk from the bottle so my baby didn't develop a preference for bottle-feeding over the slower flow of the breast.

Getting my son to nurse again, however, was not so quick a fix. He had tongue tie, which couldn't be fixed until he knew how to latch, and no matter how many positions and techniques we tried, he just couldn't do it. My lactation consultant showed me how to use a supplemental nursing system, with a small tube taped to my breast to deliver extra milk as my baby struggled to nurse. Using the SNS on my own, however, wasn't easy. Either the tape holding the tube to my breast came unstuck or the milk spilled all over me, and even when I did manage to get everything right, my baby still wouldn't latch. I was worried that all this pressure to nurse was causing him to associate breastfeeding with frustration. And, after hooking myself up to a breast pump six or seven or eight times a day, then retaping the SNS to my breasts to try nursing again, I was getting frustrated, too. 

I was ready to quit. The lactation consultant gave me permission to quit. We were making no progress. I was spending so much time pumping that I worried it was hurting my bond with my son.

So I took a break. For one whole week, I stopped trying. My mother-in-law came to town and took charge of him, giving him bottles at a slow pace as instructed, and giving me time to pump -- and to rest. No more SNS, no more struggling, no more shoving a breast in my baby's face. I had a phone call with the lactation consultant that week, and she gave me one piece of advice: After your mother-in-law leaves town, after you get your baby back, spend two days getting as much skin-to-skin contact with him as you can. Don't try to nurse. Just strip down, relax, and reconnect.

The first two days were heaven. It was the middle of winter, but we turned up the heat. Aside from taking breaks to pump, I spent them mostly in bed, cuddling my sweet baby boy in my arms. Then, on the morning of the third day, as I leaned over in bed to reach for a sock, my baby spontaneously latched. The day after that, with the SNS taped in place, he latched again and drank formula at my breast through a tube. The next day he latched on his own, without the SNS.

Latching alone didn't mean that breastfeeding was suddenly easy. Nursing was painful at first, then excruciating. He still had that tongue tie. When having it fixed didn't prove to be the overnight cure I was hoping for, we went to a craniosacral therapist, one who worked with him to help him learn to open his mouth wide enough to properly nurse. 

And then, after all that, my baby figured it out. It still wasn't easy. At first he nursed only if I held him in a particular way, and then only before 4 p.m., and then only on the right side if I held him in the same position as I did on the left. My supply was never enough, even when we nursed all the time, but we soon found a rhythm. When he was hungry, I'd fill a bottle with formula, then we'd nurse while it warmed. In the middle of the night, when he woke up hungry, I had just enough milk to get him to nurse back to sleep. Was all the work we did worth it? We didn't breastfeed forever. When he was ten months old, I quit pumping. By eleven months, my supply was so low that he weaned on his own. But when I remember those moments when nursing went well, especially those peaceful cuddles late in the night, I'd say yes. It so was.