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sonata85's Pregnancy
My Due Date: May 1, 2020I have given birth!
Age: 38 years old
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Advice needed: breastfeeding anxiety
By sonata85 » Posted Jan. 2, 2020 4:24pm - 933 views - 18 comments
Hi Ladies—Happy New Year! I’ll be 23 weeks tomorrow, and though baby is hopefully a good 14-17 weeks away from arriving, I’m already worried about breastfeeding. Before I had my 1st daughter, I thought breastfeeding would be the most natural thing ever. Whip out the boob, put one of those cute covers on in public, feed baby, and everyone’s happy. Though my 1st was born at 36 weeks, she was IUGR (3lbs 14 Oz), didn’t have much energy to suck, and I had to be on magnesium sulfate to control my blood pressure. Magnesium sulfate can really dehydrate you, my daughter was in the NICU, so I got all these pamphlets about how much milk I should be able to pump on a specific day after delivery. And I never had enough, but I pumped every 2-3 hours for months while supplementing with formula. My 2nd baby (34-weeker) was more average sized and probably could have breastfed. But for me it was like some sort of performance anxiety kicked in. We shared a nursery in the NICU with this woman who had an oversupply. I’d pump at the same time she would and get maybe 2 ounces while she was filling up 2 5 ounce Medela bottles every. Single. Time. This awful cycle of comparing my lack of milk to her over abundance was really eating at me. Sad thing is her baby boy was less premature than my daughter, but he had blood sugar issues and needed a blood transfusion/ my girl was just tiny and needed to learn how to eat. So at some point, maybe 2 weeks in. I told the lactation consultant that I would be pumping as much as I could, supplementing with formula whenever necessary, and giving my girl a bottle at every feeding. Boobs be damned. She was supportive. In the NICU there’s a push to breastfeed, do skin-to-skin, but there’s also a push for the baby to eat and demands from the drs for the baby to increase the amount she eats every day or 2. With babies who were healthy but small, the push became to get them to eat. Bottles are easily measurable, they’re easier for a baby with latching issues or not a lot of strength. So finally with both girls I ended up pumping and supplementing, always feeding with bottles. And they grew.
But with baby #3 on the way and the completely weird prospect that he might go to term and be 7 pounds has me wondering if I’ll be able to enter that supposedly wonderful, natural world of whipping my boob out and feeding him like it’s nothing.
I guess I’d like to hear some feedback from you ladies. The other part of this is that I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. My relationship with bottle-feeding is definitely love-hate. I hated that I had to use bottles and felt like my body was garbage for quite awhile. But knowing that my 4 pound baby drank 2, 3, 4 ounces of a bottle made me feel like we were making progress. There was something wonderfully comforting about being able to see exactly how much my girls ate and being able to swaddle them and put them into their bassinet for what I knew would be about 2.5 hours of good sleep for them and possibly a shower for me.
Anyway, I’m wondering what it’s like with a full term baby and also wondering what you ladies who exclusively BF do in terms of pumping—do you need to, or does baby regulate everything? For bottle-feeding moms (whether pumping, formula, or a bit of both), what do you like about it? I’m definitely in the Fed is best camp, but I’m also a perfectionist and will always kind of wish my boobs could be magic milk machines. It’s complicated lol
My Journal - Page 3
Advice needed: breastfeeding anxiety
By sonata85 » Posted Jan. 2, 2020 4:24pm - 933 views - 18 comments
Hi Ladies—Happy New Year! I’ll be 23 weeks tomorrow, and though baby is hopefully a good 14-17 weeks away from arriving, I’m already worried about breastfeeding. Before I had my 1st daughter, I thought breastfeeding would be the most natural thing ever. Whip out the boob, put one of those cute covers on in public, feed baby, and everyone’s happy. Though my 1st was born at 36 weeks, she was IUGR (3lbs 14 Oz), didn’t have much energy to suck, and I had to be on magnesium sulfate to control my blood pressure. Magnesium sulfate can really dehydrate you, my daughter was in the NICU, so I got all these pamphlets about how much milk I should be able to pump on a specific day after delivery. And I never had enough, but I pumped every 2-3 hours for months while supplementing with formula. My 2nd baby (34-weeker) was more average sized and probably could have breastfed. But for me it was like some sort of performance anxiety kicked in. We shared a nursery in the NICU with this woman who had an oversupply. I’d pump at the same time she would and get maybe 2 ounces while she was filling up 2 5 ounce Medela bottles every. Single. Time. This awful cycle of comparing my lack of milk to her over abundance was really eating at me. Sad thing is her baby boy was less premature than my daughter, but he had blood sugar issues and needed a blood transfusion/ my girl was just tiny and needed to learn how to eat. So at some point, maybe 2 weeks in. I told the lactation consultant that I would be pumping as much as I could, supplementing with formula whenever necessary, and giving my girl a bottle at every feeding. Boobs be damned. She was supportive. In the NICU there’s a push to breastfeed, do skin-to-skin, but there’s also a push for the baby to eat and demands from the drs for the baby to increase the amount she eats every day or 2. With babies who were healthy but small, the push became to get them to eat. Bottles are easily measurable, they’re easier for a baby with latching issues or not a lot of strength. So finally with both girls I ended up pumping and supplementing, always feeding with bottles. And they grew.
But with baby #3 on the way and the completely weird prospect that he might go to term and be 7 pounds has me wondering if I’ll be able to enter that supposedly wonderful, natural world of whipping my boob out and feeding him like it’s nothing.
I guess I’d like to hear some feedback from you ladies. The other part of this is that I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. My relationship with bottle-feeding is definitely love-hate. I hated that I had to use bottles and felt like my body was garbage for quite awhile. But knowing that my 4 pound baby drank 2, 3, 4 ounces of a bottle made me feel like we were making progress. There was something wonderfully comforting about being able to see exactly how much my girls ate and being able to swaddle them and put them into their bassinet for what I knew would be about 2.5 hours of good sleep for them and possibly a shower for me.
Anyway, I’m wondering what it’s like with a full term baby and also wondering what you ladies who exclusively BF do in terms of pumping—do you need to, or does baby regulate everything? For bottle-feeding moms (whether pumping, formula, or a bit of both), what do you like about it? I’m definitely in the Fed is best camp, but I’m also a perfectionist and will always kind of wish my boobs could be magic milk machines. It’s complicated lol
Comments for this Journal Entry
 | Comment from dakotagurrl » Posted Jan. 2, 2020 11:31pm ...nite. By that point I was freezing 4oz of pure yellow gold a day. THAT made me feel great about BF and confident that he would get what he needed until my milk came in. I continued with BF and pumping (feed one side, pump the other) to build a freezer stash and gain a decent supply. By about 3 months, my supply had regulated, baby BF til full and I had a freezer full for the days I couldn't BF him (usually 3 days/month). Idk if HE helped with it, maybe it did, maybe it helped me change how I felt about it all, maybe I've always been able to and the trauma from #4 messed me up too much to do anything more than cry...who knows. I do recommend trying it later on and very slowly. It is something that can cause contractions, so take it slow and stop if u feel anything ur not comfortable with. Even talk to ur dr about it. For me, I felt nothing. I also barely had contractions with BF so that could just be me. Read up on it tho. HE is easier than pumping, imo. |
| Comment from dakotagurrl » Posted Jan. 2, 2020 11:30pm My first 2 were strictly FF babies. I had zero interest in even trying to BF. My 3rd I EP for 4 months then quit when it started to affect my mental well being. I didn't get depressed, but I started feeling like pumping and cleaning pump parts only to pump again shortly after, was all I did. And it was. So, I made the decision to stop before it took me down a road that I didn't wanna go down. With my 4th, my milk never came in. I pumped and squeezed in desperation to just get something, anything, and nothing worked. When we lost her on day 6, I still hadn't produced anything, so I stopped trying. My milk never came in. At that point I didn't care, but it did worry me when I conceived #5. So with him, I started hand expressing around 35wks. Nothing crazy, just a cpl times a day to really get a good technique down. Around 36.5wks I started a schedule and tried to do it every 4 or so hours, to prep my body without pushing my body. Shortly after 37wks, I was HE every 2-3hrs except at |
