Breastfeeding well uh....

Breastfeeding has been hard to say the least. Now, I am going to be brutally honest in this post about breasteeding so I hope it doesn't offend anyone about what I have to say.

I am being well, truthful. Breastfeeding is damn hard. I am still trying to find the women who say it went so beautifully for them and was the easiest thing ever! Yeah, I kind want to have a few words with them. Yes, I do understand there are many women out there where breastfeeding just comes "natural" and yes I envy those women because I was not one of them.

In fact....we are still ironing out some bumps. Where do I even start?! Lets start with the fact that there is no amount of preparedness that can make you a breastfeeding champ besides the "extra" wealth of knowledge which flew out the window the minute Harper was born. We envisioned the birth and breastfeeding as something so amazing like kids running in fields full of dandelions. Ha, well try fields of dandelions with lots of thorns on the ground. 

As soon as we had Harper  they placed her on me immediately and they respected our wishes of not having her weighed, measured or cleaned until after an hour of bonding time with her. She laid on my chest and it was the most beautiful thing ever. During that time we let her try and find my breasts but she was so sleepy from all the meds that was not going to even began to happen. It didn't matter at that time because all three of us were in a place I can't even describe to you in words. It was just pure magic.

After the hour of our bonding time family came in and after an hour of them visiting we decided to try again with breastfeeding and my nurse Tina helped me out. It seemed so easy at that time. I was presently surprised. It felt weird, and it hurt but she was latched and that was all that mattered. After that we had our "celebration dinner". She started crying but as soon as we picked her up she was content. I continued to breastfeed her. It was going to perfect.

Then as the night creeped on we were exhausted. We got settled for the night. Got a new nurse and tried to go to sleep. At this time Harper started to cry and I put her on the breast right away. Nothing. Her latch was gone. Its like they switched our once beautiful latched baby with a different baby. She didn't want anything to do with my boob. Nothing. I called the nurse to have her come in and help me and she came in for a  brief moment said my latch was perfect and left. Long story short we got no sleep that night and no help. Finally, our night nurse changed and we got our new day nurse. She helped me with latch and called the Lactation Nurse to me right away. As soon as she came in I felt a sense of relief. Soon to find out one of the reasons Harper was not latching was due to my flat nipples. She left the room brought a nipple shield and helped me with it. Bam, our baby was back. She was latching no problem.

Long story short...I am still using the nipple shield, pumping/nursing like a mad woman, taking supplements to increase supply, doing all sorts of tricks to help milk supply, and trying to get away from formula supplementation since she dropped weight so drastically. We are doing pretty darn well because were down to one bottle a day and now my goal is to get away from the nipple shield!

One step at a time!
Till next time!