After delivering a baby and being discharged from the hospital, a funny thing happens: they send you home with a baby! If you're not a parent, you're saying, "Well duh." If you are a parent, you're saying, "I know... it's crazy, right?!" When you walk into the place where you have, up until this point, lived as a non-parent, with a new little person in your arms, it's a bit of a bizarre feeling. There's the wonderful feeling of knowing that there is now not just a "couple" but a "whole family" that lives under your roof, but then there are the funny things that no one told you about. Like thinking, "Where do I put her when I'm alone and I have to go pee?" (Of course, by now you own at least a half-dozen little contraptions where baby can sit or lay... More on how much stuff babies come with later.) But after a while, you start to get the hang of it--mostly--and life eases back into feeling normal again, but with a beautiful twist. And somehow you learn to function on minimal amounts of sleep.
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I'm a breastfeeding mom. (Some segue, right?) I had planned all along to give breastfeeding my very best effort. While I was pregnant, the only dreams I had of my baby were ones where I was nursing her. It's not that I'm a super emotionally-driven person who needs that physical connection to feel like I've appropriately bonded with my child, although there is a definite bonding that takes place. And it's also not that I'm a fanatic who believes that all other forms of feeding a baby are wrong. I just felt that for me, it made the most sense to give it my best shot before turning to other options. The health benefits, both now and later, for mom and baby, have been proven a million times over, and the other reality is that IT IS FREE. Prior to heading into the hospital, I had my ideal situation all laid out in my mind of how things would go after delivery: when Aubrey came out, she would be placed on my chest where she would stay for the next 30-45 minutes, cuddling and nursing, before having to be taken to the nursery to get checked out (I've read all the books... this is what you're "supposed" to do). But because she was early and was having trouble breathing, this situation went very differently. In our childbirth classes, our nurse had us do an activity called "Flipping Your Cards." Each couple was handed a stack of about 8-10 cards that each had two sides with opposing aspects of childbirth printed on them, such as vaginal birth/c-section, or natural pain relief/epidural, and so forth. She had us arrange our cards so that we were viewing the side of the card that we most desired. Then she asked us if we couldn't have exactly our ideal situation, which one would we be most willing to flip. So we flipped one. And then another. And then another. We kept flipping cards until none of them were on the side where we had originally placed them. The only card that was the same on both sides was one that said "healthy baby." The point of the activity was to remind all of us that our delivery day would probably not go exactly how we had planned, but that in the end, no matter how many "cards we had to flip," our goal was still to end up with a healthy baby. Even understanding the point, every couple in the room still struggled with and protested against flipping certain cards. I don't think there was a card pertaining to breastfeeding, but I remember being in the hospital on my delivery day, thinking, "This is the card I really didn't want to flip." I had read everything I could get my hands on about how to have a successful breastfeeding experience from the get-go, and one of the key components (in the opinion of most experts) is getting to nurse as soon as possible after delivery. Instead of having this option, Aubrey was taken to the nursery to have her oxygen levels monitored. It would be another day or so before I could even attempt to nurse her, and a full four days before we were able to do it with any real success. In the mean time, she had breast milk from a bottle and a pacifier --both of which mortified me at the time, but there was no other option.
The first five weeks of nursing were horrendous. There was a lot of crying --mostly from me, but sometimes from Aubrey, too. In my opinion, our hindrances were two-fold: She was early, and she had a bottle first. Early babies often have trouble getting the hang of breastfeeding in the first place, not to mention that they sleep so much it is nearly impossible to keep them awake and alert long enough to get the job done. And most medical experts believe that babies who have bottles/pacifiers before nursing will generally have a harder time getting used to nursing than those that nurse right away. Our saving grace was a magical little invention called a nipple shield. It's exactly what it sounds like, and it is shaped in such a way that the baby can easily get it in her mouth instead of having to work at it so much. There are holes where the milk passes through, and it is really soft silicon, so the texture is as much like the real thing as possible. This is what got us through those first several weeks. The nurses and lactation consultants at the hospital (as well as several things that I read) strongly urged that I wean Aubrey off the shield as soon as possible. The consultant went so far as to say that I needed to have her off it in a week. So naturally, when a week came and went and we were still unsuccessful without the shield, I felt like a terrible mother, like I was ruining my child for life. Another week came and went, and I cried even more. I read and read and read everything I could find about breastfeeding and weaning from a shield. After finally compiling all the information in my mind, and sorting through it as logically as possible, I finally came to the realization that the most important thing was that my baby was eating. At the end of the day, she was getting the food she needed, and that's what mattered. I tried to give myself a break and not feel so stressed out. Eventually, the weaning happened, and life was grand. Truth be told, from what I read, she weaned at about the time that should have been expected anyway: most moms of early babies that have to use a shield, wind up using it until around the baby's due date anyway. As Aubrey was a month early, five weeks on the shield was not a crazy-long amount of time.
As I close this post for the evening and move on to the work that I should actually be doing right now, I just want to say that if you are a mom-to-be who is planning on breastfeeding, please know that it can start off tough, but it CAN work if you are willing to stick with it for long enough. Don't be disheartened when you read about how great it is (and how it shouldn't hurt) but you don't feel that your initial experiences are lining up with that dream scenario. I promise, it will get better. Much better.
