Hello my name is Teddy, I am the creator of The Pregnancy & Parenthood Blog. I am a stay at home mother of two wonderful children and I have my 3rd baby on the way. I would like to thank Badass Breastfeeder for this great opportunity to share my breastfeeding story, Here we go!!!!
I knew as soon as I found out that I was pregnant with my first (my daughter) that I wanted to breastfeed. One thing I didn`t know was how hard it was going to be and how many ups and downs I was going to have during the next 13 months that I was breastfeeding!! The day that my daughter was born, the first thing that the nurses got me to do was try and breastfeed her, but it being my first time and all, I had no clue what I was doing so the nurses tried to help me. We started off with a few bumps in the road where my daughter kept putting her tongue to the back of her throat which wouldn’t allow her to latch on at all, but finally after hours of trying we were successful… but that was not the end of our problems. The next morning the nurses came into my room to check my daughters temperature and noticed that she had a really high fever. The doctor than informed me that my daughter would have to be hooked up to an IV for the next 48 hours so that they could monitor her and get her temperature down. They soon found out that the reason her temp was so high was because she was dehydrated from not eating enough , this was do to the lack of colostrum and milk my breasts were producing (pretty much I wasn’t producing anything) I felt absolutely horrible that I could not tell, I felt like a bad mom that I was unable to breastfeed my daughter. I had never felt so down in my life and of course the hormones running through my body didn’t help either…but in the next 24 hours things started to get A LOT better!!
The nurses got me to pump every 30 minutes until things started to change, soon I was filling up bottle after bottle full of milk just for my little girl and it made me feel amazing!! Once the nurses noticed that I was filling so many bottles right to their rims they weighed my daughter who was 7lb 7oz at birth and because of the fever when they weighed her she was only 6lbs 1oz (she had lost a lot of weight). So I started to feed her and she latched on perfectly but after only 5 minutes of feeding she fell asleep and was refusing to eat any more and it worried me because babies are supposed to feed at least 10 minutes on each side, so the nurses weighed her and she then weighed 3oz more!!! she chugged an entire 3 oz in the span of 5 minutes and even the nurses had huge smiles on their faces!!! From then on I never had a problem with low milk supply, in fact my problem was that I was producing way too much and my daughter wasn’t eating it fast enough which caused me to have mastitis but the doctors cleared that up as fast as they could!!!
Me and my daughter seemed to run into problem after problem during the 13 months that I was breastfeeding her… cracked nipples, sore nipples, extremely leaking nipples but the worst thing that ever happened was when my daughter was about 6 months old. Now my daughter was born with a tooth believe it or not, it was so small but just cut through the gums and around 4 months she started getting more, but this day she had 4 teeth, her two bottom ones, one top one and a K9!!! The cat decided he was going to jump onto the dresser and knock my glass candle off and the crash made my daughter jump and bite down on me all at the same time… she took a huge chuck of skin right out of the side of my nipple, I was bleeding like crazy and I ended up having to go to the hospital. The doctor pretty much only gave me one choice… stop breastfeeding! But that was something I was NOT about to do, after everything I had gone through to get to where I was I was not about to quit because of a little bite mark that may have hurt like hell, so this is what I did. I pumped and pumped on that side while my daughter fed off the other side, until my one breast healed completely!! The pump did hurt my breast and I had to throw my milk away because half the time it had blood in it but it didn’t get infected and it heal pretty quickly and I soon went right back to feeding my daughter until Christmas when she was 13 months old!!! It was an amazing and sometimes very very painful experience but I am proud of myself and I am proud of my breasts for putting up with so much torture, but my daughter deserved the best and well breast is best!!!
Now I am a mother of two and my breastfeeding experience is going a lot better with my son, I have been breastfeeding since day one, through jaundice and everything!! He is 11 months now (going to be a year old this Sunday Oct 20th) and I plan on feeding him for at least 13 months just like I did with my daughter!! My son now has seven teeth and a few more attempting to come in and YES he has bit me multiple times and every time he does I feel like my heart has stopped because I fear another chunck of skin will be removed from my breasts, but it has not been so bad and he seems to be a lot more gentle with his jaws than my daughter was… and bonus, we no longer have a cat to scare the pants of my children by knocking things over (R.I.P Ozzy) he will be missed but not by my breasts haha!!
I hope you enjoyed my story and I would love to hear yours!! If you are a mom who is thinking about breastfeeding I will tell you know, even though my story sounds painful, just think about the fact that I was still able to go on. You will have ups and downs but it is worth it 100%, the best thing you can do for your baby is nurture him/her with what god gave you!!
I would love for you to come visit my website at http://together-as-parents.webs.com and share your pregnancy and parenthood experiences. You can also follow me on Twitter @MultitaskMomma
Teddy
