The Breast Laid Plans

I've just finished reading Unbuttoned: Women Open up about the Pleasures, Pains, and Politics of Breastfeeding a collection of short non-fiction stories that covers every aspect of breastfeeding (latching, struggling, not nursing, weaning, just to name a few).

Nursing can be a touchy subject. Touchy, because it is a personal decision. It's one thing to discuss it among friends, family and the doctor, but when the gas station attendant or that stranger in the grocery store start weighing in on your decision to breastfeed/not breastfeed, it's a whole other story.

Our (mine and Chris') decision to breastfeed Emily wasn't really a "decision". It was an assumption: of course I'd nurse her. Like many of our other parenting practices, it was influenced by the realities of Spina Bifida/having medical concerns. If we have the opportunity to do something, we do it, because we know what it's like to not be able to do some things. For example, I like to hold her, or swaddle/sling her, because I remember what it was like to not be able to hold her while in the NICU.

After Emily was born I was in recovery and the doctors were busy stabilizing Em so the meylomenincogyle could be closed. She was not allowed to eat before surgery, nor during recovery. My job was to start making food. Since I couldn't nurse her yet, I pumped. I pumped and pumped and filled those little bottles full of...air. Ugh. It took 3 days of pumping virtually round the clock for the colostrum to come in. Why was this happening?? But we reasoned everything was okay, because Emily was on IV's. Once she was cleared to start eating, we went down to nurse. I pushed my wheelchair down to the NICU and got ready to do as nature intended.

Only it didn't work.

Emily had a "weak suck". It makes sense now, knowing that she has overall low muscle tone. The tongue is, after all, just a muscle mass. So she has some weakness. I figured we'd just work through it and somehow overnight everything would be okay. We'd take off her blankets and diapers, unplug her, move her to the scale, weight her, plug everything back in, put the diaper on, wrap her up, and nurse...and repeat the whole process with the scale again only to find she wasn't even eating close to an ounce. We did this over and over again.

Then a few days later we were told she wasn't thriving because she wasn't getting enough to eat. This was unbelievably heartbreaking to hear. All I could do was breastfeed. I couldn't do anything else for her. I couldn't have the operations for her, take the meds, I couldn't manage her recovery, I couldn't take her home, I couldn't meet most of her needs at that time, so of course I wanted to do the one thing I was supposed to do: provide her nutrition. But to hear I was failing at ensuring my child could thrive, well that was just heart-wrenching.

We battled with the doctor who told us we needed to start supplementing Emily with formula. We had an army of hospital lactation specialists behind us pointing out that she was eating...it wasn't that she didn't want the breast milk, it was the ability to suck that was the challenge. With he help of our favorite NICU nurse, we found the secret weapon: the perfect bottle. Everyone agreed to give Emily 24 hours to put on some weight before visiting the formula discussion again.

So I pumped, transferred the milk to the special bottle, and Emily drank. This bottle was like a sippy cup...it required virtually no sucking. So while this didn't fix the latch/suck issue, it did ensure I was providing her nutrition, and that was all that mattered to me. She gained several ounces by rounds the next morning. No one ever said "formula" to us again.

After we left the hospital it was a good two months before breastfeeding wasn't a huge production. During those two months I often felt inadequate, and defeated. It hurt, physically and emotionally. Breastfeeding was waayyyy harder than what I had thought. This image that the baby just migrates to the boob and viola! starts eating was just not our reality. I felt isolated, like I was the only mother ever to face breastfeeding challenges.

Now, of course all these months later it's effortless, and I can nurse and multitask...Emily nurses and multitasks, and it doesn't take three pairs of hands, a boppy, soothing music, lanolin, and a whole set of prayers to get the job done. For us, it was a process. We had to really work at it, and I'm glad we did. And now I know that other people face the same challenges...after all, Hallmark wouldn't make a "Here to Support you while you Breastfeed" line of cards if it wasn't so darn hard.

This collection of stories in Unbuttoned resonated with me because it offers an array of breastfeeding realities. It highlights experiences with examples of decisions to nurse, decisions to bottle feed, use formula, stop nursing at a certain point, nurse for a while. It reminds me that everyone has a unique, individual experience with motherhood. It also reminds me that everyone has bumps along the road, and motherhood is a unique learning process for each mom.