Is breast best?

Every doctor and midwife you see along the journey asks the big question “are you going to breastfeed your baby?” The amount of pressure put on an expected mother about breastfeeding in my opinion ridiculous. I knew I wanted to attempt breastfeeding but I wasn’t going to allow someone to make me feel guilty about thinking about bottle-feeding either.

After Baby Daddy and I discussed feeding we decided to try breast-feeding, Darcy took to the breast really quickly; this may have something to do with her being a heffalump, it was very reassuring. A few weeks before Darcy was born I started to leak so I knew that Darcy was getting something when she was feeding. The first couple of days were going really well Darcy was feeding every 3-4 hours for 20-30 minutes, I was exhausted for these few days as I was only sleeping for about 2.5 hours before she wanted more. 

 

On our day 3 check with the midwife she noticed that Darcy was slightly, shall we say? “sun kissed”. Darcy had jaundice which isn’t worrying unless she gets to day 10 and still is showing signs, the midwife did explain it is very common and larger babies find it slightly harder to break it down. There are a few things that can help breakdown jaundice one of these being vitamin D, otherwise known as sunlight but seeing as Darcy arrived in the cold, cloudy months of December there was a lack of sunlight. The other way to help breakdown jaundice is passing urine as this gets rid of all the stuff your body doesn’t want, to make a baby pass urine they have to feed, so the midwife suggested that we definitely feed Darcy every 3 hours instead of letting her get to 4. This caused quite a lot of stress for me as I felt a lot of pressure to make sure Darcy fed every 3 hours, this meant sometimes I had to wake her up which she did not appreciate and most of the time she was falling asleep on the breast. To help make sure Darcy was getting enough milk the midwife lent us a breast pump at first I was slightly nervous about using it but once you do it for the first time you realise it feels just like the baby. They gave us a tiny cup to use to feed Darcy, as they do not suggest using a bottle, this felt very unnatural and was actually really difficult to use and more of the milk was running down her chin than going in her mouth.

 

I was managing to pump 3 ounces in 20 minutes per breast which by the midwifes opinion was impressive, it was very reassuring as it meant that I knew Darcy was getting roughly the same amount when feeding. When Darcy was a week old she started to latch on and off the breast this caused very sore nipples. Midwifes and Doctors saying breast-feeding doesn’t hurt in my opinion once the baby is latched on it doesn’t hurt, what does hurt is the actual nipple itself. Due to Darcy latching on and off my nipple they started to crack and bleed and I know I have just gone through labour but sore cracked nipples takes 2^nd place on the pain scale. Because my nipples kept leaking it meant that they never had time to dry and heal so they were constantly sore and bloody. Every time Darcy was feeding I would flinch due to the pain, which caused her to get tense, this was the first step into considering bottle-feeding. 

 

By day 10 my nipples could not handle it anymore they were so sore! I decided to keep using the pump as my nipples could handle it and feed Darcy my breast milk direct from a bottle. Thankfully again Darcy took to the bottle really well and by using the bottle we knew she was definitely drinking 3-4 ounces instead of guessing when she was feeding from the breast. They say the more you pump the more milk you produce for me this was the opposite the more I pumped the less milk I produced, this became tricky as Darcy was needing minimum 3 ounces every 3-4 hours and I just wasn’t producing enough plus my nipples still were not healing. After a long discussion we decided to move Darcy to formula milk, I couldn’t keep up with her needs and my nipples were crying for me to stop. Due to Darcy enjoying her food just like her father she unsurprisingly took to formula milk very well. Now at 7 weeks Darcy drinks 6-7 ounces every 5 hours and is in a very regular routine.

Positives:

1. Protects your baby from diseases 

2. You build a bond with your baby

3. Its free!

4. No prepping needed you just need to shall we say whip it out

Negatives:

1. You don't know how much your baby is drinking

2. Daddy doesn't get as much intimate time

3. Sore nipples!

4. Due to the position Darcy and I breastfed (lying down) it was hard to be out of the house for the first few weeks.