For the past two weeks, everything in this house has revolved around breastfeeding.
The sofa and armchair have been filled with ever-changing arrangements of pillows and nursing pillows, barely leaving any space for normal use. On the back of the sofa hangs a light blanket for occasional swaddling (when Ingrid gets too violently upset about not getting to the breast fast enough) and a muslin for wiping up dribbles and spills. Half a dozen nursing pads are drying on the windowsill. Any activities are planned based on when Ingrid last fed, and when she will need to get her next feed. The house smells of milk.
Slowly, slowly, we are coming to grips with how this breastfeeding thing works, and starting to feel more in control (marginally).
Breastfeeding (unlike giving birth) does not just happen. It is work, and requires both skill and knowledge – there are more ways of getting it wrong than getting it right. There are positions, and techniques, and terminology. And the 5 or 10 minutes of instruction that I got from the midwive (at 5 in the morning) were woefully insufficient to teach me what was needed.
It took 3 days for my nipples to be chewed to pieces, until they were cracked and bleeding. Then another 3 days to get mastitis. Not a good start.
The mastitis was cured with antibiotics, which got rid of the pain and fever in about half a day (but I’m stuck eating the pills for a week). The chewed nipples got a chance to heal once I found (on the Internet) a different position for Ingrid, which gave me more control over what she was doing and also let her approach the nipples from a different direction. Finally, a breastfeeding consultant / support worker pointed out what I had been doing wrong, and showed me how to work around Ingrid’s unhelpful attempts to get at the breast faster. (All materials about breastfeeding assume that the baby is calm and quiet when being fed – none give advice on what to do when the baby is frantically waving her arms and chomping her jaw because she wants food RIGHT NOW PLEASE. Ingrid, on the other hand, seems to go from too sleepy to open her mouth, to full arm-waving hungry panic, in about 3 seconds.)
I am still not looking forward to feeding her, and I feel my body tensing up in anticipation of the pain. I’m still sore, and the first few seconds, when she’s finding her grip, are never painless. But it’s a lot better, and I finally feel like I have a clue about what I’m doing.
Ingrid is still feeding 8 to 10 times a day, but the feeds are now getting more efficient, and the intervals between them are less random. We can now generally manage a feed in about an hour (of which about 20 minutes are occupied by actual active feeding, and the rest is getting her onto the breast, or getting her to wake up again after she falls asleep halfway through feeding). This still means that I spend somewhere between 8 and 12 hours a day breastfeeding – a full-time job.
Ingrid is also learning. She can now stay awake and feed for over 10 minutes, so we rarely need more than one or two “reboots” during a feed. And she lasts longer between feeds (if we time them right) – last night she went 5 hours between feeds, which meant that I could sleep without being woken for a full 3 hours! (We lost 1 hour because she was having difficulty falling asleep after the feed.)
Hi there!
I know you wrote this blog some time ago and beautiful little Ingrid will be a toddler by now, but I wanted to say I love the honesty in your writing, coupled with the adoration for your baby that shines through your posts. I don’t know if you’ll even get this but I thought I’d ask a question, now that you’ll be looking back with hindsight.
I’m expecting my first baby in August and plan to exclusively breastfeed, but I have a pre-existing pain condition and worry a little about the pain (any I experience will be amplified by my nervous system, which will make birth an…interesting time!). Did you find that breastfeeding the little one became much easier over time? I know the pain and fever from mastitis passed fairly quickly that first time, but was it an isolated incident or did you have more inflammatory episodes? Hope you don’t mind me asking, but you’ll have almost 2 years more experience in the parenting arena than I will! ;-)
I have such respect for you for being ‘stubborn’ in support of what’s best for Ingrid, by keeping nursing through the pain and problems you mention in this post! Hope this finds you and your family happy, healthy and smiling. Best wishes to all of you.
Gill, up in Edinburgh. xx
Hi Gill!
Breastfeeding got a lot easier after just a few weeks. I remember the first three weeks as painful – downhill during the first week, and slowly uphill during the following two as my nipples were healing. But after that everything went really well. 6 weeks after birth we were definitely in a routine.
I had two more cases of… something. (I think it’s called milk stasis but I’m not sure.) Painful breasts and the beginnings of a fever, in any case. Both times it happened because I let Ingrid sleep on top of me while I was reclining in the sofa. I think the pressure on my breasts didn’t let the milk flow as it was supposed to. In both cases it passed within a day or two – I just applied some heat, rested, drank lots of water, and possibly took a painkiller.
It took a while for my skin to get used to her having teeth, when those came. It didn’t exactly hurt but was a bit uncomfortable for a while. I think it was just a matter of the skin needing to be desensitized a bit.
The three weeks of struggling were definitely worth it. No doubt at all. Ingrid enjoys it so much – half-closes her eyes and relaxes and goes off into a world of her own. And I enjoy watching her enjoy it.
if I may say …
my 2 babies were easy to breastfeed. They knew what they were doing. Plus I got useful info from Estonian breastfeeding consultants before giving birth.
I only checked that babies had the right position – lower lip curled outwards and visible muscle movement near their ear.
Bepanthen (www.bepanthen.co.uk) helped to cure sore nipples.
I had mastitis couple of times (due too tight bra). Best cure for that is cabbage leaves. (Google gives plenty of UK links). It also helps to relieve the tension during the first days when the milk arrives.