7/16/2020 0 Comments My Breastfeeding Journey...Archer was born at 12.41am on New Years Day. We had the magic golden hour and tried our first feed. I was told he was latched well but looking back it didn’t feel the same as what I now know to be a good latch. We rested and woke to feed again but he didn’t latch. I was shown how to hand express colostrum into a cup and syringe feed it to him. Lucky I could get a lot out! We left the birth centre that same morning and were told to keep trying to get him to latch. Our midwife continued to see us daily at home. He soon lost more than 10% of his birth weight and we progressed to feeding him by a tube on my husbands finger as this encouraged him to suck when the syringe didn’t. He would feed and I would pump so that I could pump for every feed he was wanting and teach my breasts to keep up with demand. It took until day 5 for my milk to come in and we saw a lactation consultant that was provided from the main hospital. It was with her that he finally latched well and over the next couple of weeks the direct breastfeeding started to outweigh the tube/ then onto bottle feeds. Night feeds were more of a struggle because we were all so tired. We were stuck on the night time expressed feeds for awhile but I still remember one night in the nursery when he finally latched easy. My fiancé woke up, came in and found me crying so started his usual pep talk about how feeding was always improving and I was doing so well. He got pretty far into the speech when I sobbed ‘no, he is actually feeding!’ By 6 weeks post-partum we were doing great! We survived my partner going back to work, cluster feeds and growth spurts. I had a worry of him not latching though so I started to develop a good freezer stash. We fed through reflux and thought I would have no problems of meeting my 6month goal that I had set as that was when I was going back to work. At 3 months though Archer just stopped gaining weight. We saw various doctors for 2 months for them to come to the conclusion that he was healthy and just small. It was such a stressful time for me though. We used the entire freezer stash on ‘top up’ feeds. We eventually started solids at 5 months under Dr advice to try and have him gain weight. Due to the looming start of work deadline, no freezer stash and still needing to gain weight, we introduced 1 formula bottle a day at 5.5months. a friend took some beautiful milk bath photos to celebrate how far we had come from initially thinking we may not even get 1 feed! I still wasn’t ready to stop and continued to pump twice a day at work and direct breast feed whenever I was home. Between 6months and 11months I ended up with Mastitis 4 times which made my lazy boob an even lazier one and I decided to permanently ditch the pump in November before our wedding. At around 8months we switched to 2 formula feeds a day and celebrated another milestone by taking our own milk tub photos in a local park. Between life working full time, continuing to breastfeed, be a mother and plan our wedding, I lost a lot of weight. At our wedding I was less than my pre-pregnancy weight by around 2-3kg and holding Archer against my chest was physically painful. I really wanted to meet the 12 month goal but at 12 months I decided I was ready to ditch all but our right before bed feed until whenever Archer decided to self wean. I thought this would be 2 years or more but he had other ideas. At 13 months he began refusing the breast and all bottles/cups of milk. I began pumping again ‘just encase’ but he never changed his mind. My pumping was less than 30ml at a time, so I used the milk for icy poles for teething. To me it showed he probably had been comfort sucking rather than drinking at bed time for awhile. By 14months post-partum I completely stopped producing milk but used my weaning pumps to make some frozen teething treats and amounts to use on his breakfast cereal until around 14months. I also had a breastmilk ring made and put a photobook together for Archer of all our photos, including one of our ‘last feed’ The one thing I never expected from our journey was how strong and forever changing the emotions were. Especially the grief of ended when I have no doubts that was the best time for us both. Sometimes I even think I was completely crazy for feeding as long as I did. Even 2 years later when he gets a cold I guilt myself to thinking ‘should I have pumped longer to feed him through this!?’. I have been lucky to have so many wonderful people around me that have always been there to listen to me in these times. I will always be grateful for the sisterhood of support xx Image by Stephanie Reid
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