The Beginning...

It is Day 5 of my Breastfeeding journey with Oliver and I am inspired to start a blog about the day to day of breastfeeding life for me. My reasons for doing this are to vent my joys and frustrations and also as accountability that I will make myself stick with this. My biggest goal is to breasfeed Oliver for one year and more if possible. This goal seems insane to me and like I am reaching for the stars, but there it is. My second place goal, if I don't make it to that one, is 6 months. I will be reasonably happy if I can make it to 6 months. And the shortest term goal, the one I will force myself to stick to, is 6 weeks. No matter how hard this turns out to be, I WILL breastfeed for 6 weeks and I will not give up. I probably sound pessimistic, it would be better to explain what happened with my first son, Evan, for background to my breastfeeding psyche...

Before I had Evan, I was absolutely sure that I would breastfeed for one year and that I would make myself do it. I bought the double electric breast pump, the breastmilk bags, the nursing bras... Evan arrives, all 9 lbs 10 oz. of him, and we are all go for breastfeeding. While in the hospital he refuses to latch on, prompting many visits from several different lactation consultants, all of which have a differing opinion of what I should be doing. One of them gives me a nipple shield, which begins the never-ending need for said nipple shield every time we feed. We went home from the hospital with high hopes that things would work. After a painful tear at birth, I was experiencing a difficult recovery and was not prepared for the work and heartache that comes along with breastfeeding. Perhaps I was naive and thought that everything would just work out naturally, obviously it did not. Every time we put Evan to my nipple shielded breast, he would fall asleep after 2 minutes or less. No matter what we tried it was no use. It was the beginning of January and stripped him down, made him wet with washcloths, moved his arms and legs, I mean everything and he would not stay awake after being put on the breast.

Two days after we brought Evan home, we saw the pediatrician who told me that Evan had lost 10% of his birth weight and that we should start supplementing with formula after feedings just until he gets his weight back up. As any parent not wanting their child to starve, we added a bottle feeding after our less than successful nursing sessions. Evan decided that he no longer even wanted to try with the nipple shield and only wanted to drink from the bottle. I continued to pump breast milk for him, but we always had to supplement with formula. I suffered from severely low milk supply with pumping and he was very hungry. I pumped for Evan for the first three months and then stopped and stuck with formula exclisively for the rest of his first year. Directly after we switched to formula full time, Evan developed severe eczema which we now know is due to his dairy allergy. He is also allergic to eggs and, worst of all, peanut. Although I am praying for a miracle that he will outgrow his peanut allergy, now being more educated about food allergies I am aware that breastfeeding is an important part of avoiding exposure to potential allergens and teaching the body to respond to them properly. I sometimes wonder if I had been able to continue breastfeeding Evan, would he have so many food allergies. I know I gave it my best shot at the time, but I wish I had tried harder. Who knows if it would have made a difference, but all the same, I wish I could have breastfed him.

So, this is my second chance. I want to do for Oliver what I couldn't do for Evan. I had a much easier delivery resulting in a very small tear this time with little pain so far and Oliver is a champ at latching on to the breast! Remembering Evan's difficulties, it amazes me how well Oliver can latch on... so he is doing his part beautifully. I, on the other hand, received the news today that Oliver has also lost 10% of his birth weight and the pediatrician is suggesting supplementing with formula after feedings. I told her some of what happened with Evan and she was understanding. I have until later today when Oliver has a weight check at the hospital to see if we need to give him formula after feedings to see if his weight goes back up. As long as he is up at least an ounce, we can continue to breastfeed exclusively.

At first, I was completely against giving him any formula at all, having read that even the first exposure can cause a food allergy or tendency to react allergically to foods in general. But what can I do? I cannot allow my baby to starve, so if tomorrow there is not enough change, I am going to try a hypoallergenic formula. While it is still cows milk based, it is very much hydrolyzed and hopefully would not cause a reaction. At least I am hoping and praying that it won't. I have been on Fenugreek to increase milk supply since Tuesday night, before I even knew that I was going to have any problems, and it seems that my milk is starting to come in a little bit today. I've been pumping after each of Oliver's feedings and I can see it getting more breastmilk than colostrum. Oliver was on the breast for 2 solid hours in the wee hours of this morning and then an hour and a half after that wanted another feeding. I'm so scared that he's not getting enough, but if there was nothing there I assume he would not stay on the breast for so long. Tomorrow will tell. Thanks for reading. :)