Breast is not always best for Mums?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/4680702/Breast-not-always-best-for-mums

Ok, so we all know that breast feeding is best for your baby, and gives her the best start in life, but what about those people who struggle to breast feed and never manage to successfully feed their baby this way? I found the above article an interesting read for many reasons, especially as it touched on the psychological implications of being unable to breast feed.

Why did I find this interesting? because I have never managed to successfully breast feed Vivienne.

Before we had her, I assumed that breast feeding would be something that would not neccessarily be easy, but that if I persevered hard enough, I could make it happen. However, nothing could prepare me for just how difficult it would be.

Breast feeding is definitely a learnt skill - and a big part of it is probably due to your level of exposure to it. We covered a bit of it in our ante-natal group sessions - how to latch your baby, some common problems that could occur, etc etc. Our midwife was also helpful in providing information about latching. I went into it with all the theoretical knowledge I had learnt, only to find that the reality was somewhat differnet.

Vivienne wouldn't latch onto me!

Basically, as soon as she was born, our midwife tried to establish a latch. Picture this - a Mother who has just given birth (without any interventions I might add). I was sore, overwhelmed, exhausted. Vivienne, newly arrived into the world was screaming her lungs out as our midwife tried to get her to latch onto me again and again and again. Other nurses were called in to the delivery room when she would not latch, various techniques were employed, still without success. Two hours later(!) defeat was conceeded.

Vivi spent the rest of that day strapped to me 'skin to skin' in an effort to help with the breast feeding. That night I had to sign a consent form so the nurses could give her formula, as she hadn't eaten anything.

The next few days in hospital were spent, once again, trying to get breast feeding established. I became used to nurses coming and going, hand expressing colostrum (which by the way, really hurts!) which we fed to Vivi through a tube and syringe. We saw a lactation consultant at the hosptial who put a plan in place for us for when we got home. I never once questioned that we would be able to get breast feeding established eventually, and in my mind their seemed no other option, after all 'breast is best' and we wouldn't want to be feeding her any nasty formula if we could help it!

So home we went, positive that we would be able to establish breast feeding if we persevered long enough.

What followed was weeks of plans being put in place by our midwife and lactation consultant. I was continually told to 'persevere, we will get there!' and as a new Mum I just assumed that eventually it would happen. I was determined to do it, and it had been so drilled into me that for me, bottle feeding was simply not an option. So for the first six weeks of Vivi's life, we tried time and time again to get her to latch. We used every means known to man - I recall one plan we had in place was to try for five minutes at the start of every feed to get her to latch on, even forcing her on to me. So this meant five minutes of Vivi screaming her head off while we tried to latch her on - and as everyone who has a baby can understand, five minutes of screaming feels like five hours! I got to a point where I began dreading the feeds and the inevitable battle that would arise out of them. Trying to force her onto me felt anything but 'natural' and I was finding it hard to bond with her a result. Also, her weight gains were erratic - and very slow which was worrying. One week she actually lost weight, and some weeks she gained virtually no weight at all.

The crunch came when she was about six weeks old and she started refusing to latch on to me even when I was using a nipple shield (which she had been able to latch on to after a lot of perseverence!). I suddenly realised that it wasn't worth it - that I couldn't go through another six weeks of this - or who knows how long. I conceeded defeat and began expressing milk for her and feeding her with a bottle. I still felt like a faliure, even though she was getting breast milk. Everyone else made it look so easy and I wondered what was wrong with me, and why I couldn't breast feed our daughter.

I expressed milk for Vivienne until she was about 15 weeks old, and started refuisng to drink my breast milk. We had to switch to formula as a result and once again, I felt like I'd failed her somehow.

All of this conincided with Vivi being diagnosed with having Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) which perhaps explains why she was never able to latch on initially, but I don't know.

However, I do know that since exclusively formula feeding her, I've felt much happier and I have a happier baby who is now gaining weight at a reasonable rate. This whole experience has made mre realise that what is most important, is a healthy baby and if that means a baby who is fed formula, then so be it.

I will say however, that I still feel disappointed in myself that Vivi is not being breast fed, and there is a part of me that always thinks that I could have done more, could have tried harder and done things differently. A lot of this disappointment, I think, stems from the emphasis there is in this country for women to breast feed. For example, at the ante-natal classes, there was not a single bit of information on bottle feeding. The topic was not even remotely touched upon, which lead me to get the impression that it was somehow 'taboo'. I have yet to see a brochure on bottle feeding, on the ins and out of how to sterilise equipment, how much formula to use, what type of formula is best and so on. Tim and I basically had to stumble our way through when it came to feeding Viv formula, and the only information we could find came from other Mums who forumal fed their babies. The fact that breast feeding is so promoted in NZ is fantastic, as I do believe that it is best for baby, but for whatever reason there will always be those of us out there who are unable to breast feed and the pyschological implications of this can be extreme.

I should point out as well that I had an incredibly supportive partner in Tim who stood by me every step of the way - it makes me wonder how other Mum's who are struggling to breast feed fare, if their partners are not so supportive of them.