Breastfeeding Wasn't Painful

Over and over again when I was reading about breastfeeding when I was pregnant, one message was repeated: it shouldn't hurt. If you have sore nipples, you're doing something wrong.

So when breastfeeding didn't hurt, I figured all was well. Baby seemed as happy as any newborn could be expected to be. DH once worried aloud, ironically about half an hour before my mature milk came in and I started leaking all over the place, that she wasn't eating enough. I confidently said she's fine.

I'm still not sure about that now, in retrospect.

The next day, at four days old, we had to take her in to see our pediatrician, because the hospital ped had been worried about her potential exposure to GBS during labour. He wouldn't release her from the hospital unless I promised to bring her to see our ped when she was four days old. Her birth weight was 9 lb 4 oz and at four days, she'd dropped to 7 lb 13 oz.

As Whozat sagely points out, having IV fluids during labour can artificially inflate your baby's birth weight. So I'm not sure if Em really wasn't eating enough and I should be glad that we had to see the doctor so early, or...

If she was fine, just lost a bit more quickly that extra fluid weight, and the subsequent cascade of pumping and feeding her other ways might have caused her to forget how to latch on properly and exacerbate her posterior tongue tie. I'll probably never know.

We fed Em with a bottle, with a spoon, with a cup, with a tube beside our gloved finger. I feed her with a tube beside my nipple, with a tube under the nipple shield. For seven weeks, we kept this up and I kept thinking maybe we were making progress. But feeding her in ways involving my breasts was so cumbersome and time consuming that I was about ready to give up and just pump full time, when we finally went to an ENT and got her tongue tie clipped.

Then, for a couple of days, as she learned to latch onto my breast as a seven week old, I had sore nipples for a few days. Stinging, ouch, this is what they're talking about, dreading nursing a little bit. And then it got better. And now I worry that she'll be one of these babies who wean really early.

Note: Not until months after my baby was born did Annie at PhD in Parenting publish this great post on pain in breastfeeding. Go read it! In case you don't have time, the short story is that some discomfort is normal.

Another note: I was in some pain during the first few days of pumping because I had a really crappy, cheap breast pump. Chapped, cracked, milk blisters, the works. As soon as I rented a good hospital grade pump, all was well.

On The Sexualization of Breasts

Have you read any anthropological work looking at cultures where long term breastfeeding is more common than it is in North America and whether people there who are sexually attracted to women are any less obsessed with breasts as a sexual organ?

I have a hunch.

I suspect that where long term breastfeeding is more or less the norm, breasts are more like elbows or noses - generally unremarkable body parts, ones with a very important function for mothers who are able to breastfeed, but just body parts.

I think what tipped me off to this was the ever provocative Wonderkarin who awhile back tweeted a question, something to the effect of do your partners suck on your breasts during sexual play? It hadn't occurred to me that this might not be normal, but trust me, after using my breasts to feed my baby, I've definitely felt squeamish about them still being sexual. Wonderkarin lives in Sweden where long term breastfeeding rates are much higher than in North America.

So, anyone have any data on breast obsession versus long term breastfeeding rates, or am I on my own here? Maybe this is the real reason I did an undergrad degree in Sociology: to get me started on this. Because I have so much time on my hands!

Please tell me this work has already been done?

Some Partially Formed Thoughts On the Word Breast

This is not a manifesto. This is the post I've been chewing on and talking about for awhile. I think what it comes down to is discomfort with the word breast.

Breast. Breasts. I have a couple and they work well.

I used to think of them as sexual and to the disappointment of someone to whom I'm married, I don't really feel that way any more. They're just bits of me I use to feed the baby. Maybe someday they'll be sexy in my mind again.

And all milk is breastmilk. Just some come from human breasts and some come from other animals' breasts. Human milk is best for human babies. I think that's all given.

I want to say that we need to stop calling it breastmilk and breastfeeding, because that helps to linguistically maintain the sense that feeding our babies naturally is unnatural, and that it needs qualification; that we need to distinguish it from bottle and/or formula feeding. However, with corporate advertising normalizing bottle feeding of babies, if we lactivists just start talking about feeding our babies, we might disappear linguistically.

So what to do?

I propose we continue what we are already doing: campaigning for supporting parents through all feeding decisions like Best For Babes, help to educate the public on the reasons why breastfeeding is a Good Thing (as so many are working to do, see La Leche League, Kelly Mom, so many awesome bloggers), but also:

We need to destigmatize the word BREAST. Desexualize them and the word, normalize natural feeding along with bottle and / or formula feeding. Make breasts obviously dual purposed - sure they can be sexy, but for a special period of a mother's life, they are baby food making equipment.

Still chewing this one over. Your thoughts on where to go from here very welcome.

So You're Off to the Hospital?

Packing, especially packing light, is not my strong point. I often get over-excited, forget important stuff and pack completely absurd things. I lived up to this norm when, in the middle of the night, I had to re-pack my go bag.

As faithful readers of the blog may recall, after I'd been in what we decided to call labour, but really wasn't, for about 24 hours, we got booted from the birth center and told to go have the baby in the hospital.

We were in no rush to transfer so we went home and napped for a few hours first. Or at least my husband did. I think I lay down for awhile.

And then I took some phone calls. And then I started repacking, as my go bag had been packed for a happy birth experience at the birth center, and a quick trip home afterwards. Suddenly a whole different set of rules would apply: I'd be stuck there much longer afterwards, I'd not be allowed to eat, etc.

So, from my go bag, I removed:

• food that couldn't be eaten sneakily (glad I kept nuts and granola bars - the hospital rations were not enough to labour or start lactating on)
• iPod and speakers (figuring I'd not be allowed to use them)
• diapers (the birth center said to bring them, but I knew the hospital would be provide them)
  

I added in:

• our last will and testament, our medical power of attorney and our medical insurance cards
• my laptop (birth center has no wifi but I guessed correctly that the hospital would)
  
• underwear and nursing bras
• chargers for various devices (camera, mobile phones, laptop)
  

I was really glad I had:

• chargers! The hospital kept the baby, and thus me, for 48 hours after birth, and I had a lot of calls to make.
• laptop. The hospital had free wifi and for the few hours I wasn't sleeping and the baby was, I was glad to have some distraction from the sterility of the place and my anxiety about what to do with this gorgeous little creature.
  

I'm still not sure what I was thinking when I included:

• underwear and bras. The hospital provided disposable underwear because, like a normal woman who's just given birth, I was bleeding a bit more than normal monthlies. And a bra? As if I'm going to put on a bra when I was in so uncomfortable that I was afraid to pass gas because I was worried my bits would fall out.
• last will and testament. If I didn't survive whatever medical intervention they were going to inflict on me, I'm sure my affairs could wait until my husband located the document in the apartment.
  

Finally, I wish I'd had more snack food. The food served by the hospital unfortunately really lived up to the stereotype of hospital food, plus was exceedingly modest in quantity. I know I was looking forward to losing some pregnancy weight, but I wasn't ready to start just yet!

I'm glad to report that on a recent trip with the baby to see her great-grandmother, I packed much more appropriately. I wore all clothes at least once and the only thing I felt I should have brought more of was trousers for the baby. I don't think anyone else noticed she only had two pair for four days.

Got any packing wisdom to share? Birth or baby pick up hospital packing stories on tap?

A Quickie: Some of My Favourite Parenting Posts

After a week of snowbound staying home with the baby joy, you might think I'd have some original thought to share. I do. I'm just having difficulty deciding how I want to frame it.

In the meantime, here's a new favourite and some old favourites that I'd like to share with you. The first I just got fwd'd today. The others are ones I literally return to re-read periodically. I hope you find them as interesting and wonderful as I have:

• The Inconvenient Truth About Parenting. Monica on dealing with your stuff and letting your kid be themself.
• Mindfully Loving My Children. On the languages of love and how Melodie's kids know she loves them.
• CIO: 10 Reasons It's Not For Us. On crying it out as a baby sleep strategy and the science behind why Annie won't use it.
• On Breastfeeding and Things We Don't Talk About. Arwyn on what makes her uncomfortable about nursing. This post scared me while I was pregnant as I worried I'd experience the same thing. I've not, but I still think it's important to talk about.

I'll leave you with these to chew on and I hope to be back with you soon on some other stuff I'm chewing on.

Would you like to leave me with some of your favourite (re)reading material?

UPDATE: Almost - well, briefly actually did - forgot:

• Venusimo. Honest to Betsy on the female equivalent of machismo. It speaks to a lot my ongoing - not dissatisfaction but - lack of satisfaction with my birth experience.

Woe of the WOHM

I don't get where all of you find the time to blog! My personal relationships are neglected, my marital relationship worse, I barely spend two hours a week on my job search... and just realized it's now been more than a month since I posted.

And to honest, I'm typing one handed whilst the BP snoozes on one arm during day three of snowbound! Sigh.

How is winter treating you?

Breastfeeding and Tongue Tie

In all my recent breastfeeding blogging and tweeting, I realized I never finished documenting our current state of affairs with breastfeeding the Baby Piranha.

At 4 days, my pediatrician was concerned about her weight loss (birth weight was 9 lb 4 oz, 4 days was 7 lb 14 oz) and suggested it was due to her not latching well. She suggested I start pumping and syringe feeding, and that I try using a nipple shield. Done.

In retrospect, I realize that part of the reason for the dramatic weight loss was that I was given IV fluids during labour, and that inflated my weight - I only weighed 3 pounds less the day after I came home from the hospital, than I weighed going it! It can also inflate babies' weight - so her birth weight was probably higher than it would have been naturally, making her normal post-natal weight loss look more dramatic. I've since mentioned this to my ped and she agrees this could have been a factor.

At 11 days, the BP was gaining weight but not latching, so I went to see an IBCLC, who wrote in her notes that the BP has a posterior tongue tie. She encouraged me to continue pumping, offering the breast with and without the shield, trying out finger feeding, and sold us a larger syringe. Done. Nothing was said about tongue tie, it was just written down.

At 3 or 4 weeks, after only getting the BP to eat directly from my breast by manually expressing into her mouth, we returned to the IBCLC to be told to keep up the good work and get some coaching on side lying nursing. Done.

All of this time, my friend whose baby not only was tongue tied but after having the tie clipped, had to have it re-clipped at 4 months because it regrew, was encouraging me to visit her ENT to have the BP's mouth evaluated for tongue tie. I resisted because the IBCLC surely would have told me if that were the cause of our woe.

By 7 weeks, however, I was ready to throw in the towel on breastfeeding directly, and just buy two pumps: one for work, where I would be soon returning, and one for home. My friend made another appeal to call her ENT.

I thought it couldn't hurt and even if he clipped her tongue and it didn't help, the clipping was not supposed to be that traumatic.

I phoned the ENT, said the BP was losing weight (not precisely true, but I didn't have the patience to wait three weeks for an appointment) and was able to come in for an appointment two days later - on my second day back at work.

We drove waaay out into the suburbs where the ENT's office is - he is reputed to be the best ENT for tongue tie in the DC area. He's a nice, short, older man clearly fond of babies. He looked in the BP's mouth and said he thought her tongue tie was the cause of our latch problems and recommended clipping it.

I immediately agreed - it was really what we were there for.

Minutes later, I'm in an examining chair, holding the BP in my lap. A nurse is holding her head and the ENT is opening her mouth. An observer, possibly a student, is watching behind the ENT, and he is explaining to her what he's diagnosed and is about to do.

The BP starts to cry when her mouth is opened up. The ENT makes a quick clip - I can see the motion of his hands when the clip is made. The BP doesn't cry any harder, which makes me think the clipping really didn't hurt much. The ENT pops a bit of gauze in her mouth to absorb the few drops of blood that is coming from under her tongue.

The BP continues to cry for a few minutes. We're shown to a nice waiting area, not the main reception room, where we're encouraged to sit and try to nurse.

I'm told that after the clipping, it's important to try to nurse as much as possible - I'm not sure, but I assume it's either to help heal the wound in a way the tongue can keep moving well, or for the baby to have a good first day on the breast, to really learn to latch well.

She calms down fairly quickly - though I'm sure any caregiver will agree than even a few minutes of crying caused by something YOU CHOSE TO DO TO THEM! is hard to listen to. Those few minutes, I was busy doubting myself and my decision. I was thinking "oh I should have just given in and pumped for her, this wasn't necessary, I'm a horrible person, succumbing to the medical-industrial complex."

While I was busy berating myself, I was dutifully offering my breast to her. Suddenly, I noticed the BP had stopped crying and had latched on. Really latched on, and was sucking and gulping milk.

I'd never heard her gulp before. It was amazing. I got a little verklempt.

Since then, I've really only had to pump while at work and once or twice for car rides. Any time we're together, I can feed her directly from the breast. It is soooo much easier than all the pumping and bottles!

I also realized a day or two later, while watching her stick out her tongue in preparation to latch on, that I'd previously never seen her stick her tongue out of her mouth before. I'd seen her tongue, but it'd never before extended beyond her lips. Now it does!

I also spoke with the supervisor of the IBCLC I had seen twice, and let them know that I felt I should have been referred to an ENT much earlier. Their response was that they hesitate to make that referral other than in the most severe cases, because they don't want new moms to think their baby is deformed. I think that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard, but maybe I'm too much of a pragmatist.

The BP is a few days over 5 months old now, and still latching and eating like there's no tomorrow. She's rather big for her age, but tall as well as chubby. DH and I were big babies too, so it's probably genetic. We were at a party recently where she was about the same size as a 9 month old baby!

She's also tolerating me reintroducing a bit of dairy into my diet. I'm not eating dairy like the old days yet, but a bit of cheesecake here, a bit of pizza there, and we're both happy campers. (When I say tolerating, I mean she is showing no signs of having trouble with the dairy - no screaming when pooping, no green poo, etc...)

So, that's really the full breastfeeding saga thus far. I'm reading Baby Lead Weaning now, and I'm so excited to have found out about it. It seems like a very natural and sensible approach.

Anyone else have thoughts on tongue tie and clipping of tongues?

Photo courtesy of Qole Pejorian on Flickr.