Tuesday, October 18, 2011

How I Became a Breastfeeding Mother, Part 1

When I first got pregnant, I just KNEW I wasn't going to breastfeed.  It seemed so antiquated and barbaric. It made me flash back to images from National Geographic.  I felt like breastfeeding was something men pushed on women to keep them tied down.  I never thought it could be empowering.

I thought that science had to have something better, and that that something was formula.  I knew that my mother breastfed my sister and me for 2 or 3 months, and our neighbor breastfed her children, but I never really put much thought into it.

Something changed when I saw my Bettie in the NICU.  That change intensified when I smelled the formula she was being fed.  It smelled rancid.  It was disgusting.  I didn't want her to have to ingest such foul smelling stuff.

I had a very supportive post-partum nurse named Katoya who first helped me pump (since the good folks in the NICU wouldn't let me try putting Bettie to the breast).  I remember being in awe when milk started to flow.  The oxytocin kicked in and really boosted the old mothering instincts.  That first session netted me less than half an ounce, but it got mixed with her formula.  I vowed to do whatever I had to do to get her weaned off formula and taking breastmilk exclusively.

Katoya explained that I should be pumping any time Bettie was eating.  Since she was eating every 3 hours, I should be pumping every 3 hours, so that's what I did.  When I was released from the hospital, I went home and got my Medela Symphony pump set up in the bedroom because I was very shy and embarrassed about the way pumping looked.  The first time I pumped, I had the suction turned up way too high.  I realized this when my nipples turned black and started to bleed.  I learned that high suction wasn't the answer to supply problems.  I found kellymom.com and started to learn more about breastfeeding and pumping.

I was pumping every 3 hours, 24 hours a day for about 30 minutes at a time.  Yes, I was getting out of bed.  My supply wasn't great--in 30 minutes I was lucky to get 2 ounces, so I felt like it was very important to not miss a session.  It was exhausting, but totally worth it.  After 7 days, Bettie was getting nothing but breastmilk.

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