Done With Breastfeeding – Finally!!!!
All the women who say they love breastfeeding, like the women who love being pregnant, have to be nuts.
Okay, I take that back, they have to be slightly nuts.
Since the babies were rushed to the NICU immediately after they were born and since they were severely premature, I wasn’t able to breastfeed in the traditional sense. The twins were born at 10:00am and 10:01am, and after the heavy drugs from the C-section wore off, and I was just on the light drugs J, I started pumping.
They say that the colostrum, the first milk that’s expressed from the breast, is the most important for a baby’s brain development and their natural immunities, since it’s high in protein and low in fat. Thankfully that’s what I was able to give them their first night. It was very little, probably only about 10mL, but luckily they didn’t eat a lot. Jeff brought it down to the nurses – I was still too weak/too scared to go see them. We continued in this fashion for two days, before I was able to go and see them myself.
The body is a strange thing. Even though the twins were almost three months early, somehow my body knew that I had delivered them – it knew that they were no longer a part of me. And it started producing immediately.
Since they were so small, they didn’t eat much – but my body had been prepping for twins, so when my milk came in – it came in with a vengeance. But I really didn’t know what I was doing.
The lactation consultant came into the room to give me tips on how to produce and how to get the babies to latch. Latch seriously? Did this lady not get the memo? My babies were each under three pounds and were hooked up to IVs, NGs and oxygen. Did she not read my chart?
Not only did most of her breast-feeding tips not apply to me, she came in while I had friends visiting. I won’t shout them out, since I’m sure it was much more uncomfortable for them than for me, but she started talking about how to insert my nipple into the baby’s mouth and how to massage my breast when it became full and hard with milk.
I was trying to give her the signal – with my body language and facial expressions – that it wasn’t a good time, but she just kept on going. Not only did she not have a clue, she didn’t tell me anything about pumping, other than I should try to pump both breasts at a time for optimal milk production.
Two days later, right before I went home, another lactation consultant came in and tried to make up for my bad experience. She was the one who told me to use an old sports bra (cutting two holes right in front of the nipples) for a pumping bra instead of spending $20-$40 on a new pumping bra. She also told me to rent a hospital grade pump.
Ah, really? Why couldn’t the first person tell me that? Now it was Sunday and every place on the UWS that sells or rents hospital grade pumps, including the hospital, was closed. My dad and Jeff had to go down to Union Square, to Babies R’ Us, to get a pump. [Note: With Obamacare all pump rentals are free and will be reimbursed by your insurance!]
Thankfully I was able to get the pump before I went home, because it became extremely important very quickly. Pumping was one of the only things I could give my babies. I couldn’t change them yet, I couldn’t bathe them, I could only sit with them and for a few hours a day and do skin to skin (where you hold the diapered baby to your unclothed chest).
Skin to skin helps to establish the bond between Mother and baby that could be lost with such prematurity. Only Mom’s can do skin to skin because men can’t regulate their body temperate to the baby’s. The nurses said that the baby’s could overheat and get uncomfortable if they do skin to skin with their Dad’s. One nurse referred to it as “welcome to the jungle” referring to the Dad’s chest hair – which she says she’s had to pick off of babies, who’s father’s insist on doing skin to skin, lol.
Since my babies weren’t home and pumping was the only way I could feel close to them, I did it all the time – religiously every three hours – although, I didn’t do it at night. They say that you should act like your baby is home with you and wake up at night – twice a night, to continue the every three-hour process.
I found this process very hard and very contradictory. It was hard because I was tired – I just gave birth – and it was contradictory because everyone, including the doctors and nurses, continually told me to get rest while the babies were in the NICU. How can I get rest and wake up every three hours to pump?
And pumping is hard, it takes a lot out of you. The fat it takes out of you is nice I will admit that, but it also makes you even more tired than you were before. Or at least it did for me.
When they came home they were still eating every three hours, since they were still so small. My process was this, I would feed them – which took an hour – and then pump – which took a half hour. Then by the time I cleaned the bottles and cleaned the pump, put everything away, and maybe had a bite to eat it was time to do it all again!
Jeff didn’t get any paternity leave so he only got to take one week off and they charged him PTO. He also took a week where he worked from home, but he needed to focus on work and wasn’t a lot of help. It was all me waking up at 3am to feed twins alone. It was hard, lonely and exhausting.
Now that they’re bigger and eat every four hours the pumping did get a little easier. And making the decision to hire a night nurse for about a month helped a lot – it was probably the best thing I ever did – but pumping still took up a lot of time and expended a lot of energy.
I am so glad I was able to give my babies breast milk and I was lucky that I was able to do it for four months (even though I subsidized a little with formula toward the end) but I AM SO GLAD that that part of my life is OVER!
