Heather and The Cupcake...an Introduction

Hi everyone, my name is Heather. I usually blog over at Heathers Creative Life, where I share craft and party ideas, and cool things I've made - including my 5 month old daughter, AKA "The Cupcake". While I've been kicking around the idea of talking about my EP life for a while (milk still counts as a cool thing I've created, right?), I'm just not sure how much that crowd wants to know about my boobs, so this is a great opportunity and I'm hoping to contribute several posts here. While I never intended to EP, it has actually worked out great for my family and I don't regret it one bit.

My story of why I ended up pumping is a pretty familiar one to many EP moms:

My daughter didn't eat. She was too sleepy for her first few days in the world, and despite undressing, tickling, and trying every other distraction technique the nurses showed me, she just wasn't into it. We kept trying every few hours, including with a nipple shield and eventually they had me pump. Those first couple days are kind of jumbled together in my memory, but each new nurse/doctor/lactation consultant brought in different ideas about what should and should definitely NOT be done - and everything contradicted. Mostly I remember being very frustrated and anxious.

As a first time parent, when someone in the hospital tells you your baby is losing too much weight, you tend to get a little freaked out. This in no way helps the situation.

At one point on the 2nd day she latched on and seemed to go to town...for 2 hours. She chewed and chewed until I was raw and weeping, but I endured it because I thought my baby was wasting away. Then she went back to not wanting to latch again, and still wanted to sleep. We tried syringe feeding the pumped milk/colostrum, which was when I realized I was losing my mind. I was exhausted from 36+ hours without sleep, not to mention the trauma of labor, and here I was trying to pour this liquid gold into my baby's mouth. She, of course, had no idea how to swallow and just let it all leak out. It was a thousand times more frustrating than the cliche of herding cats, and the stakes were much higher. She cried, I cried...At one point in between droplets we tried giving her a pacifier to stimulate the sucking reflex and encourage swallowing...but wait, introducing other nipples was what we were trying to avoid with syringe feeding, right? Somehow in my fog I recognized the lunacy and just called an end to the whole agonizing process. We slapped a nipple on the bottle and she took it like a champ. A million pounds were lifted from my shoulders as she sucked it down with ease, and we've really never looked back.

At our weight check the next day our pediatrician announced "She is perfect!" and brushed aside my worries about her nutrition. He explained that all babies lose weight early on, and that they bring in those who lost more than 10% for a weight check as a precaution, but really I need not worry. She was perfectly healthy and doing great. She had already begun to gain back her early losses which he said was quite impressive, and by 2 weeks she was well over birth weight again.

My milk came in quickly and with a vengeance, I was able to get 4 days of bottles into the refrigerator and start building a freezer stash, all while still producing her daily needs. I knew exactly how much she was eating, which was so reassuring for me that it alone was enough to keep me pumping (and I tracked each bottle by writing it down for the first month or so, just to be sure).

The LC's, doctors, and nurses all instructed me to keep trying to get The Cupcake to take meals straight from the tap, but she was never interested. Truthfully, pumping worked out really well for my lifestyle and personality so I didn't try all that hard to force it. I was able to set a schedule, maybe the only thing in my life at that point that ran like clockwork, while still feeding TC on demand. I was able to control the suction and latch of my pump, something I couldn't do with my infant, and though I was still dealing with the pain from her hospital chew-a-thon (important note: you can totally bite without teeth. That hard little gum ridge they come with is plenty painful when tender body parts are smashed between it), eventually my nipples healed.

In my pre-birth breastfeeding class and in the countless books I'd read prior to trying, I kept hearing that "breastfeeding doesn't hurt if you are doing it right." Well, that's great - but what if MY BABY wasn't doing it right? I think this attitude is actually extremely detrimental to new mothers, and coupled with the variation and contradiction in advice each different "expert" gave me in the hospital, only serves to prove how subjective the field of breastfeeding really is. Everyone had different opinions, but presented them as hard core facts, which left me confused, frustrated and skeptical.

At 5 1/2 months, my beautiful little girl is tipping the scales at 16 1/2 lbs, and I no longer worry if she is getting enough to eat. She LOVES her bottle, and because of that she can be comforted by numerous caregivers, something which really helped me be able to get out and about once in a while and transition back to work without too much trouble. She's still getting breast milk, and as the fist baby (and first grand baby on my side) I have zero worries that we are missing any bonding time (I swear I held her for the first 6 weeks straight). In addition, while she still eats every 2-3 hours, I've been able to cut back on my pumping sessions so it is less of a burden and we have a little more freedom in our schedule, and even though she still wakes several times a night it is less of an interruption and both of us can go back to sleep quickly.

I never would have thought to choose exclusively pumping, and outside of my family I have not found much support for it - but I'm almost to my goal of pumping for 6 months (with plenty in the freezer after that), and the piece of mind it has given me was worth all of the bottle washing and then some :)