My firstborn was challenging. I was new and unsure and she was born via cesarean and I was recovering. It took two, no three months to start improving and for me to feel like it was working. I supplemented and pumped and did everything I could. Then we successfully breastfed for almost two years.
I thought with number two it would be easy peasy. Especially since I had also worked for two years as a breast feeding peer counselor for the WIC program. Right?
Wrong. Oh so wrong.
Much to our surprise he was born with an extra chromosome, otherwise known as Down syndrome. We knew nothing about that but apparently low muscle tone is a big issue. So I had a baby with low muscle tone, "floppy" was sometimes used to describe him, plus he had to stay two weeks in the NICU for help with oxygen and breathing. Imagine!
He had tubes in his nose and things taped to his chest and finger. But I was SO determined! God dammit I was going to nurse my baby!
He had a hard time but I kept trying. I had a new baby in the hospital and a toddler at home. I would stay in the hospital as long as I could, then was finally convinced to go home and rest. I'd wake up every two hours at night to pump for a baby who was not in the room with me. I'd experienced low milk supply with my daughter and knew this would be challenging. That's whenI started this blog. Pumping and drinking protein smoothies and giving little bottles, even two ounces of milk, for my husband to drive over to the hospital.
On our wedding anniversary, six days after he was born, my husband brought the pump out to the living room- whoo, living it up! We watched Glee and I saw Becky for the first time. Becky, the teen with Down syndrome. I'd never known anyone with DS, and never seen someone represented in media. I cried with so many mixed feelings.
In the end, I had success with Liam sooner than with my first, (and we bf for 2.5 years) , despite these crazy challenges. I think two things helped a lot.
1. Crazy ass DETERMINATION. Nothing was going to stop me until my son was nursing successfully.
2. Going to a weekly BF group at a local lactation consultants office and tracking progress. Seeing that every week he was gaining weight and getting a little more milk out of me each time. I had to see tangible progress. And with that my confidence increased.
Confidence is so much of it. I knew how important it was especially for this new baby of mine because he needed the immune support breast milk offers and the low muscle tone needed breast-feeding to help with muscle tone in the mouth. I thought about how much benefit I could give him by nursing him and I was determined like nothing else ever before in my life
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