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Arwen and Elisabeth’s Breastfeeding Journey

Posted on August 16, 2008
Filed under: Breastfeeding beyond infancy (2 years +), Engorgement, Expressing, Food allergy, Mastitis, Nipple pain, Tandem feeding, Tounge tie

When I was in my last trimester of pregnancy, a man I worked with brought his new puppy in to work on his day off. The puppy was so small and gorgeous and I had the overwhelming urge to cuddle it and, to my surprise, breastfeed it (which is something I didn’t put into action). It was probably then that I recognised myself as a mother who had a strong maternal urge to breastfeed.

During my last couple of months of pregnancy I attended a breastfeeding class as was suggested by the midwives at the hospital I went to for checkups. I wanted to do everything that was offered to me, but I think that perhaps I thought that breastfeeding was going to come naturally to me and wondered what the content of the class could possibly be? I was equally confused when my cousin lent me a couple of books on breastfeeding… one of them being the size of a novel… I had no idea what someone could possibly fill that many pages up with.

I never got around to reading the books on breastfeeding, probably because I was so wrapped up in my wonderful pregnancy and preparing for birth, but I did attend the breastfeeding class and felt more than adequately informed afterwards. I was sure it would be a breeze… ’cause like they said “breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt… if it does, take the baby off and re-attach”… Easy.

I had enjoyed all the changes in my body through my pregnancy and felt very womanly and sexy and beautiful. My breasts grew to more than twice their original size and having been quite small beforehand, I was very happy with my new bust. My nipples and areole had grown quite a lot and were now a deep pink. I had been expressing a small amount of colostrum since it had first appeared somewhere in my second trimester and had shocked me with it’s bright orange colour, and had been rubbing this into my nipples to prepare them for breastfeeding. I also found some joy in squeezing the little white lumps that had appeared in my tubercules montgomery… it was similar to the joy of squeezing a big juicy pimple or a blackhead! :)

So I had been doing all the things that were recommended and I felt that my nipples would be ready for anything. I knew it could hurt for a while as my nipples got used to the feeling of breastfeeding and I felt as though I had read enough about breastfeeding from pamphlets and the internet for us to be successful.

Arwen had his first breastfeed a short while after his birth. He started turning his head towards his hands that were scrunched up next to his face and my mother commented that he was probably looking for something to suck on. So I excitedly placed him close to my breast and he latched straight on. I remember it being a strange feeling and I’m not sure if he was attached correctly, but I didn’t really mind, I thought I’d figure out the specifics of attachment later.

Arwen slept for quite a few hours the first night and I think I just lay there next to him watching him as I was too pumped after the birth and just wanted to look at my new baby. I was physically exhausted, but was on such a wonderful high.

The following night, Arwen barely slept and seemed to be feeding constantly. Ten minutes after I took him off the breast after an hour and a half long feed, he would wake up and want to feed again. I was feeding Arwen lying down, but was still getting used to breastfeeding and co-sleeping, so this didn’t really mean any extra rest at this stage. I was utterly exhausted after being awake for three days and was finding that my nipples were becoming very sore. I was really looking forward to my milk coming in and I thought that perhaps this would mean some more rest for me as Arwen would actually be satisfied from his feeds.

Throughout my hospital stay I had been telling the midwives that breastfeeding was quite painful and I knew it shouldn’t be. I asked them to please have a look and make sure I was doing it right, because I was sure that I could not see any problem with my technique or the attachment. The midwives said that I was doing it right and that he was attached right, but at the same time they said if it hurt, there must be something wrong… so one midwife got me to visualise the feeling of breastfeeding to try to get me to find the source of the pain. It was hard to pinpoint the site of the pain when my whole nipple and areole was hurting! So I was shown a video about breastfeeding that I had already seen and felt comfortable that I had absorbed well. Needless to say I didn’t gain any new information from it and the pain was still there. I went to another midwife who I felt was more compassionate to try and get her to help me find out why it was so painful. She said I was doing everything right.

Just before I left the hospital the following day, Arwen had a checkup with the paediatrician, who found that he had a tongue tie, just as I had when I was a baby. It was amazing to me that he had the same ‘defect’ I had when I was born :) I was told by the paediatrician, who I quite liked, that there was no need to cut the tie unless it proved to be a problem. I said that mine had been cut when I started to talk and she said that there was always speech therapy, which could help with any issues he may have with talking. I felt happy with this and put it in the back of my mind to be watchful of any problems he might have with eating and talking. It didn’t occur to me that his tongue tie could cause problems with breastfeeding.

I had been feeding Arwen from one side of the breast each feed, alternating sides each time. In all the information I had been given, it said that the baby would take themselves off the breast once they had finished and then you should offer the other side. Arwen stayed on one side for an hour and a half or so and by then he was usually asleep I think. I stuck to giving him one side at each feed and used my ring to remember which side I was up to. I would place it on the hand of the side I had to start from next.

My milk came in a day or so after I came home from hospital and I continued the one side each feed routine. I seemed to be constantly feeding around the clock. My nipples were so painful that with every feed I was crying. My right nipple had scabs and seemed to be causing the most pain as it was shaped differently to the other one. I had understood that you should only put breastmilk on sore nipples and the antibacterial qualities would help to heal them. A couple of people had said I should try putting lanolin on them to ease the pain, but I had stood firm by what I had read. Then when the midwife who was visiting me at home recommended Lansinoh to me I wished I’d listened to those other people, as it was a great relief! It really took the sting out of my nipples. I was sitting on my bed all day propped up with about eight pillows around me, topless and in pain, but determined and convinced the pain would pass.

Within a week of arriving home I came down with something similar to the flu. My whole body was aching and I couldn’t stand up. I seriously thought I was going to die. All I could relate it to and think about was the fact that Arwen’s placenta was incomplete and I possibly had retained products. I thought perhaps the missing placenta piece had caused me to get some horrible sickness and I would have to get a hysterectomy to save myself!! I was quite scared and feeling sicker than I’d ever felt.

My mother called me from work to check on how I was doing and I told her I couldn’t stand up. She came straight home from work and we went to the doctor. I was told I had mastitis!! I had thought that mastitis was when you had some pussy green goop pouring out your nipple. I had no idea. The doctor pointed out a reddish mark on my breast which I hadn’t noticed before. As my breasts were so full of milk I had missed the fact that I had a big lump in my breast. I was in shock that a blocked milk duct could make me feel like that and I wished I’d read more about the problems associated with breastfeeding.

The doctor asked about my feeding technique and pattern and I told her that Arwen had never needed to have both sides during a feed. She was a bit shocked by this and told me that it was common to feed for 15 minutes on one side and then swap the baby to the other side. I was quite upset that I hadn’t been told this and something so simple could possibly have prevented me from getting mastitis! The doctor prescribed some antibiotics for me and warned that Arwen may get some diarrhoea from it and be a bit unsettled. She said that if it didn’t improve within the next day that I’d have to go to the hospital to get it drained. So I rubbed and expressed my breast as much as I could.

I had recovered from the mastitis a few days later I think. But I have had it a few more times since then. Luckily each time I have recognised the signs early and I haven’t got nearly as sick as I did the first time.

The pain in my nipples was still intense though. I was determined to wait it out as I was sure there would be a day when it would be ‘pleasurable’ as the literature said.

I think it was when Arwen was about seven weeks old and the time my lochia had eventually disappeared that I was able to breastfeed without pain. I was of course very glad I had stuck to it and not given up.

A week or so later, when Arwen was 8 weeks old, I started my course part time at uni. So Arwen had to be in child care one and a half days a week. This meant that I had to do a lot of expressing! I knew that he would be happy to take a bottle as his father had given him some expressed milk in a bottle when he was about four weeks old. He had guzzled it straight up without any hesitation.

During my first few weeks at uni I went into a toilet cubicle to express, being embarrassed whenever someone came into a cubicle next to me as it was so quiet and I was making a big loud squirting sound! So I would usually stop and wait until they had gone to resume my pumping.

After I mentioned expressing in the bathroom to someone, they had told me that universities have a parent’s room where I could surely express, and that there would possibly be a fridge for me to keep the milk in, rather than carting it around in an insulated container all day. So I found the parents room and spent a couple of hours there every Tuesday pumping out bags and bags of milk. I stored the expressed milk in the fridge at the child care centre and picked it up on my way to the bus stop. I would then give the expressed milk to Arwen’s family day care worker and she stored it in her freezer ready for next time. She also had a can of formula in her freezer ‘just in case’ there wasn’t enough expressed milk. She ended up giving him a few bottles of formula during his time there, which I wasn’t happy with, but I didn’t have any known alternatives at the time.

When Arwen was about four months old, he started to get eczema and I eventually deduced that he had a reaction to cows’ milk and possibly nuts as he would get red blotches of eczema on his face the day after having some formula, after I had drunk some milk, or I had eaten peanut butter. I immediately bought a new back up tin of soy formula and excluded dairy and peanut butter from my diet. Arwen stopped getting eczema, and has had a few reactions after eating yoghurt, ice cream, being touched by someone who had just been holding cashews and sharing a drink with someone who I suspected had just eaten peanuts. So I am convinced that removing these things from our diets was the right thing, and even more convinced that breastfeeding is very important for Arwen’s health.

Arwen breastfeed almost constantly until four months when one day he started to go for a few hours at a time without a feed and the time between feeds gradually increased as he got older. He has gone through periods of being mostly a night feeder and of being a constant feeder when he’s feeling unwell or in need of some extra attention. He didn’t have a regular non-breastmilk meal until he was about 13 months old as he was thriving on my milk and was just not that interested in eating food. He loved sultanas, but that was about all that he would definitely eat more than a mouthful of. Now that he is almost two, he still breastfeeds at least three or four times a day and usually two or three times throughout the night. I don’t worry if he doesn’t eat much of his meals because I know that he is getting so much nutrition from breastmilk and I’m very glad I’m able to have this relaxed attitude to food, though I’m not at all relaxed when it comes to junk! ;)

I have had thoughts lately of weaning as sometimes I’m just not in the mood for Arwen to sit on me and my face and twist and wriggle and pull my hair and demand a feed in the middle of the night. It is also painful for me sometimes to breastfeed, but mostly it’s just a bit uncomfortable. But most of the time I do enjoy it and know how much I will miss it when it’s gone.

I had a big discovery a while ago when someone I know mentioned that her daughter was tongue tied and that after her operation, breastfeeding became easier. I had not ever considered that the pain I had been experiencing was due to Arwen’s tongue tie. By the time I read this, I was well into breastfeeding and had become used to the discomfort and I just felt happy to have a reason behind the pain. I actually think that breastfeeding has helped Arwen to use his tongue and he seems to be able to stick it out further as the months go by, which I’m sure is due a lot to breastfeeding. I don’t think I will consider surgery unless Arwen’s speech is majorly impaired, which it doesn’t appear to be. My nipples are definitely a different shape than they were before breastfeeding, but as far as I know there doesn’t seem to be any major damage, so there is no real reason for me to stop feeding Arwen. If my nipples become too sore I just unlatch him (which now means prying his teeth open with my finger) and change sides.

Overall, I love being able to lie there at night so close to him to feed him, and I love the fact that I can get him to stay in one place for a feed when I’m feeling the need for a bit of a rest. Arwen’s got boundless energy and is constantly moving and talking and running around and jumping off things… it’s nice to have a bit of relative stillness through breastfeeding and it’s nice to feel reconnected with him through breastfeeding when I’ve been ratty with him. I really do hope that we have at least a couple more years of breastfeeding ahead of us :D

I wrote this story almost four years ago now, and Arwen is still breastfeeding at the age of 5 years and 8 months. When Arwen was a baby I never in my life thought I would be breastfeeding a nearly six year old, and even had the thought that breastfeeding a baby who is old enough to have teeth and talk was disgusting!! Thank goodness I was exposed to healthy and inspirational breastfeeding stories and my thinking was challenged and a new perspective reached. Breastfeeding a nearly six year old is something that has just crept up on us and was never something either of us set out to do. Each day just blends into the next and I’ve just continued to feed him as he’s wanted and needed, but with increasing negotiation about when and how long and where as he gets older. His tongue tie is still there and he does have trouble with the “th” sound, but that’s not uncommon for a five year old really. He also has a gap between his two bottom front teeth so that the “tie” in his tongue can fit through when he talks. But when it comes to breastfeeding it really has not been an issue these last few years.

I have since had a daughter, Anise, who will be 2 in one weeks’ time. Arwen breastfed right through her pregnancy, even during the time when my milk vanished for a few months, and even when my colostrum came in during late pregnancy and the taste was unusual and salty. He got used to the taste of the colostrum and then gorged himself on milk when it came in after Anise’s birth.

At this stage Arwen is usually only breastfeeding once or twice a day and finished feeding overnight shortly after Anise was born. It became too draining on me to wake more often to feed my four year old than I did to feed my newborn! He gets knocked back for feeds frequently by me because I just don’t feel up to it every time he asks, and this is something he quite happily accepts. We have talked about our breastfeeding relationship coming to an end and he thinks that the earliest he wants to wean is after his sixth birthday. I’m not sure whether he will want to wean as his birthday comes around, so I’m just playing it by ear, but still planting the seeds of thought about weaning, and that his breastfeeding days are winding down.

Filed under: Breastfeeding beyond infancy (2 years +), Engorgement, Expressing, Food allergy, Mastitis, Nipple pain, Tandem feeding, Tounge tie