At that point, we discovered that he had lost a little weight since his last appointment and we attributed the loss to my poor diet. We improved my diet and, two weeks later, he had gained weight. Two weeks following that, when my son was four months old, I ran into my midwife at a playgroup at our local birth center. She asked to weigh my son to see how he was growing. To our horror, he had lost all the weight he had gained and then some and qualified as Failure to Thrive. He weighed only 12oz more than on the day he was born.

In order to determine whether the problem was my milk or my son’s metabolism, my midwife asked another woman there at the playgroup if she would nurse my son. For the first time in weeks, he ate voraciously for over 30 minutes, which led us to conclude that the problem was my milk. While this was discouraging, it was a huge relief because metabolic disorders are scary ordeals. My midwife told me that we would have to supplement and I was in tears.

Fortunately, I had developed a strong support group during my pregnancy and in the weeks after birth. I had been attending La Leche League meetings and Birth Center gatherings since I was in my second trimester. I called my LLL leader and a couple of other friends and before I knew it a friend arrived with frozen breast milk from several people’s freezer stashes, along with a starter SNS (supplemental nursing system). She also nursed my son while she was there.

My son bounced back quickly on the donor milk. It was very challenging, like being in the newborn days all over again. I nursed him every 90 minutes, day and night. We had to get used to the supplementers, first the starter SNS, then the LactAid system. We had to thaw milk, fill bottles at all hours, wash bottles and supplementers, and carry a cooler with ice packs and extra bags of milk whenever we left the house. These were the kinds of things we thought we would be avoiding by breastfeeding and having me stay home with our son. There were also the confusing emotions and thoughts related to having someone else’s milk nourish my child instead of my own.

I was unable to pump efficiently and we lacked the financial means to purchase milk from a bank. I also was wary of pasteurized donor milk as the pasteurization process eliminates many of the aspects of breast milk that make it the perfect infant food. Gratefully, we were able to find a small numbers of generous local women who had surplus breast milk to donate. Due to their help, my son has never had formula, something I am eternally grateful for.

In the beginning, I wracked my brain trying to figure out what had happened to my milk supply and tried all kinds of herbs and supplements to get it back. However, I quickly stopped because it was a lot of stress, work, and money to try to boost my supply when we were going to keep him on the donor milk until he had doubled his birth weight regardless of my supply.

Three months after he was diagnosed as FTT, my son had an appointment where he weighed in at nearly double his birth weight. I was extremely proud and happy to reach that milestone and finally turned my attention to increasing my milk supply and weaning off of the Lact-Aid supplementer and donor milk.

I ended up taking 5,850 mg of Brewer’s Yeast and 1 tsp Motherlove’s More Milk Special Blend supplement daily. This boosted my milk supply nicely. I approached weaning off the donor milk the same way one would approach actual weaning, focusing on eliminating one feeding with the supplementer at a time until he was getting only my milk. I don’t recall exactly how long this process took, but it was about 3-4 weeks.

Something that had a huge influence on my ability to fully breastfeed my son again was his starting solid foods at around 7 months. We completely followed his lead when it came to starting solids and he was clearly telling us that he wanted them! We skipped pureed foods and he’s been self-feeding fruits, veggies, and meat from the beginning. Had he not started eating other foods when he did, I doubt I would have been able to supply all of his nutritional needs through my breast milk alone.

After it was all over, I was still curious about why this had happened to begin with. I never found a cut and dried answer, but I have my own suspicions. I believe that my poor diet caused my fertility to return prematurely (I got my first post-partum period 11 weeks after my son was born and have been having regular, ovulatory cycles every since). Looking back, the first low weight episode coincided with my first post-partum ovulation. Once my fertility was back, diet alone couldn’t correct the fact that my supply dips drastically at ovulation and during my period. Somewhere in the mix is my hypothyroidism, which I was aware of before becoming pregnant, but blood tests haven’t shown my levels as being abnormal since my son’s birth.

Next month, my son will turn one. As I think back on the past year, I can’t believe we did it. It would have been so easy to give up, and everyone would have understood. Instead, I have an active, mobile, happy near-toddler curled up in my lap to nurse a dozen times a day. I also have a strong motivation to try harder next time so the same thing doesn’t happen again with a future child.

I continued to read about the importance of breastfeeding, I hired doulas who had breastfed (one who still was/is), I surrounded myself with the so-called “milk militia” because I knew that if ever I wanted to give up they would give me the push and the support I would need to persevere. Also, hanging out with them and their boobing kiddies helped me to normalise breastfeeding as the done thing, and not be afraid to do it in public myself.

I had planned to do baby-led attachment for our first feed, sit in our birth pool and wait for my bubba to instinctively guide herself to my breast and feed. Unfortunately this did not go to plan, mainly because our birth pool was luke warm when she was born and rapidly cooling, so we didn’t spend as much time relaxing in the pool together as I thought we would.

She made the funniest grunting noises as she lay on my chest and began searching for my nipple, but when she found it she didn’t latch on. She sniffed and licked, and just generally familiarised herself with my nipple, but didn’t feed. I knew it was important for her to feed in that first hour so I asked my doulas to help me get her to attach. First we got out of the cooling pool and sat on the couch together. My memory of that first feed is hazy, all I really remember was being amazed at the strange new sensation of someone sucking for their life on my breast and the intense contractions that sucking caused in my uterus before our placenta had been born.

For the first two days we were doing beautifully together. Our attachment was pretty much always good, and when it wasn’t I sure knew about it. I could easily tell the difference between “getting used to breastfeeding” discomfort and “not effing attached properly” pain!

My milk came in on day 2/3. I remember sitting on the toilet, leaning forward and covering the tiled floor in white liquid! Over night my breasts changed entirely, and everything my baby and I had learned together so far about feeding went out the window. It was a whole new boob game now.

My breasts had become hard, hot, heavy, enormous, and nipple-less. And my daughter’s tiny mouth could not contend with these new monsters.

My doula came to see how we were going on the afternoon of day 3. I hadn’t been able to feed my daughter for many hours and I was becoming more of an emotional wreck by the minute. My doula spent hours with us attempting to help us get her attached, and to express some milk so my breasts would soften and make it easier for bub to attach. We called the breastfeeding association and got some advice.

She said that by the sounds of it I was big breasted and flat nippled and all we needed was practice and patience. In the meantime she suggested we try using nipple shields, to give my daughter that little bit extra to be able to latch onto. But it was late and the shops had closed so we couldn’t get any.

Eventually we decided the best thing was for my lactating doula to feed my daughter. Although it broke my heart, I was relieved when my doula gave her the feed she needed

My doula and I spent hours attempting to correctly attach a pump to my breast, and we managed to express 40mls over that agonising period. Pumping is still to this day the most painful BFing experience I’ve ever had.

After spending most of her night helping us, our doula went home to her own family and then the hell really began.

That night my baby went for hours with no feed. She cried and when I would try to feed her she would become even more hysterical, screaming and red-faced, and it was hard not to take it personally as she calmed (and sometimes even slept!) on her father.

We spoon fed her the expressed breastmilk we had managed to get while our doula was visiting, but unfortunately we lost a lot of it thanks to the lid on the bottle not being screwed on properly. I watched it spill in slow motion thinking of the hours of pain it took to get that milk out “NOOOOOO!”

I was feeling like a fraud. I felt like I wasn’t really my daughter’s mother because I couldn’t feed her. I tried to be rational about the situation – it was early days, breastfeeding is a skill we have to learn, every individual baby and her mother have to work out their relationship for themselves and that takes time and practice. But thinking rationally didn’t change how devastated I felt. I couldn’t help but feel rejected by my daughter – she had after all happily fed from my doula even though it’s a skill she’s supposedly just learning! Well she mastered it at someone else’s breast!

It hurt so bad to hear her wailing and knowing what she needed but not being able to give it to her on account of my own inexperience. I felt overwhelmed, sad, and guilty. My partner & I took turns at pacing the hallway with a hungry baby in our arms Baby, Mama & Daddy all cried through these hopeless early hours of the morning.

In the morning my doula called to find out how we were going, and I couldn’t beleive it had been less than 12 hours since we’d seen her because I felt like I had lived and died a hundred times since then. I burst into tears. She told me she was worried because it had been a while since my baby had eaten, and the weather forecast promised a very hot day ahead. She said we had to get a lactation consultant’s (LC) hands on help immediately.

She also suggested walking into the local hospital in the hope of getting to see a helpful midwife or nurse. I could think of nothing more stressful than getting my distressed baby and I dressed for the outside world and catching the bus to the hospital. We hadn’t been outside yet, not even out to our own backyard.

I began ringing around to find out about local lactation services. The local hospital put me through to an answering machine message which informed me that their lactation consultancy service was for women who gave birth at that hospital and they are not open everyday! Fat lot of good that was! Then I looked up my local maternal child health care centre and called them, but there was no answer.

While I was rapidly reaching the end of my rope my partner had gone in search of nipple shields. He came home with them and we quickly put them on me and brought a hungry baby to the breast. Miraculously the plastic nipple slid into her little mouth and found its way to the back, to her soft palate! She latched onto me for the first time in 22 hours! And she sucked away furiously!

For the first time since her birth our tears were happy tears. My partner danced on the spot. Our baby’s tummy was filling with delicious booby juice! The worst was behind us.

For the next week my baby fed almost around the clock using nipple shields. I finally understood why all the books, websites and pamphlets I’d read while pregnant stressed that you should get comfortable before you start feeding – those little mother suckers can stay in one feeding position for hours!!!

I remember one of the first nights I was feeding my baby. I was tired and cranky and I really didn’t feel like being touched. I cried as I fed her because the last time I didn’t want to be touched but my breasts got touched anyway was when I was being abused I got over it by talking to my partner, and looking at my baby and thinking about my love for her and how good booby milk is for her. I reminded myself it wasn’t about exploitation with my baby, she needed me for her survival.

Sometimes she’d slip off, sometimes it would be a struggle to get the breast and shield into her mouth – she loved to try and cram her hands in there along with boob! And other times I’d struggle to get her on because she’d grab at my breasts with those little claws and then YEOW she’d dig her sharp nails into my nipple!

As great as it was being able to feed my baby it bugged me that I had to use the shields. I knew using shields longterm could cause problems with my milk supply as a result of the nipple stimulation sensations being dulled. So we arranged a home visit from a lactation consultant to help me learn how to attach my baby to my bare breast.

The LC was helpful with showing me and helping me get my bubba to attach, but I found that what little confidence I had built with breastfeeding was once again undermined as she spoke about weight gain, “dummy sucks”, comfort feeding, and baby sleeping at the breast. Her visit now had me paranoid that despite all the feeding my baby had been doing, and how well I thought we had been going, my baby still wasn’t getting enough milk.

I cried to my partner how simple it would be to switch to formula. He was fantastic. He held both of us when we cried. He reminded me that aside from the minutes when we’re trying to attach we had a very happy baby, and that she is clearly healthy. He reminded me of her frequent wet and dirty nappies, how alert she looks, and how she smiles in her sleep, clearly “dreaming of her mama’s life-giving boobas”. And he reminded me that we are learning together and making great progress every feed, even though it felt like teeny tiny steps. His calm reassurance reminded me that even if our daughter had been predominantly comfort sucking she was still clearly getting enough milk. And comfort is a valid need too!

I still wanted to stop using shields, but I decided to go easy on us. I wasn’t having any supply issues yet, so I took it one feed at a time. Sometimes she would manage to feed bare-breast, but most of the time she needed a shield. Over the passing weeks the ratio of shield to bare breast feeds changed, and eventually we only needed them for lie down feeds. And then one day when she was about eight or nine weeks old I realised that we hadn’t used them at all for a couple of days!

I didn’t realise how far we had come in a matter of weeks until one day I was walking around My partner’s office breastfeeding without a shield as I wandered. Those painful, tearful early days were a distant memory.

These days I not only do I acknowledge the existence of my breasts, I am proud of them. I look at my rapidly growing healthy baby, every podgy roll of skin is a tribute to my life-sustaining breasts

I no longer think of my breasts as belonging to my sexual abuser. I think of them as belonging to my baby and to me, they’re “ours”. I love the hormonal haze I get while breastfeeding, how sleepy it makes bub and I. I love the way we gaze into each other’s eyes dreamily as we breastfeed. Now my breasts make me think of my baby, not abuse.

The everyday realities of breastfeeding have made me get over my self-hatred. I’ve had to learn to handle them all the time and share them with a little person, and it has been immensely rewarding.

Sarah is the author of Ilithyia Inspired, an honest and thought-provoking blog about birth, breastfeeding and motherhood.

Update (Feb 2009): Sarah has created a beautiful montage of the first year of her breastfeeding journey. Enjoy!