The early days of breastfeeding are hard.
Filed under:
Baby
When I was pregnant I knew from the start I really wanted to breastfeed my baby. I think this was influenced from being a nurse and hearing the wonderful stories from my Mum.
It’s the most natural thing in the world it’s bound to just happen one thought. How wrong was I?
After a traumatic and very scary labour my beautiful baby boy was born, with minutes the midwife is asking me if I was planning on breastfeeding to which I replied yes. Within seconds of my answer the midwife is helping me to latch my baby. In my head I thought my baby would just latch, it was not quite that easy.
The first fews hours after delivery I was tired, emotional and sore (this continued a few weeks). To add to all of the above I was desperately trying to start breastfeeding my new baby. I knew in the first fews days I would only produce colostrum little did I know how little is produced initially. In my head I couldn’t understand how such small amounts would keep my precious new baby going. But belive me it does its wonderful stuff that certainly does keep your baby going until your milk supply comes in.
That night after having my baby boy who as yet did not have a name I spent pain staking hand expressing as he just would not latch despite all best efforts of myself and the midwifes. So in the early hours of the morning I am syringing hand expressed colostrum into my babies mouth. This is when it dawned on me that not all babies will just latch and get it. My baby certainly didn’t.
I was determined not to give up but it was hard in the initial few days as my baby was now crying and hungry and trying to latch him was difficult and painful. All I could hear around the ward the first night was the other mums who were bottle feeding with content fed babies. That first night was scary, challenging and very lonely when my husband and all my visitors had left.
Don’t get me wrong there was many times when I was so close to giving up with the feeding and grabbing a bottle but now 14 weeks on I am so glad that I didn’t. Breastfeeding is now a joy for both me and Chester (he was named after the first day).
I hope my blog of my on going journey helps others that might be going through or experienced what I did.
Love Laura
It’s the most natural thing in the world it’s bound to just happen one thought. How wrong was I?
After a traumatic and very scary labour my beautiful baby boy was born, with minutes the midwife is asking me if I was planning on breastfeeding to which I replied yes. Within seconds of my answer the midwife is helping me to latch my baby. In my head I thought my baby would just latch, it was not quite that easy.
The first fews hours after delivery I was tired, emotional and sore (this continued a few weeks). To add to all of the above I was desperately trying to start breastfeeding my new baby. I knew in the first fews days I would only produce colostrum little did I know how little is produced initially. In my head I couldn’t understand how such small amounts would keep my precious new baby going. But belive me it does its wonderful stuff that certainly does keep your baby going until your milk supply comes in.
That night after having my baby boy who as yet did not have a name I spent pain staking hand expressing as he just would not latch despite all best efforts of myself and the midwifes. So in the early hours of the morning I am syringing hand expressed colostrum into my babies mouth. This is when it dawned on me that not all babies will just latch and get it. My baby certainly didn’t.
I was determined not to give up but it was hard in the initial few days as my baby was now crying and hungry and trying to latch him was difficult and painful. All I could hear around the ward the first night was the other mums who were bottle feeding with content fed babies. That first night was scary, challenging and very lonely when my husband and all my visitors had left.
Don’t get me wrong there was many times when I was so close to giving up with the feeding and grabbing a bottle but now 14 weeks on I am so glad that I didn’t. Breastfeeding is now a joy for both me and Chester (he was named after the first day).
I hope my blog of my on going journey helps others that might be going through or experienced what I did.
Love Laura
