Breastfeeding didn’t start out how I had dreamed & hoped for... We ended up finger feeding my expressed milk for the first 2 1/2 weeks! Yes, my hubby & I almost went crazy. It was so incredibly hard!
It’s amazing to me how shamed I felt in the hospital & the assumptions the nurses & LC “specialist” made about me as my son & I struggled to get our breastfeeding journey started. The biggest assumption being that I was going to starve my son if he wouldn’t breastfeed. (While I was hand expressing & feeding him by spoon sometimes & through a syringe with my finger acting as the “nipple”
other times) He was getting plenty of nourishment based on his diapers & all the glucose test came back amazing! No one was any help to me there. All they wanted me to do was use a nipple shield & move on. I refused which made them upset with me. I knew that something else was going on with my sweet baby boy & the nipple shield wasn’t going to fix it. They wouldn’t listen.
When we finally got discharged from the hospital we went to the LC (lactation consultant) I had been working with pre-birth (a wonderful woman at the birth center I intended to give birth at but had to transfer away from during active labor due to my sons dropping heart rate) & she diagnosed my son with a potential lip & tongue tie. She recommended a pediatric dentist which we got into as soon as we could. She also said his pallet was really high. My son was 8 days old when we found out he had a third degree lip tie (out of four degrees. The fourth being the worse possible) & a posterior tongue tie. That is what had us on our difficult journey from the beginning. We had both revised that day. At 10 days old we got him to a chiropractor that specializes in children. She was able to help us with his high pallet alone with several other parts of his little body that where not in the correct place. (neck, cranials, hips) A week after the revision my son latched & we haven’t looked back since.
I believe that chiropractic care also helped us immensely & he is still under monthly chiropractic care to maintain as he grows! If we had just done what the hospital wanted & hadn’t gotten another opinion my son & I wouldn’t have a breastfeeding relationship today just over 5 months later! He also would very likely have speech issues & eating issues as he got older based on the information I was given my our pediatric dentist. The past 4 1/2 month of exclusively breastfeeding have been the most amazing gift!
If your struggling in your breastfeeding journey it’s okay! Keep pressing on & find people who are great supporters & encourages. For us that made ALL the difference! ️️
-Emily Smart, @guidedlight_motherhood