WARNING: A LOT OF BOOBY TALK BELOW. NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY - SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK:
So I think I'm going to abandon ship on the breastfeeding. I know, I know - it was going so well. That is until last week when I started experiencing toe curling, feet sweating, head spinning, profanity spewing pain every time Lila latched on to my left boob.
It continued to get worse and worse and it got to the point that when she even breathed on it I inadvertently clawed the skin off the back of her head which resulted in her quick retaliation of springing at me and attempting to suck my nipple completely off. When I took a closer inspection (it's really hard to look at your own nipples, by the way) I found a large, gaping, awful looking crack and if you stare at it hard enough you can actually see my rib cage.
I called the lactation consultant who advised me to only feed her on the right side and just pump the left side. Which is awesome because the feedings weren't already taking long enough and I had a lot of extra time on my hands and the guilt of putting Ellie off every time I breastfed Lila wasn't yet quite ALL-consuming, so why not throw a few pumpings into my daily schedule? Awesome.
So I dusted off Ole Pumpy, stuck Ellie in the playpen and turned on Pretty Woman (for obvious reasons). After 20 minutes I looked at the bottle and was like WTF? Where's all the milk? There was only a measly ounce there which explains why Lila has been so fussy the past few days. She was trying to tell me that my milk skills sucked and to start doing my job as a Mom and feed her.
And thus my new feeding routine was born:
1. Pump left boob
2. Wave at Ellie
3. Feed Lila on right boob
4. Tearfully apologize to Ellie for being such a loser
5. Feed Lila bottle of milk from right boob
6. Ignore unbridled guilt resulting from ignoring Ellie
7. Feed Lila supplemental formula bottle
8. Kill self
9. Repeat every 2-3 hours
As you can see it's really efficient and a delightful way to spend the day.
The only thread that keeps me hanging on is the 800 or so calories breastfeeding burns every day. That's a whole lotta pancakes. And pancakes are the only thing that I've got going for me right now.
6 comments:
I can SOOOO relate, it's been 5 years since my own adventures in breastfeeding, which instead of being that magical bonding everyone speaks of, but instead the unforgetable feeling like I was lying on a skateboard w/a boob on either side and then launching myself from the top of a very VERY steep hill, while my poor breasts dragged along the tar.....adding insult to injury my vampire of a daughter was getting an ounce or less!!!
Before you give up, here are a few things that worked for me to increase my milk
1. Mothers Milk Tea (I'm soooo not a tea drinker, unless its laced w/vodka, lol), but it was worth it.
2. Fenugreek - you can get it in the supplements section of the pharmacy or grocery store.
3. Oatmeal. I have texture issues, so eating a bowl of it was a no go, BUT sounds like Nick has some talent w/breakfast, so who know! My sister SWORE by oatmeal & fenugreek cookies!!
Good luck!! I can sympathize! Katie looked like a sharpe' or whatever that dog with all the extra skin is.....the running joke was that I made skim milk while my fellow breastfeeding friends made heavy cream!!
You probably have heard this, but the amount you can pump and the amount the baby can 'extract' by nursing do not necessarily correlate, so don't let that fool you.
If you've never checked it out, I highly recommend the site www.kellymom.com - it has tons of good BF resources and answers. It helped me off the ledge many times. :-)
Hey thanks for the input girls. I had heard of most of those things so I'm going to give them a whirl. And thanks for the website recommendation, Kitty. Very helpful.
I'll send you some of my milk-I could feed a third world country-
oatmeal-blueberries-salmon and beer are also supposed to be milk boosters-the fenugreek i've heard some it helps and some not so much-i'll email you some of my breastfeeding emails i get for some more tips-
Hannah,
I don't know if the LC mentioned it or not, but home pumps don't have the efficiency of the hospital grade rentals. I could never get an ounce out of either breast with my Medela home Pump in Style. But I rented a Medela Lactina I think it was and BAM! I could get 4 oz from each side.
Of course, that was only after I drank a beer, ate three bowls of oatmela, 6 oatmeal cranberry fenugreek flax seed cookies and drank a glass of milk tea. But hey, it worked.
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