My breastfeeding story  and breastfeeding relationship by Naomi Homel. My mother breastfed my three siblings and me. I was 11 when my brother was born, and as she fed him till he was almost 4, breastfeeding was a natural, regular part of our lives. When I became pregnant for the first time, a little over three years ago, there was no doubt in my mind that I would breastfeed my baby. I mean another option didn’t even enter my head. I didn’t even think about express feeding at any stage. In my breastfeeding story, the baby would be on the boob until the baby didn’t want to feed anymore. Simple.

My Birth and Hospital Experience

My son Lewis’s water birth was empowering and beautiful. I received wonderfully support in a continuity of care midwifery model at the Royal Hospital for Women Birth Centre. In the hours after the birth, I was on a high, he latched on well, and while I didn’t feel 100% per cent relaxed while he was on the boob, I assumed I just needed to adjust to the new positions and muscles my body was using.

My problems began that evening when I elected to stay in hospital; I was a nervous GBS-positive new mum. How I wish I had gone home with my husband and my mother. Lewis had a restless night, and I chaffed at being told I couldn’t have him in bed with me. My lovely caseload midwife had gone home to sleep, and the postnatal midwife on shift was cranky and tired. She roughly grabbed my breast and seemed exasperated that Lewis was grizzling and I couldn’t get him settled. She offered to give him formula. I, appalled, rejected the offer and spent the rest of the sleepless night, rapidly losing confidence in my ability to settle my new baby. I practically fled the hospital the next morning and hoped being at home would give me back the wonderful, powerful feeling I had felt after birth.

The Next Week

Over the next week, Lewis was unsettled, my midwife, husband, and mother all worked to help me settle him, but I felt a growing sense of anxiety and unease. A visit from the early childhood nurse sent me into free fall. I was so used to the beautiful woman-centred care from my midwife, and this good intention nurse arrived, weighed my boy, weighed him again and declared him very slightly under the weight in comparison to her chart. She issued me with a barrage of instructions about feeding schedules and said she had to get me on the right track.

‘Oh my God’ I thought ‘I have been on the wrong track!’ With my anxiety confirmed and amplified, I would feed my poor screaming boy with an eye on the clock all the time, I would dream about baby scales, and I dissolved into tears regularly. The nurse returned, disliked the progress we had made and set about getting me to feed, express, feed express take Motilium, give him a bottle, the list was endless. My confidence was rock bottom.

I was confused. Once in the same sentence, the nurse informed me that I had an undersupply, making the baby cry and an oversupply making him cry. Lewis didn’t regain his birth weight till six weeks, and lactation consultants, the ABA and even the breastfeeding guru Dr Jack Newman couldn’t give me the answers I needed.

What I Wished For

Oh, how I wish told me to climb into bed with my baby and do nothing but feed and cuddle, feed and cuddle and take the odd bath together. But I know if someone mentioned this I wouldn’t have done it, there was, on retrospection, a part of me that hadn’t entirely surrendered to motherhood yet and I’m not sure that anything apart from the lessons I was learning would have been able to teach me how to do that.

In our breastfeeding relationship, Lewis and I “breastfed” for six pretty agonising months. By the end, he refused about 80% of feeds, and he had a mixture of expressed breast milk and formula supplements. I wouldn’t say I liked expressing breastmilk and I often cried when I saw my baby guzzle formula. I felt little stabs of pain every time a mother in my mum’s group weaned their happy, breast-adoring baby so they could have ‘me time’. After the first three months, I let the pain go a little, Lewis and I thrived emotionally together, my love of motherhood grew, and we bonded beautifully without exclusive breastfeeding. I am sure my breastfeeding relationship with my baby with the help of extensive baby-wearing and general attachment parenting instincts helped this. Lewis grew into a beautiful, feisty toddler, but a little part of me grieved our lost feeding relationship.

Planning Our Second Child

As I began to consider a second child, I had a few hard rules. I wanted my midwife with Lewis involved, I wanted to do homebirth and wanted to breastfeed. I wanted one on one breastfeeding support from the person who supported me during pregnancy and birth. Additionally, I didn’t want to forge new relationships in the emotional, intimate and vulnerable days after birth. My feeding experience with Lewis had not turned me off breastfeeding. The experience turned me into a passionate advocate for breastfeeding and the respectful support of women during the postnatal period.

I found a midwife who was happy to attend my homebirth, and she partnered with another midwife. We met with the second midwife, and we spent a good hour discussing my feeding Lewis. I came away knowing that both midwives would re-write a lactation plan every day if needed to get my new baby feeding like a champ. One of the midwives told me that I needed to learn to love my breasts again, a wise woman. The pregnancy was wonderful. I did have anxieties about feeding. I would dream that I had given birth and then fallen asleep for 12 hours and that my husband had let me sleep and fed the baby formula rather than wake me. Moreover, I discussed my anxieties with my midwife more towards the end of the pregnancy, and by the time I gave birth, I was so looking forward to feeding. The lessons on mothering that Lewis had taught me had taken root deep inside me and the un-parallel support and care my midwives gave me combined to make me so entirely ready to make the sacrifices I needed to make in the precious days after birth.

Home Water Birth

Rowan’s home water birth was just gorgeous. I had my baby boy in my breast just after birth, and I felt like flying. Curled up on the couch in the hours after the birth with my living room lit by lamps and my family murmuring around me, I held that little boy, and I fed and fed and fed him. The midwives would make minor adjustments here and there, mostly making sure that I relaxed my muscles and was comfortable. And I was! Rowan loved the boob, and I loved feeding him. This is the start of our breastfeeding relationship. Oh my! I could feel myself healing.

My midwives nicknamed Rowan’ Mr Boob’. He knew exactly where he wanted to be and even with my husband having to work a gruelling production schedule after the birth, meaning he was away for long hours, and with a two-year-old to care for I still managed just to feed and feed and feed. I breastfed Rowan in Kmart, in a sling, in multiple-story parks around the inner west, and even at Brisbane airport’s international arrivals gate. I fed ALL NIGHT most nights, thank god for co-sleeping and smartphones, Rowan would latch on, and I would doze or read novels on my phone till he finished. Also, I read more books in that time than I had since Lewis had been born.

Most importantly, I surrendered completely. Our breastfeeding relationship grows. Rowan needed me, and he needed milk, so I fed him. It was easy. Never once did I have that panic I had felt with Lewis, the panic that I needed more sleep, that I didn’t know how to settle my baby.

As Our Breastfeeding Relationship Grew

As Rowan grew, our breastfeeding relationship grew. I felt like I was having a beautiful love affair with him, as he made my heart melt. Breastfeeding was a big part of this. I loved seeing him develop little breast habits as he reached new developmental stages. My heart sang when he started making a distinct breast request noise. I began to look forward to feeding him as a toddler.

By ten months, of my breastfeeding relationship with Rowan, I still feed him every 2 hours through the night. Additionally, I feed him umpteen times a day. I was getting a little sick of being an all-night milk bar, but I could bring myself to deny him feeds, it just felt wrong. I was tired, but I was perfectly functional. Also, I was happy to let him guide me.

He cut his first little tooth, and over the next few weeks his HUGE front teeth almost broke through so one afternoon when he gave me a hard bite while feeding I was not too surprised. He was in a grizzly mood after the little bite, and I knew he had a little cold, and he was very congested. After a bath, we sat and quietly fed while Lewis splashed in the water. That feed was lovely, long and relaxed. I am so grateful for it. That night while breastfeeding him to sleep, he gave me another big bite. I yelped, latched him off the breast, and he cried. I knew he was ill and exhausted so I patted him and sang to him and he fell asleep. That was the last time he ever fed.

Rowan had a Virus

The next few days are a horrible blur. Rowan got very sick with some virus. He violently refused every feed I offered him. I was even holding him in the positions I used to feed him in caused him to cry hysterically. My breasts were so so full, and I was in agony. I started inhaling information; the first rule seemed not to force the breast. My husband, I tried to coax him and once he almost fed only to turn away at the last moment and cry piteously.

Our worries extended, we couldn’t get him to take ANY fluid and barely any solid food. We took him to the children’s hospital where I begged for some lactation support, some advice, anything. We received reassurance about Rowan’s health, he was not dehydrated, had a virus, and his throat was red, but he was ok. The lactation support wasn’t forthcoming, a kind nurse (herself a mother of 4) helped me express and relieve some of the pain, but she had no new ideas on how to get him on the breast.

As Rowan got over his illness, I hoped that he would feed again, but as the days turned into weeks, I knew that it was over. I tried every method I could think of to get him to feed. We had loads of skin-to-skin, we took many baths together, and I offered the breast in every way I could think of, I tried a nipple shield, but the closest he came was a few huge bites.

Unplanned Weaning

My emotional state over this time was really low. For the first week, I cried almost all day, every day. The depth of the emotion blindsided me as I was feeling. Lewis told strangers in the street that ‘row row won’t drink milk, which makes mummy cry’. I am eternally grateful that I was surrounded and supported by people who understood and empathised with me. My husband held me as I cried and never told me to stop feeling what I was feeling.

A neighbour and close friend appeared on my doorstep within hours of hearing about Rowan’s feeding strike, and I knew that she JUST KNEW what I was going through, I didn’t have to explain why I was in tears. I bawled my eyes out in the arms of an ABA leader in a room full of almost strangers. I had feared so much that would I receive negative judgement for not feeding my baby, but all that came my way was love.

Expressing Breastmilk

With my breastfeeding relationship with Rowan, I expressed milk until he turned one. That experience was gruelling and un-rewarding; he didn’t enjoy drinking the expressed milk and would only sip it if it were cold from the fridge. I am still perplexed about Rowan’s feeding strike, and I mourn our lost relationship. However, I leant very quickly that Rowan still needed me close to him, he still needed to be cuddled to sleep, and he wanted to sleep nestled between his dad and me till he was almost 18 months and still loves me.

Our breastfeeding relationship and with my ability to come to a place of acceptance was by letting Rowan guide me. Every time my baby boy asked for milk I fed him, I am just so grateful that I never denied him breastfeeding to fit a routine or in an attempt to get him to sleep through the night. I fed him on demand, and we both loved it.

Original article appeared in Midwifery News Spring 2013

Published on PBB’s website 2014

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