Today I’m sharing a little about my breastfeeding journey, some tips and what has been working for me.
Carlitos is days away from turning 6months. Typing that out looks crazy to me- it feels like he’s been here so much longer than that because our life is so different now. I won’t delve too deeply into my labor story, but it was LONG. He went a week over and I was induced at 41 weeks. 20 hours of labor later, he popped out at 8lbs 6oz 21in.
The week after he was born was an absolute haze of emotions, HORMONES, exhaustion and anxiety. I was obviously happy to have my son finally born, but to be honest, I was slammed with a lot of postpartum anxiety for the first week. I was trying to breastfeed in the hospital, but getting him to latch was much harder than I thought. His mouth was so small when he was born and honestly I was just so all over the place that it was beyond stressful. The nurses ended up saying that we would need to supplement him with formula because he was dehydrated and because of that and the fact that he stayed inside me so long after my water broke we ended up staying in the hospital almost 5 days.
I was so upset. Obviously there isn’t anything wrong with giving your baby formula- fed is best, right? But I was so set and determined to breastfeed that I was heartbroken and left feeling more anxious than I already was. The hospital had an absolutely incredible lactation specialist (if you’re a local lady, email me for her info!) that made me feel so much better about everything and gave us a ton of tools and help.
But still, our start to breastfeeding proved to be incredibly difficult for all of us. I felt stressed, Carlitos was fussy and hungry because he couldn’t hold a good latch and Carl felt helpless. So we transitioned to pumping. I was planning to start a pump supply after the first month anyways since I needed to go back to work part time, but I started exclusively pumping early into my hospital stay.
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Thank you for sharing!