Breast reduction, mixed feeding, loss of identity, Mum guilt. These are a few of the topics I’m about to cover in my story of Levi’s feeding journey.
When I was 23, I chose to have a breast reduction. I was sick of living with F-G cup breasts that constantly dictated what I wore, what exercises I could do, how confident I felt in bathers (because they weren't “perky” and the only bathers that fit and held them up were granny ones!) and gave me back/neck pain every day costing me so much in physio appointments and pharmacy trips. When we got engaged in January of 2015 I decided that was the year, there was no way my wedding dress would also be dictated by my boulders holding me down. I was aware that it may affect future chances of breastfeeding, but I weighed up the pro’s and con’s and decided the risk was worth it. Could you imagine how big they would have grown if I didn't reduce them before having a baby! It was a thought I did not want to entertain for even a second.
Fast forward 4 years on, 36 weeks pregnant and I started expressing colostrum. I was pleasantly surprised when the little drops of liquid gold came out of the nipples that I was so worried wouldn’t produce any milk! I expressed almost every day for 2 weeks exactly, sometimes I got a little bit, sometimes barely 1ml, and my left boob was harder to get it out of then the right but something was better than nothing!
At 38 weeks pregnant I was induced due to obstetric cholestasis (I’ll get into that in another blog post) and gave birth to my beautiful son Levi. Levi came out, had a cuddle and then we had to be separated for me to go get stitches. My husband Jason gave Levi his first feed of colostrum in those hours I was away which was amazing and I’m SO glad I had it for him.
When I returned it was 2am, we attempted a feed but he just had a little sniff and didn’t latch, so I gave him another feed of colostrum. When we both woke at 5am we managed to have our first breastfeed and it was amazing. I’ll never forget the feeling. I cried with happiness that it had happened and was filled with hope.
The next few days were spent in hospital recovering and learning to feed. Levi was good at latching to the left breast but we found the right harder. One of the midwives there made it her mission to get him on the right one before we left the hospital which was amazing. She helped me so much and we got there in the end! I also had my private midwife visit daily and she helped me with tips and positions and reassured me that I was doing all the right things.
When we got home we had some family visit and it was the first time someone had said to me that maybe I should wake Levi for a feed, he had been asleep 5hrs (6am-11am). I didn’t wake him as he had been awake most the night so I figured he needed the sleep. He didn’t sleep much at night but did long stretches in the day, which I never woke him from for a feed.
Just after my 2 week check up things started to get hard. My nipples were really cut up and I was cringing when he was due for a feed because latching was SO painful. Most times I would cry for the first few minutes until it got going because it was so painful. Levi also would vomit after every feed, and he had terrible gas that was keeping him up at night. We did a lot of the circling legs, bicycle legs, tummy rubs and everything else possible to help him release it. The weeks from 2-6 are a blur of no sleep, spews, crying (both me and Levi), embarrassment and the feeling of failure.
At 6 weeks we had some family visit for a few nights and one family member suggested maybe we give him a bottle of breastmilk so my nipples could heal and I could get some rest. I was hesitant but decided it was worth a go. For about 5 days I pumped between feeds, to try help increase my supply and get enough for a bottle, but even after 20-30mins a side I was barely making 30mls. This was a sign for me that I was not producing enough even after cluster feeding for what felt like weeks. I then decided to give him a bottle of formula and see if it makes him any happier.
It did.
He guzzled it down, burped instantly, did a poo shortly after and slept from 7pm-12pm. The difference was undeniable and I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t feel any regret whatsoever. From that day we mixed fed, Jason would give him a bottle before bed then I would wake up and breastfeed him back to sleep around midnight. Then Jason would wake up to him if he woke before 5am and give him another bottle so I could sleep. I would get up with him and breastfeed in the morning and then through the day until night time when we would do it all over again.
This worked for a few weeks until Levi started refusing my breast mainly when we were out in public. He would not latch and scream bloody murder the whole time. The first few times this happened I was completely caught off guard with no other option but to go home and try again there. But 9/10 times if this had happened he would refuse it at home too and I would end up giving him a bottle, sometimes of breastmilk if I had any defrosted but mostly formula.
Right on the 12 week mark Levi woke up one morning and refused my boob, it was the final attempt I made and that day I got my period back. It was like he knew! From 12 weeks on he was exclusively formula fed. Which you would think is the end of this story… but no, it’s the end of the breastfeeding story, his feeding journey continued to be confusing and complicated!
Over the next few months his vomiting got progressively worse and worse. Each doctor's visit we would trial something new to fix his presumed reflux. Started with Infacol, then Padbury's colic mix, then moved him to goats milk formula which seemed to work but then it came back again. This whole time he had barely done any tummy time as he would spew then his face would go in it and he was extremely distressed by the whole experience which meant he would refuse every time I attempted *cue mum guilt*.
Eventually we went to a new GP about something different and got talking and she suggested that he might be allergic to cows milk protein which apparently is still present in goats milk! She told me a few formulas to try that were completely free from the protein. They were EXPENSIVE - $35-$40 per tin. We changed over to that formula and WAH-LAH no more spewing. This was at exactly 8 months old. He was on some solids by then so we had to go 100% dairy free for his diet. By the time he was 12 months he was chunky, happy and still refusing tummy time but could bum scoot faster than any other baby around! Eventually we did the “milk ladder” and got him back to eating dairy, he is now at 2.5yrs old mildly lactose intolerant.
When he was 8 months old, just before we discovered he was allergic to cows milk protein I had a night away to see some friends, I was having a great time but didn't feel quite myself. One of the girls made a comment like “awww you're such a mum” about something trivial but it sent me on a spiral. I had spent the weekend feeling like I didn't know how to dress anymore, I only wanted to talk about my baby even though I was sooo happy to have a night away from him and just was pretty miserable. When I left to drive the 2hr trip home I cried for the first half hour straight. I didn’t know why. I then came across a podcast about a woman feeling like she had lost her identity around the 8 month mark and I have never related more to a podcast in my life than I did that day. I went home, told my husband and booked a visit to my GP. It just goes to show the emotional toll that builds up over months of feeding issues, that a simple off the cuff comment can bring up all kinds of feelings of guilt, identity shift and sadness.
I also realised it was World Breastfeeding Week and all I had seen all week (or chosen to see) was beautiful stories about successful breastfeeding journeys, and I felt like a complete failure even though I hadn’t thought about our feeding journey in 5 months since the day we stopped. I wrote my feelings down and decided to share my struggles on my Instagram page because I wanted there to be 1 story out there that was not the successful one, in case other people I knew were struggling like me. The response I got was incredible. So many friends, old and new shared with me their story and I felt less alone. End of the story is whatever makes you and your baby happy is 100% the right thing to do. You can reflect and think about what you might do differently next time, but in the moment that you make those hard decisions your family's needs are all that matter, and your mothers intuition knows best.
