Week 1

 

• Nipple pain
• Bought nipple shields
• Fed in public

 

 

Week 2

 

• Sorted latch out
• Going well
• Fed in public without Conor

 

 

Week 3

 

• Trying no nipple shields it worked
• Latch going well

After such a great 2nd week and her tongue tie healed, I decided to start weaning her off the nipple shield as I knew I didn’t want to use it all the time, especially since I plan to breastfeed until shes at least 1 years old. So one morning, I just plonked her on without the shield. She latched like a dream, she didn’t hurt, I could feel that she had a deep latch and was definitely getting a ton of milk. This was such an achievement for me, it really made my week. She latched all day without the shields, but I decided to carry on with the shields at night to avoid my nipples getting too sore and ruining all the progress we had made.

 

Week 4

 

• Supply issues
• Shallow latch
• Back to nipple shields
• Stressed
• Growth spurt/cluster feeding

This week it started to go a bit downhill. One night whilst she was cluster feeding, she would latch on suck for a bit then pull off screaming. We changed her, calmed her and I tried to feed again, she just wasn’t accepting it. After trying for half an hour with her screaming until she turned purple I gave in feeling bad that she was so hungry and gave her a bottle of expressed milk. Every time this happened I sat there crying. I felt like such a failure, how could I not produce enough milk for my baby? Tried hand expressing to check if there was milk and she was being fussy but nothing. I thought it was a one-off.

This happened every night for a week. During the day she would drink fine, maybe a little fussier, not settling for her naps and constantly wanting to be on my boob but I think that was her growth spurt. I spoke to my health visitor and she suggested pumping to see if I had milk there and to try and stimulate milk flow. I’ve ordered an electric breast pump and my manual breast pump just wasn’t cutting it.

I also noticed that her latch started to hurt me again, she went back to having a really shallow latch and within a couple of feeds, my nipples were so sore again. I could hear her clicking again and a sucking sound with lots of dribbles so I knew it was her latch. I’ve reverted back to the shields as my nipples were cracked and so sore again.

This has really stressed me out, which isn’t good for milk production anyway but I can’t help it. Breastfeeding is such a natural thing and it really disappoints me that I’m struggling so much. Every time she cried because there’s nothing there or I have to substitute with a bottle of expressed milk it breaks my heart.

No one wants to hear that their baby is hungry but yet you’re feeding them with nothing coming out. It’s horrible.

 

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The Plan

 

Hopefully, the next few weeks things will pick up.

Im going to try everything to get my supply back up:

• oats
• Gatorade/isotonic drinks
• Dr Pepper
• water
• power pumping

Fingers crossed that something will work, as I really really don’t want to have to give Primrose formula. I think before I would even consider that I would try to find some donor breast milk for her.