Very early in the morning, two days after he was born, Max was crying again. A midwife took his temperature and it was nearly 40 degrees. Everything suddenly started spiraling. I fell from a happy hormone fog into a crazily altered reality. The nurses and doctors started arguing over whether Max needed to be admitted into the neonatal unit or could stay on the ward while I was in my pjs signing a pile of consent forms. The shock of having a son who was two days old receiving IV antibiotics put me into a robotic stupor. I remember seeing his tiny hands with lines in and him hooked up to a monitor. I was terrified.
Max was completely dehydrated. He was big and needed milk, now – not in a few days when my milk came in. I felt awful because I hadn’t noticed anything and my dogged determination to breastfeed had allowed him to get sick. Once Max had been given a bottle he wouldn’t have a bar of my breast. He refused to latch on. My midwife bustled into the unit that afternoon and the relief at seeing her was fantastic. She set up a feeding system so Max got his formula through tubes and a nipple shield, no more bottles for him.
I was sure that this was just a hiccup. Everything I’d read said that almost everyone could breastfeed. It was hard at first but with perseverance you could do it. There was no question about giving in to the bottle. I had breasts and I was going to breastfeed him.
The baby blues hit hard and when my milk started to come about four days after Max was born I was constantly in tears. Each time I tried to speak I would take a deep breath and begin with “please ignore me if I start crying” and not finish that before the tears would be flowing again. It was incredibly difficult trying to deal with this hormonal insanity and the battle that was going on to feed Max. I would start each feed sure that this time it would work and when, after an hour of trying he was still screaming and I was dripping with sweat from the effort of trying to get him on, I'd give up in tears.
I’d set my hopes on seeing a lactation consultant on Friday. I was furious when I found out that no one was available until Monday. I started to freak out about not breastfeeding. Posters all over the ward reminded me that breast is best and the eyes of the women in the posters happily breastfeeding seemed to follow me everywhere. There was no information about bottle feeding and nothing suggesting that things might go wrong. What was wrong with me? If I couldn’t breastfeed I must have failed and Max would die of cot death or asthma or something else caused by him being fed formula.
I tried to keep it together but I fell apart. I was a mess. I wanted to breastfeed my baby and that was meant to be something that all women can do – I was going to do it, surely.
If somehow it didn’t work, I felt that I would never be able to take Max out, that each bottle I gave him in public would be agony and that formula is filled with chemicals that would make him sick. I was inconsolable and one of the lovely hospital midwives started crying with me. We both sat on the end of hospital bed together with a box of tissues in tears.
The feed, express, eat, sleep cycle was exhausting and made more difficult at night because the doors to the neonatal unit and the ward were locked. I bumped into the same women as we stood at the door of the unit with our little bottle of expressed milk at 3am waiting to be let in to feed our babies. I was terrified when, at every feed, I opened the fridge and compared my dismally small bottles with the full bottles of other women. I wanted an 80ml bottle with my name on it. Instead I had little 10ml bottles that seemed useless in comparison with the 80mls of formula Max was getting.
Five days in I was totally shattered. I’d run out of clothes that worked for breastfeeding. I ripped one shirt open so I could feed Max. I wandered around the ward and didn’t give a shit what I looked like. Each time I tried to sleep I ended up staring out the window unable even to blink. I’d lie down and try to sleep but a shaking would start from deep inside me that I’ve never felt before and I couldn’t make it stop.
I fell apart again in the evening during a phone call to my sister. I felt completely out of control and had almost given up on breastfeeding. The thought of giving up left me feeling completely empty – it would mean I had failed at the most simple part of being a mum to Max. I was angry that with such a lot of emphasis on breastfeeding there wasn’t a lactation consultant available everyday. For god’s sake, babies are born at all hours and people need help all the time, surely there should be someone to help?
I think that I was reaching the end of what I could cope with. Before having Max I’d had no idea that things could go wrong like this. Our lovely antenatal classes had painted a beautifully glossy, rose-tinted picture of breastfeeding and I longed for when I’d be able to do that.
I headed down with my husband Charlie to the unit for a night feed. This time, the team nurse came in to see what was going on. She announced that she would get this boy to latch. And she did. She squirted sucrose into his mouth at the time he was about to latch on and he sucked…and stayed there. We had turned the corner. What elation - I was gonna breastfeed this little sucker! At the same time, someone came into the unit and said that my sister was there. I couldn’t quite understand, she was in Christchurch…but after talking to me she had got onto a plane and flown up here.
Her coming up was one of the most incredible things anyone has ever done for me. It was fabulous to have her there and to hear her story of how she had dealt with her own breastfeeding issues. She was as excited as I was when I had my first proper let down and laughed at my amazement as milk started dripping from me. Max was discharged from the neonatal unit and I felt my heart exploding with pride as I wheeled him into the ward.
We went home the next day, six days after Max was born. The first morning was lovely. I was still very nervous about whether Max was ok but he seemed to be feeding well and was reasonably settled. My breasts got wonderfully engorged and I felt the desperate hunger of a lactating woman. Sleep was still difficult and when it did come I was wracked by incredibly vivid and sometimes terrifying dreams.
My nipples quickly got into a terrible state. They started crusting over and were incredibly painful. I got more and more frustrated as it would take 5, 6 sometimes 10 tries to get Max to latch on. Sometimes it would work and after the initial let down the pain would go. More often than not Max would pull off at the end of a feed and the nipple shield would be filled with bloody milk.
I remember sitting out in the garden, staring at my bleeding nipples, thinking of the tin of formula we had bought for emergencies and saying to myself – if you have one more feed like this we need to top him up. But the next feed would be a bit better and I’d think that things were improving. The tin stayed on its top shelf.
I started to get nervous about the pain of each feed. I’d hear Max cry and tense up because I knew I had to try to get him on. When it all got to be too much I had my first visit to the local Plunket Family centre. A wonderful nurse there explained that Max wasn’t bringing his tongue forward and this was the cause of much of my pain. We had a session practicing latching him on. Afterwards Max slept for hours.
That week I also had my first bout of mastitis. I was exhausted and lay in bed shaking. I wasn’t sure if it was just exhaustion or something else, but the red streaks on my breasts and fever had me heading down the doctor. I was prescribed the first of four courses of antibiotics I had over the next few weeks.
Despite the help from the family centre, feeds were still lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to hours. I’d been told to limit feeds to about 15 - 20 minutes on each side but each time I tried to put Max down he’d cry. The only thing to stop him crying was to try to breastfeed him. I needed to sleep during the day but I also needed to express. I was in a blurry hell, trying to sleep but knowing I had to express, falling asleep and waking up to hear Max crying when it would all start again. At each session I’d sit down, take the nipple shield out of its container, try to stick it over my nipple, have Charlie pass Max to me, together we'd try to get Max on without him knocking off the shield and scratching my nipples. I'd hold my breath and hope he’d go on. Once he did start sucking it hurt like hell, I’d drip with sweat and curl my toes, hoping the pain would subside.
After a few weeks Max was sleeping for less than an hour between feeds during the day. He’d sometimes be awake and crying for three hours or so. He couldn’t be hungry – he was having marathon feeding sessions of three hours or more. Limiting feed times just went out the window and I really wasn’t able to tell when one feed began and ended because he’d cry so much when he wasn’t on my breast.
With the help of some fabulous coaching from Charlie, I eventually got rid of the nipple shield on the left side. Max much preferred it without the shield and he stopped latching onto the right side. I kept expressing off the right, hoping that would keep it going until Max would go back on. By now the right side was calloused, bleeding at almost every feed and the areola was rock hard. No wonder Max didn’t want to feed from it!
I was desperate to keep going so I kept expressing. I called my midwife and explained all the problems. She came up and weighed Max. He’d lost weight. This meant that one month after he was born he still hadn’t regained his birth weight. I was stunned. We changed his nappy and it was dry. He had to be fed. In a state of shock and with trembling hands I took the tin of formula down from the top shelf. My midwife helped me mix up the first feed for him. She also asked how I felt about keeping going with breastfeeding. She was totally positive when I said I definitely wanted to keep going but also said that often once women have got to where I was at it was almost a relief to stop – and that’s absolutely fine. There was no way I was ready to give in – breast is best.
The next day my parents came to visit. I hadn’t told them how bad things had become. I was totally stressed out. I wanted to be the daughter with the beautiful baby who fed perfectly, slept and barely cried. Yet here I was completely out of control in breastfeeding hell. I tried to express from my right side and I only got 20mls. I’d rented a hospital strength breast pump hoping that would increase the amount I was getting. I’d assured myself that the problems weren’t with my breasts but with the pump I was using. In fact I had basically lost my letdown. I called my midwife in tears. At the exact time moment that I was on the phone crying with Max in my arms, the doorbell rang. I opened it to my parents who were hopping with excitement about seeing their grandson but shocked to see their disheveled, sleep deprived daughter, distraught on the phone. That was pretty close to rock bottom for me. I tried to talk to my parents but was pretty out of it. I was so upset that it was impossible to think clearly. I was crap at asking for help and I felt I had failed by falling into this space I was in.
The next day I went back to the family centre with my mum in tow. I had a very fine glaze still holding me together. The glue was almost entirely my dogged determination that while there was still milk I would keep feeding. The nurse who helped me previously took me into a room by myself and we sat down with a box of tissues. She talked to me about the possibility of weaning Max. I fell apart. She held my hand and emphasised that Max needed to have well mother. We talked through the breast is best mantra. Yes – most of the time it is best…but not always. My breasts were battered by now and I’d completely broken down. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and the feed, express cycle was making it worse. She didn’t tell me to wean him, the option was to go back to the feeding tubes to get the right side going again. I couldn’t face it. I was too exhausted to go back to where we had started. It was time to embrace the bottle. I was totally numb. I couldn’t believe that despite everything and so many people investing their time and energy into me breastfeeding Max we weren’t going to make it. It’s the first time in my life that I have felt total failure. Determination had always got me there in the end. This time it hadn’t. My sadness was overwhelming and I believed that because I couldn’t breastfeed Max anyone could be his Mum.
That night my left breast swelled up like an engorged pig’s tummy. It took a while to get the bottle ready and my breast was dripping in response to Max’s cries. I couldn’t stand it any more so I did what felt like the most natural thing and I offered him my breast. He chomped down on it straight away and fed happily. Herein began the mono boob.
The mono boob lasted two more weeks. It seemed the perfect solution. I offered Max my left breast at each feed before the bottle. My right breast stopped producing milk within about a week. Despite all the advice to the contrary, he seemed to prefer the breast and now swapped easily between breast and bottle. I was stoked. Why hadn’t I done this earlier? Now I was able to enjoy feeding him. My left nipple wasn’t bleeding and the nipple shield had gone so I could look down at him and stroke his perfect little head as he fed. The warm fuzzies were delicious and I felt certain that I had this sussed. Also, because he was being topped up with formula I knew he was being properly nourished.
Unfortunately my solution didn’t last. Feeding started to hurt again. It wasn’t excruciating, just a dull ache at the beginning of the feed and an area that was slightly tender to touch. I was on antibiotics and figured that they should stop an infection so I kept going and hoped that feeding him would clear out any blocked ducts.
Gradually the pain got worse. It was better when I fed him, so I encouraged him to stay at my breast for longer. I knew that something was up though as the area around my areola got redder. After nearly two weeks of feeding from one side the skin started to peel from my breast and the red area started to take on a blue tinge. The pain in my breast was so much that I would get into bed each night and tense up with fear that Charlie would accidentally touch my breast. He'd been so incredibly supportive but I'm sure he got sick of hearing me say ‘don’t touch my boob!’
At Max’s six week check I showed my breast to my doctor and went back on antibiotics but at the end of the week I was beside myself in pain and really worried that I had an abscess. I went to after-hours and the doctor who saw me there emphasised that I had to keep feeding to clear the ducts. By now, the pain on feeding was incredible. Max’s little mouth closed over on the most painful part of the infection. I got more and more engorged and finally I decided that I had to stop. I kept expressing to ease the engorgement and was blown away when I got 80 mls off in one session – I’d thought that Max was just nursing to humour me!
Running out of options, I showed the infection to my Plunket nurse and I spoke with the nurse at the family centre. They both told me that if it didn’t get better I’d have to go back to my GP. Because I had none of the flu-like symptoms of mastitis I didn’t think it could be an abscess. At the end of the week I was back at the doctor’s. He took one look at what was now a reddish, blue swollen mess with the skin peeling off around the infection and sent us straight to A&E.
Max and I walked down the hospital and it was decided that I needed an operation to cut the abscess out. Two weeks later and nine weeks after Max was born, my breastfeeding saga was finally over. The wound from the abscess had to be dressed at the hospital every day for a fortnight. It had to heal from the bottom of the wound to the top so each dressing change was painful because the wound was packed with gauze.
I’m battle scarred now but totally in love with my little boy. I didn’t have the chance to feel my love for him when I was trying to breastfeed him. I was stuck too deep inside the feed, express, sleep cycle – trying to live up to expectations I had created for myself based on external pressures. What Max needed was to be fed.
Now I have the time to enjoy him and every feed is a lovely cuddle rather than a screaming session (for both of us). It’s been hard getting to a place where I can accept this. Before I went to our first antenatal group catch up, the idea of bottle feeding Max in front of everyone else who had succeeded where I’d failed terrified me. I curled up in the dark in my bedroom, stared into the darkness, and refused to speak to anyone. Finally, I realized I wasn’t helping Max. He needed me – not anyone, he needed his mum. I would mix his bottles up, I would feed him, most importantly I would love, teach and cherish my son.
I want my experience to result in something positive. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed with anger at much of the dogmatic information we’re fed about breastfeeding. Writing and sharing my story has helped release some of that anger. Because hearing other peoples’ stories was so helpful when I was stuck in breastfeeding hell, I want to make our stories available to everyone. Something like breastfeeding is far from black and white and I don’t think we help ourselves by promoting it as universally the best and only option. I’m sure that breast is best, but when problems do happen it’s good to know that there are options. Knowledge is power and letting people know some of the more difficult aspects of feeding can help them to make tough decisions when things go wrong. Remember – it’s not always so simple and it might be that sometimes breast is best, unless…