little feet, big sky

Okay, breastfeeding is tough. Don’t be fooled by those idyllic pictures of bebe perfectly latched on in a cradle cuddle and peacefully nursing. Because for most women, myself included, that is so not how it starts out, at least.

Spice started out nursing from birth like a dream. Now, on days like this, it feels like our nursing future is headed for hell. She’s picked up this nasty habit in the last few days of opening her mouth and rooting back and forth frantically while the nipple is in her mouth. It takes a while for her to figure out to clamp down and start sucking and I have no idea how/why she’s doing this. Additionally, she sucks for maybe 20 seconds, then backs off and squirms, then starts over with the open-mouthed rooting over the nipple. It takes a good 5 minutes for her to figure out to stay latched on, and it’s driving me crazy!

Add to that she doesn’t burp easy and spits up almost a full feeding if she isn’t burped properly. That she has killer gas and almost every feeding results in at least an hour of the poor thing writhing in agony trying to get it out one end or the other.

From random googling, one possibility is that I have an overactive letdown, and while she starts out hungry, the milk is coming too fast for her and she backs off, then attacks again in hunger. All the advice for this mentions pulling her off for the letdown and letting it spray into a towel or burp cloth. But I tried this and I’m barely dripping during letdown. *sigh*

Failing that, I’m sometimes convinced it’s something I’m eating. We have a bad day (or night) and I swear I’m cutting out dairy and then we have a few great days and I stupidly cave in to rice pudding/yogurt/milk. This is followed by another bad day or night and I’m left kicking myself for not sticking with the no-dairy because it just makes it more confusing trying to figure out what’s causing her discomfort.

I’m going bats and on days like this, I’m left swearing to the spouse that I can’t do it, that it’s just not working, etc. I can see now why something like 40% give up breastfeeding in the first two weeks. Between the hormones, the sleep shortage, the labor recovery, sometimes it feels downright impossible to continue and that’s with having a complication-free labor and a healthy term baby!

On a slightly more humorous note, I learned the hard way just how all sorts of things end up in breastmilk. I was taking my prenatal vitamins and my previously-customary fish oil supplement and was rewarded with two days of fishy breastmilk and spit-up! Those of you that know spit-up know that rather than landing neatly in the middle of a burp cloth, it’s more likely to end up on the baby’s clothes, your clothes, bedsheets, etc. And about the same with leaking breastmilk. All we have for detergent is un-dyed, un-fragranced stuff, so it took about 3 hot water washes and indoor sunlight drying to get the smell out. Never, never again. *shudder*