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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Time is a healer

When my son was born, i knew i was going to breastfeed him. Absolutly no doubts about it, I had breastfed his sisters,the last two for 2years each. It came naturally to me, and i knew what i was doing, didnt i?

All went swimmingly for a while, then when he was 8 weeks old, i thought i had nipple thrush. The pain when he was feeding was toe-curling. I went to breastfeeding drop-in, and was given the all-clear for thrush but they did discover that steven had a tongue-tie. At 10 weeks it was released, and his feeding settled down a bit. Still painful but i figured he needed to relearn how to latch on, so gave it time. Except he was very slow to gain weight. I expressed and topped him up at each feed. Minimal weight gain.
I expressed fully and he was having 6 6oz bottles of EBM a day. still little gain.

I looked into loads of stuff about tongue ties and stumbled across this blog from the funny shaped woman. introducing the... 'hmm' I thought. And lifted Stevens lip. and lo and behold, a lip tie! I took this information to my health professions and felt i was fobbed off. I was diagnosed with PND, and i made the decision to put steven on formula.

Looking back i wish i had stood my ground with regards to his feeding issues and pushed for more help. I regret giving up breastfeeding, and if i was in the position again i would push for another referral to OMF to correct a lip tie as well as tongue tie.

I am slowly trying to comes to terms with not breastfeeding steven, its hard as every now and then he still nuzzles for the breast and i think about trying, but i know it would be hard work trying to relactate and i dont think my mental health could take another battering if it didnt work the second time round.

3 comments:

  1. How annoying that the Health Professionals did not take you seriously.

    Try not to see it as a failure, but as a success - you BF for almost 3 months, that is fantastic.

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  2. :( So sad that you're feeling so low about it. Can understand about being wary of trying to relactate - can be a lot of pressure.

    And I agree totally with MmeLindor - you've already breastfed him way longer than most babies in the UK, and he'll have got so much from that.

    And I bet he's getting even more cuddles to make up for it!

    If you want to talk things through, I'd be happy to help

    Clare
    x

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  3. Hi, I found your site when searching "lip-tie" in a search engine. I wonder if it may have affected my baby's inability to latch properly also? I've found a great support group for women who don't breastfeed. Many of us have had medical issues that prevented or forced us to stop. It really helped me let go of the sadness and guilt I had after deciding to pump exclusively after months of miserable problems. There is also some debate/info on the site about breastmilk vs. formula, the helpfulness of LC's, barriers to breastfeeding, bottle feeding resources, scientific studies about breastfeeding, etc. Commentors are generally very respectful to everyone's views. Every Friday a story written by a different women about her experience with breastfeeding difficulties is shared. You might want to check it out, it really helped me. :) www.fearlessformulafeeder.com

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