Breastfeeding | HoneyBear Lane

Weigh-in Wednesday #7: So. Very. Tired.

February 21, 2012 By Heidi @ Honeybear Lane 5 Comments

I think I might be missing that part of my brain that tells me to stop eating dessert. And hence, no weight loss this week. Actually, I haven’t been trying to lose weight the last few weeks because I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my milk supply up. Monday was an all-time low. I thought I’d figured it out with Powerade and Fenugreek. But Monday there was almost no milk, all day. And it was a very hard day.

I was talking to my sister and she mentioned that her biggest milk-killer was not getting enough sleep. And Saturday night I’d gone to bed at 2:30 am. So Monday night I went to bed earlier and the next day my supply was fine. But last night E woke up at 4 am, then 5, 6, and 7. And I dwindled again today. Sigh.

So. Very. Tired.

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New plan: go to bed by 11 every night.

Other new plans: I’m starting up Weight Watchers again this week and continuing with the Powerade and Fenugreek. And now that my hubby’s darn Board exam is over (today!!) I am going to start running early in the morning a few times a week.

I’ve also been experimenting with different bottles, trying desperately to get E to start drinking from them. I tried a Playtex Nurser, which she liked the nipple, but not the flow. Those are the ‘drop-ins’ kind with the plastic bag and it makes the flow different than a normal bottle. She got frustrated with it. Then I tried the Avent because the nipple shape was similar to the Nurser and she took to it! She drank almost the whole thing.

Okay, I’m off to bed.

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Filed Under: breastfeeding, Uncategorized, weight loss Tagged With: motherhood, Weight Loss

Weigh-In Wednesday #6

February 15, 2012 By Heidi @ Honeybear Lane 38 Comments

Did I weigh myself this week? Yes. Did I do Weight Watchers this week? No. Did I lose weight? Um…yes. Weird.

So I’m finding that I’m SLOWLY losing weight no matter what I do. I follow all my points to a T and I lose a pound. Then I throw caution into the wind and eat like a pig and lose a pound. Huh.

On another note, I’m having milk supply problems. After I weaned her from the shield, my supply got better and I didn’t have to supplement anymore. But no matter what I did, I never really made much milk in the evening, for her last feeding before bed. So I would try to give her a bottle. But suddenly my fastidious baby turns up her nose at bottles. The same baby who drank bottles just fine a month ago. And even still she will take a bottle in the middle of the night. So I nurse her anyway so she can comfort herself but I always worry that she is still hungry.

But now my milk starts dwindling in the early afternoon. Thanks to my advisory board (also known as the Honeybear Lane Facebook Page) I am now taking Fenugreek and Mother’s Milk herbal tea. I’ve only taken it for a day, so I’m hoping it helps. For those of you who have taken these supplements, how long does it take for them to start working? And how much does it really help?

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Filed Under: baby, breastfeeding, weight loss Tagged With: baby, motherhood, Weight Loss

Breastfeeding at Two Months

January 27, 2012 By Heidi @ Honeybear Lane 25 Comments

Miss E is two months old now. And I’m still breastfeeding! Doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment but I’ve overcome a lot.

Finger feeding to nipple shield with tube.

Nipple shield with tube to nipple shield with formula squirted in the tip and supplementing.

Nipple shield with formula to Nipple shield alone, still supplementing.

Nipple shield to nothing, no supplementing!

Well to be honest, I have to give her an ounce of supplement in the evening because my milk supply is always just low in the evenings. I’ve had rough spots here and there with some very painful clogged ducts. But overall I feel like a normal breastfeeding mom now. And that is huge!

At six weeks she went from taking an hour to eat to taking 20 minutes. And now she takes less than 10 minutes.

I want to say thank you to all of you who encouraged me or sympathized with me because it HAS gotten easier and it’s SO much better. But it definitely wasn’t easy.

I know that sometimes it just doesn’t work and a mom shouldn’t feel guilty for doing her job, which is just to keep that baby fed. But having been in the position of feeling like a failure/judged for giving my baby formula, I feel like this is preferable. And now that I can do it without any props, it’s so much easier than worrying about going out and running out of formula or whatever. And it’s free (you can’t beat that!) And I feel more part of the ‘club.’

When I had a C section with my first baby, I felt so left out when moms started sharing their labor stories. I didn’t go into labor, I barely remembered the birth. And after I had my second vaginally, I finally had something to share. It feels like that now with breastfeeding. I have something to contribute. I can sit in the Mother’s Lounge at church with all the other nursing moms and chat about our crazy lives. I can ask my friends my questions about it. And I can act all cool about nursing like it aint no thang. Oh yeah!

But seriously thank you, my friends. I read and try to respond to all your comments. They give me so much encouragement.

And now that she’s getting older, I have found some time here and there to start sewing again. I got some fun tutorials coming up!!

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Filed Under: baby, breastfeeding Tagged With: baby, motherhood

Breastfeeding Miss E

January 6, 2012 By Heidi @ Honeybear Lane 43 Comments

Can I just title this post “Breastfeeding Sucks?” I mean literally, yuk yuk. But then I’d get the crazy LLL ladies knocking down my door yelling “IT SHOULDN’T HURT IF YOU HAVE A PROPER LATCH!!!!”

Truth be told, breastfeeding doesn’t suck. It’s actually an awesome miraculous thing, that a woman’s body can just magically MAKE food for another human person. But it sure ain’t easy. Breastfeeding is bar none, the hardest part of having a baby. Even if it’s easy for you. Because you have to do it usually about every 2 hours, day and night. And it yes it WILL make you sore. Your little nips will be so tender and sensitive that you have to lube them up with lanolin just to take a shower. And I’m not going to even get into the real pain of clogged milk ducts and mastitis.

Breastfeeding has still been incredibly hard with Little E, but it’s actually working. I had a plan of attack because I knew my problems: My milk takes like a week to really come in and even the colostrum takes about 3-4 days. So I always end up giving my babies bottles in the hospital so they won’t starve. Not this time.

I decided to do those little tiny tubie thingys with formula running through. I tried to tape it to my breast but that was a nightmare since she was barely latching on anyway. So I finger-fed her for a couple days until I relented to using a nipple shield. After my milk came in I still had to use a syringe to put a little formula in the shield to entice her to suck. It took several tries after about a week to get rid of the syringe.

Week 3 I was using solely the nipple shield. But I was going on vacation and didn’t take a breast pump, so my supply was iffy for the next couple of weeks. I got her to nurse without the shield several times but I had to supplement even more afterwards so I realized she wasn’t doing a proper latch still and my supply dropped like a rock. Finally I resumed using the shield and pumped and pumped to get it back up. Then we flew home and I didn’t pump that whole day or barely eat the next day (no food in the house.) So finally, at 6 weeks old, we are reaching normalcy. Which means using a nipple shield.

And truth be told, it’s not that bad. My nips aren’t as sore, I can occasionally walk around the do things while nursing, and I’m basically a pro at using one. I’m tired though. I’ve never had to be up every two hours at night breastfeeding. It’s exhausting and I get so antsy waiting for her to finish. She drinks so slowly when she’s sleepy that it feels like the nighttime feedings last forever. I would love to hear tips or stories from you about nighttime breastfeeding. Seriously.

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Filed Under: baby, breastfeeding, Uncategorized Tagged With: baby, breastfeeding

Me and the Girls

August 6, 2010 By Heidi @ Honeybear Lane 24 Comments

So this is kind of a sensitive subject for me to talk about, but after reading this post, I felt encouraged to share with you all my experience.

I have two kids. Both kids are brilliant, healthy, happy, adorable, strong, loved. LOVED beyond anything I could possibly imagine. When I had my first baby, I was 23 years old, literally having transitioned from being a student to a mother overnight (I took my last college final the day before I had my baby.) And I had him by C Section, due to breech presentation. I was pretty drugged up after the surgery and they had taken my son to the NICU for some breathing problems so we didn’t get to be together for a good five hours. After they finally brought him to me, I tried breastfeeding. Well, despite the fact that it was really painful to hold him on my stomach, I had no milk or colostrum anyway, so he wouldn’t latch on after the first time trying. I pumped a little, but nothing came until the third day. I kept trying to breastfeed, but it was not working at all. Finally the lactation consultant offered me a nipple shield (a piece of rubbery plastic that fits over your breast) and that finally worked. So I kept nursing my son with the nipple shield, but he never seemed satisfied, so I supplemented with formula.

Before I had my baby, I went to one of those breastfeeding classes. The lady there said cheerfully, “there are no breastfeeding problems that can’t be fixed!” So I naively went on my way, knowing that breastfeeding would just work for me, as it had worked for my mom and all her daughters and daughters-in-law. But here was something I was unprepared for: I hated breastfeeding. I hated it for how much it hurt, how long it took, and how it seemed like I had to do it every hour, since my son always seemed hungry. I hated how after I took a shower and finally got all the spit up, poop, pee, and sweat off of me, I needed to whip out and breastfeed again. And it wasn’t just as simple as that…I lived with my in-laws so I had very little privacy, and I had to adjust the nipple shield every time, which takes a bit of a trick to get it to work just right. I kept offering my breast to my son without the shield, but he refused every time.

Finally, two months old, he took it without the shield. Happy day! I was amazed at how easy it suddenly became. But I was stupid…I thought my milk supply was drying up and there was nothing I could do. So I let it dry up, when I could have pumped a lot and got it back. So at three months he become a formula-fed baby. And all was well…except for the horrible guilt and failure that lurked in the back of my mind.

When I had my second baby, I was much more determined to make the breastfeeding work. But as usual, my baby didn’t get a drop from me until he was several days old, and of course I didn’t want to let him go hungry. First rule: Feed the baby! But he wouldn’t open his mouth wide enough to latch, so I tried the nipple shield, which worked for a week until he refused due to a slow let down. I then went to see a lactation consultant who suspected tongue tie. I then saw my pediatrician who referred me to a ENT, who said nope, no tongue tie. I was pumping all during this time, and getting plugged milk duct after plugged milk duct (still get them…arg!) and struggling. One day I just went in the shower and cried harder than I’d cried in years. I wanted SO badly to make this work, but it just WASN’T. AGAIN.

So I pumped and bottle-fed. I thought I’d try again when he was a little older. But when that time came, all the agony, tears, and frustration came flooding back and I just couldn’t bring myself to try again since I’d finally gotten into a rhythm that worked for me. So I made my peace with it, since I knew that I’d really tried, I’d really given it all I had. And the other night I had a friend hold my baby while I prepared formula for him, kind of wondering what she was thinking of me, but ultimately, not caring. I still pump and he gets a lot of breastmilk. And my son is the happiest baby alive, and we spend tons of time giggling, tickling, and grinning like idiots at each other. My breasts still hurt every day and I can’t WAIT until I am done pumping.

So that’s my story. I have never truly successfully breastfed a baby for a sustained time, and I’m good with it. And I don’t think that 1st) any person who has never had problems breastfeeding should ever pass judgement on a woman who is bottle-feeding, and 2nd) women should not carry that guilt around with them if they do not breastfeed, whether by choice or not. It is freaking hard just to be a mom all the time. Our jobs are so important…we are in charge of not only sustaining LIFE to a human being (or several) but also making sure they are successful, smart, well-mannered, kind, generous, loving, happy, healthy, active, well-balanced, and behaved.

P.S. I’m not fully convinced that I would have lost all my baby weight had I successfully breastfed anyway.