on feeding Max

I went into my pregnancy with Max wanting nothing more than to establish an exclusive breastfeeding relationship at least during my maternity leave.  I never got a chance to allow Jake and Alex to latch as I was simply overwhelmed with taking care of preemie twin newborns when the time came to try a breastfeeding relationship.  I instead began to exclusively pump from the day Jake and Alex were born and over the course of their first year of life I was able to almost exclusively provide Jake and Alex with breast milk.  I was proud of this accomplishment but I longed so greatly for a breastfeeding relationship with a baby.  It is also immensely hard to exclusively pump for a baby and I longed to avoid this time commitment with Max.  So I wanted to try my best to establish a breastfeeding relationship with Max.  But things don’t always go as planned…

Max had an extremely difficult time latching in the hospital.  He had swallowed a ton of amniotic fluid during his journey into this world and as a result he was “vomiting” a lot during the first 48 hours of his life.  I was also a hormonal mess in the hospital and spent much of the first 48 hours of Max’s life crying over EVERYTHING.  I worked several times with a lactation consultant but we ultimately decided to “spoon” feed Max expressed colostrum until he could get all the amniotic fluid out of his belly.  So I had the nurse bring me a pump in the hospital.  We eventually, after about 12 hours post birth, introduced a bottle to Max and I gave up on forcing Max to work on latching.  He needed a break and I also needed a break.  We also gave Max a pacifier.  Max was also a very big boy at birth.  And at the end of our hospital stay I was having a very hard time keeping up with my hungry little boy.  It was the last day of our hospital stay and Max had drank all the breast milk I had on hand.  He was grumpy and I was in tears.  I did not want to ask the nurses for formula (a post for another day) so I just decided to try the boob one more time.  It was more out of desperation.  And BAM … Max latched on to the boob like he had been doing it for years.  He spent the next 60 minutes feeding at the breast.  And every minute of it was amazing.  I just watched my little boy in amazement.  We were actually in the process of being discharged when Max decided to begin his breastfeeding relationship.  So we told the nurses to F-off until we were done.  I was not interrupting this moment.  I left the hospital bound and determined to breastfeed my little boy.  But things don’t always go as planned…

We found ourselves in a bit of a medical crisis when Max was only 5 days old (see previous post) and all we were told was that we needed to make certain that Max with eating an adequate amount of food every 2 – 3 hours.  The stress levels escalated to levels previously unknown in our household.  One of the greatest stressors with breastfeeding is that there is no way to know how much breast milk a baby is getting at the breast.  So we immediately went to bottle feeding Max expressed breast milk.  This was the only way we could guarantee his health.  And honestly had Max ended up with the health condition the physicians anticipated then bottle feeding was the only way we could actually guarantee Max’s life.  That’s how serious it was during those long weeks.  So I simply continued to pump on a very rigorous schedule.  It was fine.  I knew how to be an exclusive pumper.  And I knew that Max was getting all his nutritional needs met.  I just assumed that when we got the all clear with Max’s health I would go back to letting Max breastfeed.  But things don’t always go as planned…

It took weeks and weeks for us to get the all clear on Max’s health.  And when we finally did get the all clear I was back to working fulltime at work.  I had been exclusively pumping for about 8 weeks and because of that my body was producing an overabundance of breast milk on a daily basis.  It would have been a struggle for both of us to work on getting Max to latch again at the breast.  And so I decided that our breastfeeding relationship was over.  I was at peace.  The time I spent breastfeeding my son would never be taken away from my memory.  And I once again become an exclusive pumper for my child.  My new goal was to build up a freezer stash that would allow for me to wean Max around 9 months old and simply use the freezer stash until about 12 months.  But things don’t always go as planned…

I started to run out of freezer space much faster than I ever imagined in my brain.  I was, at my highest, pumping about 74oz of breast milk a day for a baby that only drank about 30oz of breast milk.  Those numbers have decreased to about 64oz a day now as I have reduced from pumping 8 times a day to only pumping 5 times a day.  We got to a point where I was going to have to start dumping out breast milk because we literally had no room in our freezer.  Plus we would be running against the “best use by date” of the frozen breast milk.  It turned my stomach into knots to think about dumping all that milk down the drain.  I began to contemplate donating the breast milk to a stranger.  But then a couple of very dear friends expressed a need for extra breast milk for their precious little ones.  And so before I could blink I was shipping some frozen breast milk across the country and a local friend was also dragging a big cooler across town to stock up.  And magically about 1000oz of frozen breast milk was now being used as a supplement for two other precious babies.  And my heart could not be happier.  I cannot even explain the emotions that overwhelmed my heart as I received pictures of these sweet kiddos drinking their bottles of breast milk.  All that had felt that I had “lost” in my inability to breastfeed Max long term had melted away in an instant.  So in the long run my feeding plans did not go as planned.  It went much better!

Mary