My first son was born in February 2020, 1 month before the dreaded first covid lockdown. Due to jaundice the hospital advised feeding top ups and at first offered formula. It wasn’t until we queried why we couldn’t use breast milk to which they agreed. I didn’t have any clue about breast feeding or pumping. I sat in our room 2 days postpartum leaking milk like crazy with no understanding or support. Until a nurse took pity on me and introduced us the electric pump. From there onwards, I pumped religiously every 3 hours for 20mins at a time.
Our son was a very difficult and upset baby, but being first time parents in lockdown we were led to believe it was normal and ‘babies just cry’. At 3 months old we were at breaking point and contacted our health visitor who suggested reflux and or CMPA. My partner was baffled how a baby, who depends on milk, could be allergic to milk. Lo and behold we use various reflux medications and hypoallergenic formulas before settling onto omeprazole and similac alimentum around 6 months. Ending our exclusively pumping fed journey.
I had such a good supply and the time to continue pumping with it being lockdown that I continued to pump and donated hundreds of litres to the NICU unit at our local hospital. It felt amazing that my milk was still going to good use. Around 1 year postpartum I gradually stopped pumping and at 18momths, our son was finally properly diagnosed with CMPA. Unfortunately still to this day he continues to suffer and now has an epipen too.
When our second son came along in spring 2023, it was an obvious choice for us, to try and breast feed again. After yet another quick labour, he latched well. However as the hours went on it became very sore and painful! I started using MAM nipple shields and couldn’t feed without them! With them my nipple were able to heal and not get damaged further but I was still able to breast feed my son!
Getting over the initial anxiety of feeding in public was difficult, but even more so when I had to fumble around beforehand putting a nipple shield on and removing and wiping up after. Both my boys were very reflux prone babies that still needed persistent burping after feeds, despite the rumour ‘breastfed babies don’t need burping’
We had lots of ups and downs feeding my second son. He never fed for the period of time that was recommended, in fact his longest ever fed was around 11mins. But he continued to thrive regardless, and despite all my panics and worry about him not gaining weight! Randomly around 4/5months old, I tried without the shields and he latched and fed fine, and the shields were a happy past memory.
As he got older, he got far nosier and I had to limit all surrounding distractions to be able to feed him at all. Where possible I would sit in a quiet dark room with white noise just to get him to feed. He was always happy to feed and wanted to but always so easily distracted that it was such hard work! He is now 18months old and down to feeding just once a day.
Im super proud of both of our feeding journeys, as stressful and hard work as they were, they have also been so so rewarding in so many ways.
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