Where there’s a will, there is not always a way

Kylie’s birth proceeded straight from the textbook. The adventure lasted six and a half hours. I was only allowed to fantasize about the desired epidural, but my body held up admirably. And then, finally, we were allowed to meet our girl, after exactly 40 weeks. Our beautiful baby girl of almost 3800 grams. And while I heard for close to 40 weeks how small my belly was, the gynecologist noted right away upon my arrival that my belly was home to a pretty sturdy little lady! Our sweet little beautiful daughter, Kylie.

She was placed on my breast right away for the first time. Suddenly there is this small person on your chest, while you can barely believe that this is actually your child, the sweetest miracle imaginable. The hospital obstetrician told me: “Just let her look for herself, give her a chance.” And following her natural instincts, Kylie eventually found her way. The obstetrician gave her one last push: “Now she needs to attach.” And Kylie tried to latch, but she didn’t get it right. The obstetrician carefully examined what was happening, or rather, what was not happening. After a few tries, Kylie became impatient and frustrated, so she was placed next to me again to relax a bit. “We’ll try again later; the first time doesn’t always work, she still has to get the hang of it,” I was told.

That day, I was introduced to many ideas and things that I had been previously quite unfamiliar with. This was also the case with the phenomenon of “nipple shield.” This is sometimes used to guide babies to where they need to be, to help them latch onto their mother’s breast. We tried and tried again. Kylie would be able to latch, but after sucking about 3 times, she’d let go and would become upset and start crying. We tried a few more times, and then, all of a sudden, she latched on and started drinking! I felt ready to celebrate. 

I was also advised to start expressing milk right away. This would help with the milk flow and would make it easier for Kylie to start drinking. Speaking of completely new things: like a type of motivated milking machine, I would look down to see if a drop or two had already collected in the transparent bottle. In the meantime, all the checks for both Kylie and me were good, so we were allowed to go home quite quickly and really start on our maternity week. We were indescribably overjoyed!

The following days were, in short, beautiful and poignant at the same time. Everything was great, but Kylie kept struggling to latch and always gave up just a little bit too quickly. Moreover, my milk flow was just out of sync with her (feeding) needs, causing her to become confused and frustrated. She cried and cried, while I tried to nurse her time and again. I guided her, encouraged her, and felt like applauding when it finally worked! During those first days together, I also cried with her, when she failed to drink once again after another half hour of trying. But fortunately, there were also times in between when it really seemed to work, and these moments prevented me from giving up. Those times were just as I had imagined it: a wonderfully warm sense of pride flowing through my entire mommy body. I was able to feed her, what a rich and miraculous experience!

Behind the scenes there was lots to organize, but fortunately I was able to rely on Jimmy, my wonderful support and mainstay. He made sure everything went smoothly, that our dog was taken for a walk, and he drove to the store for the umpteenth time to get some extra nipple ointment, white cabbage leaves or other things that the maternity care service and I kept on adding to the list of necessities. 

During the first few days, I had to feed my baby every 3 hours. On the advice of both the maternity care service and my obstetrician, I would first try to nurse her whenever it was feeding time. If that failed (as was usually the case) after ten minutes of trying, we fed Kylie baby formula or breast milk I had previously expressed. To help her get the hang of feeding from my breast, we tried to make her drink by means of “finger feeding” in addition to a bottle. For this method, you have to inject some breast milk (with a syringe) into your baby’s mouth. In addition, you hold the tip of your little finger to your baby’s mouth so that it can suck on it. This action is reminiscent of breastfeeding and may help teach your baby how to suck from your breast. Sometimes my friend would do this with the maternity care service, when they were still around. In the evening, we did this together. And in the meantime (or afterwards) I would go the pumping device for endless pumping sessions. My sensitive skin soon suffered the first cracks. But in this case, too, I decided to grit my teeth, thinking I could do it.

By the time Kylie (and the pumping device) were satisfied, often an hour and a half had passed. And another hour later, we would have to start preparing again for the next feeding session. In between (like at half past three at night) I ate whole boxes of granola bars, because I was so hungry.

I was doing a breastfeeding marathon, and I hadn’t trained for it. 

By day 4 of my maternity week, not much had changed. Kylie tried very hard, but she couldn’t latch properly to my breast. So at every feeding time, we always had to supplement her feeding baby formula, accompanied by expressed milk, over and over again. And then there was the first breast infection. I had a temperature of more than 39 degrees and felt quite bad, downright lousy, in pain, dead tired and anything but floating on a pink cloud. At the end of the day, the maternity nurse asked me: “Do you want to go on doing it? Because I still have a few other options we could try. If you want to continue, we will prepare everything together. It’s quite possible that Kylie’s penny will drop in a few days, that your milk flow will run in sync with her feeding needs and that things will go really well from now on. But you may also find in two weeks that everything will still be as it is now. I’d also understand if you wanted to stop trying.” I was firm and persistent: “We’ll continue. I don’t know how much longer I’ll last, but as long as I can, I want to keep trying.” 

That night, I was downstairs for some time and Jimmy and I were busy heating up a dish of macaroni in the microwave. It was such a wonderful moment of the day, because Jimmy and I were usually apart for quite a lot of time during the day: Jimmy arranged everything downstairs, and I was upstairs a lot because feeding Kylie always took such a long time. We talked about what I had discussed with the maternity nurse just before she left. When I took my plate out of the microwave, Jimmy carefully asked: “Do I also have a say in this matter?” He looked at me with a worried and sad look and I knew that he felt that it couldn’t go on for very much longer. I felt it, he felt it, and Kylie certainly did, too. I burst into tears and then we talked for a long time, crying together and holding each other. “It’s your call. I can’t decide for you, but I hate to see you and Kylie struggling so hard…,” Jimmy said. And even though I said beforehand that it was important for me that both Kylie and I should enjoy the experience, I just couldn’t let go of my desire to keep on trying. I never gave this situation any thought beforehand.

That evening there was yet another failed attempt at latching, and so I said, “I think we should stop… I also want to enjoy this postnatal period, together with Kylie and you!” I asked him: “If I decide to do it, will you accept it? He held me tight me and said: “It’s the right call.” 

And so, as of day 5, we were finally able to enjoy our maternity week. We enjoyed our time together, the feeding times that changed to feeding her formula from bottle and our relaxed baby girl, which merrily drank from a bottle, while we were holding her. Tears of relief and happiness emerged, and at last the gray cloud turned into a wonderful and loving pink one. 

Breastfeeding is a natural thing. It is a primal force, it is beautiful, miraculous and fantastic to do if you want it, but it is certainly not a given. You can prepare for it as much as you want, you can listen to as much advice as you can get, but no matter how badly you want it, there is no guarantee that it will work out. And that’s it.