Michelle's story of breastfeeding

My story of breast feeding begins with me being 38 and giving birth to my first child. When thinking of breast feeding I could not have imagined doing anything else. Why would you not use nature and God’s way of feeding your child? So in my mind I thought okay my pregnancy was bad, birth was worse so this has got to be easy right? WRONG! Breast feeding is not easy for everyone and therefore requires drive, stamina and heart. It started off where I had a hard time getting the colostrum out, but I chose to press it out and do the best I could and it ended up okay. Then I went home and thought things were going great. By about week three I could tell something was really wrong. My son wanted to eat every 20 minutes. I called Lavawn and went to see her she explained that he was not getting enough hind milk so I would need to do breast compressions. In the meantime I was expressing the extra milk I had so that my breasts would not be engorged and I was creating more problems. My baby had horrible stomach problems and reflux and he would only sleep for about 20 minutes at a time and was ALWAYS hungry. I had gone into excessive let down and my child’s colic and reflux got was because…I was OVER FEEDING him. (insert tons of tears and lack of confidence here) I went to see Lavawn again and I then had to start block feeding him every 4 hours. In the meantime before I went to see her I ended up with a blood blister on my nipple and it was VERY painful. I had to take antibiotics and then pump to get the milk out since I could not nurse him on that side for a couple of days. I kept pushing on though and ended up not giving up. After block feeding him I got to a point where he was getting the hindmilk, but not enough milk overall so now I had a different problem. I had to pump a little each time after I fed him to bring the milk supply back up and then of course it went back into excessive letdown. I am still breastfeeding and trying to tweak this so that my son gets what he needs. The moral of my story is nothing worth having is easy so I press on even though I still shed a tear here and there and know that I am doing what is best for my son. Remember when you want to give up there are others that understand and know that breastfeeding is NOT easy…at least for some of us. Get support and know that Lavawn will help you and she is the most caring person. She has a passion for breastfeeding and will give you confidence when you think you can no longer go on. I will not give up simply because everyone keeps telling me to and I know that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”