Breastfeeding, Take Three

I know I still need to post a birth story.  It's coming, but I'm still working on processing everything mentally.  Until then, I'm going to post some post-birth stories.  I'm going to start with my experience with breastfeeding this time, because it wasn't what I was expecting.

Not much has been, really.  And I'm getting to the point where I think that's okay, but, as I said, I'm still processing.

I had many high expectations of what would come out of having a natural childbirth.  One of these was an easier time with breastfeeding than I had with the other two.  Not that I a particularly difficult time with either of them, but I figured after an unmedicated delivery, it would be even better.

First, there would be no medications in my system to keep me from being able to nurse right away, as happened with the Birdie's birth.  I wasn't able to nurse her until several hours later, after the medications wore off.

Second, there wouldn't be any medications in my Bumblebee's system, thus making her more alert than babies born during medicated deliveries.  She was very alert right away.  But, then again, so were the Birdie and the Imp.

Third, waiting for her to come on her own (instead of being induced) might - I speculated - help my milk come in faster.

Fourth, having natural oxytocin in my system instead of synthetic oxytocin might also help my milk come in faster.

But guess what?  There was one factor I didn't consider, and it was probably the most important one with relation to breastfeeding:  hydration.  It's quite possible that the things I listed above would have made my breastfeeding experience better...if I had kept myself hydrated.  But I didn't.  It never even occurred to me that I needed to.  After all, it was never that big of a deal with my other two.  Oh, I knew it was important, but I never went out of my way to make sure I stayed hydrated, and I had plenty of milk for both of them.

But guess what else I had with them:  IV hydration during labor.  Something I didn't want and didn't have during my labor with the Bumblebee.  I was pretty dehydrated afterwards, and I didn't do anything to take care of it.

And it made a big difference.  Huge.  So big that, for a couple of days, I didn't think I was going to be able to breastfeed my Bumblebee long-term.


Everything started off well.  Immediately after delivery, although I was pretty shell-shocked from what I'd just gone through, I was able to nurse my Bumblebee for about an hour and a half.  I was never pressured to hurry things up.  They let me stay there and nurse her until she was finished.

She was 7 lbs, 8.5 oz. when she was born.

She nursed well in the hospital, although it wasn't as frequently as it should have been.  I'd planned to have her room in with me the whole time, but I was exhausted that first night, so I asked them to take her to the nursery for a while.  They brought her to me when she seemed hungry, which meant she went for some fairly long stretches in between feedings - becaues newborns are sleepy like that.  I should have been feeding her every two hours, and I knew that, but I hadn't slept in more than 48 hours and I didn't have the willpower to choose nursing her over snatching a few hours of rest.

They weighed her that night around midnight, and she was 7 lbs, 5.3 oz.  We left that day, the 20th, so that was her discharge weight.

On the afternoon of the 21st, we went to the pediatrician for her first weight check.  Most breastfeeding moms are familiar with the horror of the weight check.  After a mostly sleepless night spent trying to figure out what in the world you can do to placate your newborn who will only sleep if you are holding her, which of course you are told you absolutely must not do, you stagger in to the pediatrician's office, only to have them tell you your baby has lost too much weight, or is on track to losing too much weight, and (if they are supportive) inform you that you and your baby are sleeping too much (What?  Seriously?) and that you should be waking up every two hours to feed her (if they aren't supportive, they start talking right away about supplementing with formula).

So, we had our first weight check.  Since this is our third baby, we really weren't too worried about it, especially since everything went really smoothly with the Imp.  He only lost about 7 oz. total - about 7% (the "danger cutoff" is 10%) - before he started gaining.  During our weight checks with the Birdie, Craig and I developed a bit of a tradition.  We'd choose a weight, and then we'd bet on whether she'd be over or under it.  Loser had to buy at Starbucks after the appointment.  So, on the way to the appointment, we joked about it, and settled on 7 lbs even.  If she was 7 or more, Craig won; if she was under 7 lbs, I won.

Except, of course, if she was under 7 lbs, I was really losing.  After all, the Imp never dropped below 6 lbs, and the Bumblebee was a pound heavier than he was - so I didn't really expect her to drop below 7.  Even though that's what I bet on, 'cause I'm pessimistic like that.

And, as it turned out, the pessimist in me won.  6 lbs, 14.2 oz.  Then, to make me feel even better about it, they had me nurse her in the exam room, then they weighed her again to see how much she gained with a feeding.  The result after I fed her?  6 lbs, 14.1 oz.  All right!  I actually must have sucked some milk back out of her!  Great job, Mommy!

Of course, the pediatrician's lactation consultant was ever-so-encouraging.  "If she drops below 6 lbs 12 oz, we'll be concerned, but I don't expect that to happen.  This is your third baby;  I'll bet your milk comes in in the next 24 hours."

Oh, yes.  I'll bet it does.  Just like, "This is your third baby.  I'll bet your labor goes fast."  And, "This is your third baby.  You're already at 6 cm - she'll be here in no time."  Also, "This is your third baby.  I'll bet she slides right out with you barely even having to push."

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  We'll get to that part in another post.

Back to the milk - have you guessed it?  Nope, as a matter of fact, it didn't come in "within the next 24 hours."  7/22 (Day 3), weight: 6 lbs, 13 oz.  Only one ounce lost away from, "Danger, danger, supplement NOW!"  As before, I nursed her, they weighed her again - and she was still 6 lbs, 13 oz.  I started to panic.  Someone remarked, "At least she didn't lose any [after being nursed]."  Ohhh, yes.  Thanks ever so much for that.  I started to cry.

7/23 - we went to the hospital for the weight check because we had some routine tests that needed to be run since we left the hospital early.  This time, we received a little bit of hope:  6 lbs, 14 oz.  I nursed her, and it actually went up - 6 lbs, 14.7 oz!  Not much of a gain, but I'd just nursed her shortly before we weighed her, so she'd already mostly drained me.  So this was somewhat encouraging, but the pessimist within reminded me that Craig and I are pretty sure that the scale at the pediatrician's office is not reliable - we think it's consistently low, so it was possible that 14 oz. on the hospital scale would still be 13 oz. on the pediatrician's scale.  However, it was enough to get us out of the weight check cycle.

7/25 - I'd been feeling pretty encouraged, but overnight, I accidentally went for about 5 hours without feeding her.  I should have been ready to explode, right?  Nope.  I barely felt full after that.  So I knew things were still not where they needed to be.  Completely discouraged, that evening, I spoke on the phone with my doula, who agreed that things didn't sound right and suggested I spend a few days of strictly nursing every two hours (or more often) and otherwise keeping the Bumblebee skin-to-skin with me and doing nothing else.  She also helped me realize I hadn't been drinking enough water to make up for the fact that I hadn't had IV hydration during delivery, so I was very dehydrated, which was probably the main reason my milk was being so stubborn about coming in.

Unfortunately, the timing of me needing to focus 100% on the Bee coincided with my mom going back home for a few days (she had been with us since the day before the Bumblebee was born);  fortunately, I have an amazingly supportive husband who never once questioned or argued about my need to do this, and took on either caring alone for our two small children or arranging for someone to help him out with them.  I was able to settle on the downstairs couch with my Bumblebee and three travel mugs that I kept full of water on Sunday evening and stay there or in bed with her constantly until Tuesday evening, with only a few breaks.

And guess what?  It seems to have worked.  On Wednesday morning (7/28, 9 days old) I had to take her to the pediatrician for an unrelated issue, but of course they weighed her.  I went in, half-fearful and half-hopeful.  This time, the hopeful side won out.  Weight:  7 lbs, 4.2 oz. - a gain of 6 oz since her last weight check, 5 days earlier.  Since the average rate of weight gain for a breastfed baby is 1 to 1.5 oz. a day, that was enough to let me know we were on the right track, finally.

What a relief.

We have a little over 4 oz. to go to get her back to her birth weight, so I expect she'll hit it by Monday, if not sooner.  Her next visit is on Monday (two weeks!  Wow!) so we'll find out then whether we made it or not.

Regardless, I've learned a very important lesson for next time, if I decide to have another natural birth:  drink way more water than I think I need, because my tendency is to not drink enough.  I guess this should be obvious, but since I was probably over-hydrated after my first two babies' births, it didn't matter nearly as much whether I drank enough during those early days (which, of course, I didn't, but as I said, it didn't matter).

So, now I know.  That's one item to go in the "Lessons Learned" list.

One of many.  Very, very many.  I'll get to those other ones soon.