When I meet up with Alexandra for the first time after the birth of her baby girl, she’s basking in that post-baby glow: tired, but regal and powerful just the same. And somehow, her hair looks like Mufasa’s mane on steroids. She’s always had luxurious hair, but with the added bonus of the pregnancy boost, it’s just ridiculous how much you want to touch it. But I digress.
Alex and I have been friends now for the better part of 3 years. We met at a baby and mommy yoga class (which was a shitshow on most days, but kept us sane and drew us close). Our sons were born only a few days apart and we have been navigating the ups and downs of babyhood and toddlerhood in a creepily synchronized fashion. Alex, like me, is a breastfeeding mama; when I go visit her and baby V., she’s feeding the little boobie vampire with ease. Watching her, you’d never guess the hell she had to go through with her first born, J.
Little J had latch problems from day one. For those unfamiliar with breastfeeding lingo, a baby’s “latch” is the way he attaches his mouth to the mother’s nipple; there is a right way to drink milk from the boob and, as you might have guessed, babies don’t automatically know how to do that. Indeed, the matter is far from simple: just take a look at this resource library about latching techniques and troubleshooting. Crazy, right? The checklist for things to look out for to ensure the baby is latching on properly is dizzying.
Now, imagine you have to check off all items off the ‘proper latch list’ while you are severely sleep deprived, are a total rookie at this, your baby can’t explain what she is doing, and you sure as hell can’t ask her questions. Oh, and you are also still recovering from a major medical event: vaginal delivery or a c-section. Your hooha is bleeding like a slaughtered cow, going #2 essentially becomes a whole new birthing process, sitting down is the equivalent of walking on hot sand, and your hormones are playing Russian roulette with your brain and emotions every hour. You wouldn’t dream of asking someone in these conditions to handle heavy machinery, yet we demand that women know exactly what the fuck a days-old baby is doing with her nipples.
To complicate matters further, a poor latch can lead to a variety of health problems for breastfeeding mothers, not least, the anxiety of whether your child is receiving enough milk at the breast, an incredibly stressful predicament. Imagine you are the only nutrition source for your growing child; your milk is the only thing that should feed him and keep him alive (or so you are told). You know he’s not getting enough, and you also know that you need to get that milk out of your boobs so the excess doesn’t cause a clog or even an infection in your breast; you also need to get it out to keep producing enough milk (rule of thumb is, the more you empty your breast of milk, the more it will produce).
Alex and little J were not making progress on their own, so Mama decided to call in reinforcements. Enter a parade of lactation consultants. A good lactation consultant is a godsend and we will hear more about those in future blog posts. In Alexandra’s case, sadly, it turned out to be a “more fuel on the fire” type of situation. Each consultant had a different opinion on what was wrong and how to fix the issue. She got so much contrasting feedback, I’m just going to put it all in a bullet point list.
“They told me his latch wasn’t good”. So perceptive *insert sarcastic eye roll;
“He had a mild tongue-tie and he should get surgery to fix it (we didn’t)”. Would you want your newborn to undergo non-critical surgery right away? Didn’t think so;
“Try different breastfeeding positions (I did. Problem persisted)”;
“Feed him every hour”;
“Pump after every feed” (which meant doing it twelve times a day. TWELVE, people. Finding the time to do that with a newborn that only sleeps on you, and doing laundry, and cooking, and running errands, and all of the wonderful postpartum side-effects I listed earlier? Completely unrealistic and unsustainable);
“Power pump (10 minutes on, 10 minutes off, for one hour), and that caused torn nipples”. My own nipples just retracted into my boobs reading that. Terrifying;
“Drink lactation teas. I drank litres of it”;
“Eat this, that and the other. I tried EVERYTHING, including Colombian Aguapanela, four times a day”;
“Get more sleep”, which is a cruel joke for a new mom. It also remains unclear how she was supposed to do that, while pumping for an hour after every feed;
“And last but not least, take medication”, (Domperidone: it increases the mother’s level of prolactin, the hormone that causes breasts to make milk). What is notable about this drug is that milk production is a SIDE EFFECT: this is not a drug developed for breastfeeding mothers, rather a medication to aid gastrointestinal disorders.
With the exception of Domperidone (“because fuck off”, in her words), Alexandra tried all of these or a combination of multiple suggestions. Nothing worked. Not a damn thing.
So she did what anyone would do: talked to her doctor. When she went to see her gynecologist for her standard six-week postpartum check-up, she explained the breastfeeding issues she was having. The doctor’s answer? “A bewildered look on her face and this advice: ‘You should breastfeed your son until he’s two years old’. That’s it. That’s all she had for me”.
I don’t know about you, but surely if you walk into your physician’s office with a broken leg, you don’t expect them to tell you, “Keep walking on it” as a solution, which is essentially what Alexandra’s doctor advised. Mental and breast health be damned, feed your baby breast milk only, or die trying!
The professionals whose job it is to help and support you dismissed Alex’s hardships, physical injuries (let’s not forget the torn, bleeding, ripped up nipples, for starters) and told her to keep going. Nevermind that there was no way J was getting enough milk at the breast, so Alex had to supplement his feeds with formula. Let’s even look past the fact that she was pumping round the clock and had followed a plethora of differing advice and recommendations. And nothing, absolutely NOTHING had improved.
Sadly, this response is not unusual. Alexandra is not the only one in my circle of friends who has suffered because of medical shaming attitudes and ineptitude. I need more than my 10 fingers to count how many women I know have been either shamed, dismissed or downright scolded by health officials, and ultimately held 100% responsible for their breastfeeding complications. And the repercussions on mental health are palpable.
“I nearly lost my mind”, she says. “I was breastfeeding, bottle-feeding and pumping round the clock. 24/7. It was insane. And for what? In the end, he was still only breastfeeding 70% of the time and the remaining 30% I had to give him formula. I did this for three months and then I reached my breaking point and stopped the pumping tour de force. I could tell I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown”. Alex switched to formula, while still trying to feed J at the breast as much as possible. She would occasionally pump once or twice a day, just to be able to give him some breastmilk.
And you know what? Little J ain’t so little anymore. In fact, he has been consistently and overwhelmingly above average in weight and height. He is now a healthy three-year-old who loves picking flowers and reading at potty time.
"I don't know about you, but surely if you walk into your physician's office with a broken leg, you don't expect them to tell you, 'Keep walking on it' as a solution."
No thanks to the health and medical professionals who are tasked with a mother’s and a baby’s wellbeing. Alex faced challenging and painful issues every day, surrounding one of the most crucial aspects of caring for her baby; she was dismissed when she couldn’t figure it out, judged and criticized for supposedly “not trying hard enough”.
The adage “Breastfeeding is for everybody” is bullshit and painfully inaccurate. Medical professionals need to do better.
Alex’s case also brings to light a grossly overlooked aspect of this dance between mother and child: the baby’s role in a successful breastfeeding experience. The mother is deemed a failure if she cannot breastfeed, yet the baby’s inability to learn proper “form” is never discussed. We are uncomfortable with the notion that a baby has some sort of responsibility in this scenario and therefore only point fingers at Mama. But her health is equally important, and like another adage says, “It takes two to tango”. My friend nearly spiraled into a very real mental and emotional breakdown; no matter what she did, though, the problems persisted because it wasn’t her fault.
It was only once she focused on what was good for her that she was able to properly care for her son. She gave the proverbial middle finger to the exhausting pressure to exclusively breastfeed, and she fed J formula so she could preserve what little sanity she had left.
Seeing Alexandra now with her newborn daughter, who is two months old and exclusively breastfed, you can’t help but be awestruck at how much her motherly instincts were spot on the first time around.
“My breasts were not properly stimulated during J’s feeds”, she muses, “and milk production went down. He always fell asleep and would stay on my boob for an hour at a time. I tried everything to keep him awake, but he always found a way to doze off. It was exhausting.” Little V, on the other hand, figured everything out right from the start, and my friend’s boobs have never been so productive. “She’s a little sucker, in the best way possible”, chuckles Alex at her own mom-joke (don’t worry, I told her it was lame).
Her story is just one example of how a mother’s wellbeing hardly computes when it comes to breastfeeding problems; I am grateful that my friend was smart enough to realize that this is not the way. And it sure as hell was not her fault that it didn’t work out the first time around.
Let’s just say that little J had two adorable left feet when it came to breastfeeding, and maybe tango is not in the cards for him, yes?
