My Maya Belle: February 2013

this entry will be picture heavy. and emotional. and all about Breastfeeding. forgive the scattered thoughts.

i have almost every photo of our rather dysfunctional nursing relationship.

ill never know if it was due to your tongue/lip ties made it hurt, your reflux made it hurt, or because i introduced bottles too early due to those issues (ask me more about those issues later in life when itcomes time for you to nurse your beautiful little one). but all i know is that something happened. and that something made my baby girl hate to nurse. and i wasnt as educated as i am now, and I didnt know how to get past those dilemmas.

what matters, yes, is that you got our milks for the first year, and counting (im pumping as i type this actually!) but it was a LOT of work. i tried for MONTHS to get you to nurse and then after accepting that I needed to exclusively pump for you, i tried every couple weeks to see if you'd magically take it.

you didnt.

i tried so many bottles. different positions. i tried coaxing and tricking and everything that myself and 2 lactation consultants as well as a plethora of those in online communities. we just werent meant to have it. i treasure, absolutely treasure each time you nursed. so much so that i took a photo nearly every time. this entry has nearly every time we nursed documented.

The milk is the most important thing, but there are certain things that bottle feeding breastmilk doesnt provide. it doesnt provide the same safety. you had to learn to trust my embrace the hard way...by learning ill be there for you. a breastfeeding baby, by nature, feels safe at mummies chest. when hurt, nursing takes that pain away, because of the healing properties the milk contains. when you bottle feed...you have to prepare the bottle before the properties react. so its not as efficient.

Its speculated that a nursing mother has the advantage of her breasts responding to her infants saliva. the saliva tells the breasts of any illness and immediately tells the breasts to create certain antibodies and antioxidants to fight that specific illness. Im learning so much about nursing, and its hard. i miss it. i wish i had it. i know we've created a strong bond outside of nursing, and i will forever be happy that i stuck it out this year by pumping for you.

in the beginning, to build and maintrain supply, i had to wake and pump every 2-3 hours around the clock. for 5 months. at 5 months i was able to go about 3-4 hours. and over time i was able to work with my supply and what i needed and remove sessions to try and maintain sanity. nursing babies at breast is so much easier to maintain supply, pumps just dont do what the baby can do to stmulate hormone production and milk production. but man, i tried. i took fenugreek, mothers milk tea, and lactation cookies. i tried everything said to boost supply, ate oatmeal all the time, and cut out foods that might be harmful, even in a small way.

i was dedicxated, my dear.

i love you.

i wantyou to have the best. it was hard. i cried a lot, still do. i wanted so badly for "easier nursing" to be in our design. but it wasnt. but i do have some pictures. i did get SOME nursing. i did give you our milk, and donated many many gallons of milk to other needy babies. i committed to you. the important thing is the nutrition, and even when our nursing didnt pan out, something that happens so rarely to those who have even our problems, i gave you what i could. i worked, school, raised you and julian, functioned on such little sleep, such hormonal circumstances, for you. i find it one of our first experiences with my sacrifice. i will sacrifice my comfort, my preferences for you. you are worth it. every single time.

i love you.

my lord this tea is nasty. :)

my sweet. i would have to try and nurse while you slept, and you often raised your arm like this.

this was the first bottle i tried, to help you relearn to suck after we have the release procedure done for your tongue tie, your lip has yet to be released and this may be one of the reasons you couldnt nurse. we'll never know.

you were wearing brothers outfit here. this is what we brought him home from the hospital in. i kept it hoping youd wear it once or twice. :)

oatmeal is said to help milk supply. i ate it by the bowlfuls daily!

a friend made this for me for World Breastfeeding Week. i felt blessed :)

one of the tools i tried, a shield to help you.

how i fed you in the early days to avoid using a bottle when you couldnt nurse.

another tool, feeding off my finger through a tube, this was the very early days when you had just had your tongue released.

some of the milk i had stored. in the early days you drank roughly a third of what i made in a day or less. some days i topped 50 ounces in a day, and some days you only drank 10-15! amazing!

i think we were in the hospital here. right after you were born. this might have been before your tongue was released even!

ugh mo-om. im trying to sleep and eat!

i needed these. very much so. they are fantastic and they helped heal the gouge i had to get special medicine for. man we really went through the ringer on this yaya.

i seriously took all of these bottles to maintain my supply (over the course of the year of course)

ah yes this was in the hospital. time flies!

i forget how tiny you were.

you still look just like this. its crazy how much youve grown.

it was so painful for you sometimes, you looked at me with this look of complete discomfort. it broke my heart. i wanted to fix it so badly.

other times you looked at me like "what the heck are you doing?" :)

every so often i tried different bottles to get you open to trying new things so i could get you back to nursing. to no avail. when you were a smaller baby you would refuse so adamently at times, it mustve been painful with the way youd react, as you got older you would politely decline unless i pushed my limits.

its still hard for me. the feelings i had over becoming a lactation consultant with such a failure of an experience, but i do focus on the facts that you got the best, the goods. and i got to give them to you. and at the end of the day i tried EVERYTHING. maybe i could have done something different in the beginning, maybe if i would have found the reflux earlier you would have nursed? or maybe if i had just done the syringe feeding longer? or if i had your lip released? i dont know. even though this wasnt ideal, youre still perfect to me. i could NOT love you more if you had nursed. i worry and fear that maybe you would be more attached to me if thatim missing out, but i quickly shun that thought.

we have our milks. my labor of love. and i have a healthy vibrant 1 year old as proof of my love and dedication.

im enamored with you baby girl. thank you for the memories we had, and when it comes time for you to nurse your baby girl or boy, i promise we will use my knowledge of nursing you and julian and i will help you overcome any obstacles you face. nursing for most people isnt easy, its a learned relationship. and it can be hard. its the most natural thing you can do for your baby after delivering it, but it doesnt always come natural.

but we are proof that while there are bumps sometimes, you can get through them.

thank you for being my girl.

even if, in the end, the only cuddles i got at the breast were putting you to sleep closeby to help my milk:

im grateful, because

this moment wouldnt have happened otherwise:

i will say, im super grateful for these. they depict all of these memories, and the happy parts. not the parts where im in pain from your bad latch and the sores i got, and not the tears from a session ending in 2 minutes. just the raw happiness.

with brother, whom i nursed until he was 11 months (with its own set of pitfalls and setbacks that include problems surrounding a tongue tie of his own, and problems mummy had) i have one known photo of us nursing.