My experience with breastfeeding, honestly.

Breastfeeding has been the worst surprise and challenge in motherhood so far. I knew that it might not go smoothly (immediately) but I could never have guessed that it will be so difficult.

Let's start from the beginning. After an almost ideal, natural birth M was placed on my chest for skin to skin contact. We noticed that she was searching for a nipple and tried to help her with it but we were also doing it for the first time - just like her. Soon we were helped by a midwife. The first time breastfeeding (that I remember very clearly) was painful and took a long time. After that, she fell asleep. That day I fed her for a couple of more time, between this she slept some more.

I gave birth at 10 AM. I had read that babies basically sleep for the first 24 hours, with breaks for eating. We were not so lucky - from 8 PM, M was awake and hungry. We tried to feed her and put her to sleep until 5 AM, but I'm afraid she was still hungry and had quite some need for sucking. She did get some colostrum because meconium had turned into regular breastfeeding poop by the early morning.

On the second day of her life, she was weighed and we learned that she had lost 7% of her body weight. The care aid recommended/advised/ordered to give her formula and start with pumping. I remember only wanting her to feel better, not cry. I was tired. I had only slept 2 hours that night and not at all the previous night because of giving birth. I was asked if we want to supplement with a bottle or use something else. I was so exhausted that I just said that we'll go for the bottle. We weren't prepared and had nothing at home. That moment, a bit of that pink postpartum bubble broke.

My husband went to the hospital to rent a breast pump and get a bottle and formula. Soon after that, he gave our child her first bottle. She was 27 hours old that moment. After that, frequent feeding, correcting the latch, pumping after every feed began. It took a couple of days to see the first drops of milk in the bottles of the pump, but I knew that M still gets something from the breast (EDIT: after seeing efficient breastfeeding on the 7th or 8th week of her life, I did notice a huge difference). During the first weeks, breastfeeding took at least as long as a full-time job takes.

The lactation consultant advised us to put the child on the breast as long as possible and pump after the feeds. I had already tried powerpumping and had pumped the left - less producing - breast 5 minutes after the regular 20-minute double-pumping. I remember hearing about that last plan and feeling desperate. All that pumping was even more tiring than breastfeeding.

One moment, about at the 3rd week of her life, I was advised to supplement her with only 60 ml formula and then start to decrease this amount so that she would want to breastfeed more often and "order in" more milk. Just after planning that, we went for a checkup to see how clipping of her tongue and lip tie had gone. This procedure was performed on the 11th day of her life and now it was time to see the results.

I went for the checkup alone with her, as my husband was working. It had healed well, but the lactation consultant working at the practice looked at me breastfeeding and suggested that I might have something called insufficient glandular tissue. It is a syndrome, meaning usually that there is no proper diagnosis, but it means that there is too little milk-producing glandular tissue. I felt like my world was falling apart. I had just thought that we are moving towards exclusive breastfeeding. By now I've read a lot about this syndrome and I think that most likely it is not the case.

After having talked with the lactation consultant and my GP, I started taking domperidone (a drug originally dedicated to lessen nausea, but is used as an off-label stimulant for milk production because of its side-effect). I didn't see a lot of improvement during the first weeks, but I think that it did help some after. (EDIT: I would not take that medication ever again for breast-feeding as I am afraid it contributed to my second bout of mastitis)

Then we were hit by the next setback. About a week after the aforementioned checkup, I felt strong chills and started to feel worse by minutes. I remembered that I had experienced chills during the engorgement period, so I went to check my breasts from a mirror and indeed, the left breast showed a red spot. Mastitis.

I started taking antibiotics the next morning and spent over a week in bed. As we don't have anyone to look after the baby, my husband needed to work part-time for a week to help. I had not felt so bad for a while. An added trouble was that M didn't want to feed on that left breast (which might have been the cause of mastitis at the first place). It was a wonder, but she did feed from it that week!

Soon after that, I quit offering that breast at all, because we ran into another problem. Namely was M (1,5 months at that time) willing to breastfeed less and less. She cried a lot and I needed to use a pacifier or even a bottle to trick her into taking the breast. I tried a nipple shield, calming and everything else that the lactation consultant advised. Despite a lot of crying (on both sides), I didn't give up.

One Monday, breastfeeding went better. Then the same on Tuesday, Wednesday and so all. If we gave her only the bottle at 3 AM and I pumped for the sake of time (otherwise it took us 1,5 hours), I put her on the breast and heard the milk flowing and her swallowing. That was the first time. Therefore, the milk supply had improved. After that, I've always breastfed at night (and pumped until 14-15 weeks in). Since then, M has been breastfeeding better and I feel that she might even expect and look forward to it.

Another couple of weeks pass and we're thinking of going to Estonia for 2 weeks. We're afraid of the corona, but I'm also (unrealistically) scared that M will quit breastfeeding because of the stress of travel. I talk with the lactation consultant, who tries to calm me down by saying that the baby will rather find comfort from the breast when new situations occur. By jumping ahead, I can say that breastfeeding went very well during the travel - I fed her on the train, plane, parked car, at a hotel and in the park.

While we were planning for our trip, M went through a strange developmental leap. She had troubles sleeping and she started to refuse the bottle and took quite a little formula (maybe my milk production had still increased?). When before, she could drink even 550-600 ml of formula then at that point her consumption dropped under 200 ml a day (and remained around 300-400 ml/day by now). These millilitres needed quite a lot of work from our side.

Now, thinking back, I ask myself that if I had done everything to get her exclusively breastfeed at that point, would that have worked. I don't know. At that point, I only pumped 120 ml milk a day (by pumping only after feeds), which wouldn't have covered her needs.

To be able to travel, I started reducing the numbers of pumping per day. From six times a day, I went to three. This went without problems, thankfully. When in Estonia, I pumped two to three times a day and breastfed her six to seven times a day (on travel days even more frequently).

During the last evening in Estonia, I felt that my left breast hurts, and hurts tons. I pumped immediately and tried to have M feed from that breast (despite not having done that for weeks). By that time, the breast hurt so much that when she touched it, I needed to clench my teeth to bear the pain. I started feeling worse and worse and couldn't sleep almost at all during that night, despite the baby snoozing away in her travel bed in our hotel room. At a mirror, I could see two big red spots on the breast. My big fear had come true again.

The whole day from leaving the hotel to getting home - eight hours - went by as a blur. I remember little of these hours, only pain and hope that I wouldn't faint somewhere. The same evening, my GP came by our house (I didn't know they did house calls here in the city) to see if it is an abscess (she thought maybe not) and I started taking antibiotics.

This time, the mastitis lasted less long. I got sick Monday night and on Friday, I could already work a couple of hours (my maternity leave was already over for two weeks) and I was almost completely healthy by Monday. With this episode of mastitis, even the little milk supply it had, disappeared. It doesn't leak any more when I feed on the other breast and the last times of pumping produced almost nothing.

I decided to stop using domperidone and step by step, stop pumping. Exactly 16 weeks after the first time, I packed my breast pump together. All in all, I was able to save a whole freezer full of milk, about 100 little bottles which she can have when I quit breastfeeding her. Of course, I offered her the milk during the whole period of pumping as well.

I needed to make the decision to start weaning M slowly. I knew that pumping at the workplace is not feasible for me because of the low supply and that I have a high risk of mastitis. It took a week or two from the decision to an actual first skipped feed. I felt again that I have failed. I had managed to get her breastfeeding, her intake of formula had dropped despite her higher need, but I still made that decision. I feel guilty again when I write this because maybe I shouldn't have started weaning her. I also feel bad that somewhere deep down I wanted to quit to avoid this loop of breastfeeding-bottle-pumping-washing everything. At the same time, I didn't want to quit. Again, I felt that breastfeeding had turned out different than I thought. Maybe I had made a different decision in different circumstances (such as when I had a 1,5-year maternity leave instead of 3 months).

At the moment of writing this, I've not fed her the 10:30/11 AM feed for 1,5 weeks. Now it will take a maximum of six weeks to go over to formula completely. Giving her the bottle makes me burst in tears, despite the fact that she has had a bottle from the beginning. The ideal scenario would be giving the breast in the morning and before the night from September when I am away from home. I realize that there is little hope for this because most likely my little supply will dry up when I feed her less frequently.

I read that deep down, weaning is an abnormal procedure for a woman, something that can bring up feelings of grief. I grief this experience that I didn't think I yearned after. I grief that it didn't go perfect and that I could enjoy the first months less than possible.

I don't know how I would act when we would have a second child. I hope that breastfeeding will go much better, but I can't be sure. I'm torn. I'm thinking that we shouldn't use a bottle if we need to supplement, but do cup-feeding or something alike. At the same time, I think that maybe I would be more alright with going over to formula quicker and not go through hours of pumping. I don't know, but I can hope for the best.

EDIT: Our breast-feeding journey ended yesterday, and she is 14 months old. I would never have thought that I would last so long. I am very thankful and happy to have tried but it has cost me a lot of time and tears. Despite this, I am thankful that she has gotten the benefits of the two doses of COVID-19 vaccine and that we have had that time together.