The one about breastfeeding struggles...

After the hospital, we were home at 5 a.m. and the midwife was coming back to check on us at 7 p.m., so we had to kind of figure out breastfeeding ourselves. Somehow, it seemed to work. The latch looked really good and he gained back his birth weight in four days. I had no problems with supply and everything was great for two weeks. And then the screaming started. It was like torture for him when I nursed. I kept going back to the midwife and she said everything looked fine. I would nurse at night and he would scream for an hour until he fell asleep. He would sleep for half an hour, wake up and then we’d do the whole dance again. I went to my girlfriend’s house who had a baby a week later than me and I watched her breastfeed. The baby fed for 15 minutes, burped, fed on the other side and then went to sleep. That was not happening with my baby. I kept going back to the midwife who thought everything looked great. He was gaining weight, so we were not concerned from that perspective, but it got to the point where I couldn’t. I was so embarrassed by the screaming and I had no way of settling him. I wasn’t sleeping at all and my husband’s career was busier than ever. He would leave at 7 a.m. and come back at 7 p.m., and he worked all weekend. At three weeks postpartum I hit rock bottom. I was so exhausted and depressed. I asked him if he could take a feeding shift on the weekend. The first time we did that the baby didn’t scream at all. He drank the bottle, burped and then he fell asleep. I had changed my whole diet. I wasn’t drinking coffee, I wasn’t eating cheese, I wasn’t doing anything because I thought the whole issue was my milk, but he took a bottle of pumped milk no problem. It was lovely. I feel like once he had a bottle, he had no interest in the boob. On the weekend, he would do bottles and I kept nursing.  Everyone kept saying everything is fine and I was like, what is going on? I have the milk, I have the position, I have the latch, everything is fine but something is not fine. Then it turned into a lot of social isolation. I would try to nurse in public. One time I was at the grocery store store and he just wailed. There was this group of high school kids eating their lunch and they were like, get your shit together woman.  At eight weeks, we got a night nurse and she wanted to try a bottle of formula. He drank it and went to sleep for five hours. Then I was doing a bottle of formula each night and he was sleeping through the night at three months, whereas he wouldn’t go more than two hours before the formula. I started doing formula at night and I was still nursing during the day. He wasn’t screaming as much but he wasn’t eating so I was nursing every 40 minutes. He couldn’t sleep because he was constantly starving so I decided to try a whole day of just bottles of breastmilk. It was the best day we’d ever had together. He was happy.”