Breastfeeding Chronicals- Chapter 3

The scene where I left off: Our first night home from the hospital with our brand new baby, who has been crying-no, screaming- for 2 hours straight. Ross and I were both in tears at this point. Her diaper had been changed twice, and she still would not latch on to nurse. With adult humans, you treat dehydration with (duh) drinking water or IV fluids. For some reason, I didn't know how to treat newborn dehydration. I didn't know if it was "okay" to give her a bottle of water. I was terrified.

We called the hospital. That's right, the hospital. We were close to getting her in the car and taking her back. Not to "return" her, like she was faulty merchandise or something; but because in the hospital she never cried like this. Surely the baby nurses would have the magic touch to make my baby stop crying. Afterall, I had NO idea what I was doing. I felt like a failure as a mother.

The hospital patched us through to a lactation consultant or advice nurse (I don't remember). I answered her bag full of stock questions: Maddy didn't have a fever (I already checked) and she didn't have any of my hairs wrapped around her little toe (which apparently is a very common cause of unexplained crying?). Her final answer?:

She's hungry.

I opened up my breast pump, thinking I could pump something and feed it to her. With my hands shaking, I opened the box and fumbled through the parts, which STILL needed to be sanitized. Nope, this isn't happening. Even if we sanitized the parts, I was way too emotionally fragile to figure out a new machine, and its not like I could practice before she was born! While fumbling through all this, and attempting yet again to nurse, the on-call pediatrician returned our call. I was hoping he would have the magic answer to make her stop crying; or that he would tell us to go to the hospital. I watched the hope on Ross's face disappear during their very brief 30 second phone call. Apparently, this was the cranky on-call pediatrician's answer:

"Umm...well, babies do CRY. Give her some formula."

As abrasive as that comment was, we realized that would be what we had to do. Unfortunately, we didn't have any formula. With all the exhausting and thorough preparations I did before Maddy was born, I never in my wildest dreams thought we would need to have formula on hand. I thought breastfeeding was just intuitive for mom and baby. We have a Safeway down the street, where Ross could have gotten formula when this all first started. But for some reason, Safeway felt too far away. Its amazing how all reason goes out the window when you are panicked that there is something wrong with your baby and you can't fix it.

Ross ran down the street to our neighbors, Chris and Jodi's house. Their son was a little over a year old, and we had hoped they had some formula. What felt like an eternity later, Ross returned with a can of Similac and a bottle of simethicone drops (baby gas drops). Ross made a 2-oz bottle of formula and added the drops. My tiny baby chugged that thing down like there was no tomorrow.

And then, there was peace in our home.

I cried and hugged Maddy. I felt like a terrible mom. I apoligized to her for not knowing what to do, and for her going through that. Ross hugged me. She finally settled down to sleep...for a while.

This was our initiation into the difficult journey I would embark on. Many breastfeeding supporters would critisize our decision to give our baby a bottle of formula that night. I don't have an ounce (no pun intended) of regret over that choice. It saved her, and us that night. Maybe I should have done things differently, or maybe if I had a lactation consultant or experienced family member in our home with us, I could have been more properly coached for her to latch and feed from me. Afterall, my mom was in town, and we had roughly 10 family members within a 10 mile radius of us. But for some reason, it never occurred to us to ask someone to come over. I think we needed to do it ourselves.

For the next few days, I would continue to try to nurse Maddy. I was determined to be totally patient with my tiny little human, and not be frustrated with her. Unfortunately a mixture of post-partum baby blues and her difficulty with latching made for a very difficult few weeks.