10 Things I Wish I Knew About Breastfeeding Before my C-Section

Baby Buckshot falls asleep best after nursing.

Despite being an avid reader and researcher, breastfeeding defied my sense of logic. Nothing could have truly prepared me for the actual act of nursing.

But in the interest of helping others, here are 10 things I wish I knew about breastfeeding before Baby Buckshot came along.

1. When having a C-Section, count on the milk coming in more slowly. In natural births, the milk supply comes in faster, so I am told.  In C-Sections, the body takes a bit more time to register the baby is born and that it needs to start producing milk.  I am assuming it is because of the anesthesia slowing the body's natural reaction. This is a big deal and I feel like it was undersold in all the reading I did.  I know people say that all a baby needs for the first two days is colostrum.  Tell that to a mom whose baby is crying his eyes out on the second day of birth from hunger.  Yes, we supplemented with formula because I didn't want my child's first days to be filled with the feelings of hunger.  Yes, we are now exclusively breastfeeding (EBF).


2. Demand a hospital grade pump immediately. A lactation consultant came in to see me on the first day and was very... casual, shall I say, about my lack of milk. It wasn't until the second day, when my milk hadn't come in and baby was having a hard time latching, that another lactation consultant arranged for me to get a pump so I could start pumping to get a jump start on my milk supply.And pump every 2 hours, even if baby is sleeping, not just to replace every bottle being supplemented.

3. Only take the ibuprofen. I was in a lot of pain post surgery and was consistently told to take pain medication if I needed it because it would help my healing.  But I wasn't told that the painkillers I was being given pass through the breastmilk.  Everyone said the ibuprofen is safe, which is relatively is, but no one said a word before giving me things things like Norco along with my ibuprofen.  When these things pass through the breast-milk, the make the baby groggy which slows baby's ability to learn how to properly latch and nurse which in turn keep breastfeeding painful for a longer period of time. Not to mention all the other damage that could have been done. Luckily, I looked it up quickly and stopped taking the painkillers very early on.

4. Go on a nursing vacation immediately. When you're in pain from breastfeeding, spending 24 hours in bed doing nothing but breastfeeding sounds like the worst idea ever.  But the sooner mommy does this, the sooner she reaches the breastfeeding promise land where baby knows how to latch, the milk supply meets baby's needs and the pain starts going away. Just stay in bed all day topless with baby only in a diaper, do constant skin to skin and try repeatedly to nurse in any way possible. Of course, there needs to be someone there who bring mommy food, lots of fluids and changes diapers and such.  Mommy's only job is to eat, drink, feed and sleep when baby sleeps.  At the end of the day for me, something clicked.  BB was latched and I knew I could keep breastfeeding.

5. Try every nursing position but start with the My Brest Friend. The most counter intuitive part of breastfeeding for me was the various positions.  The Football Hold was the LAST position I thought would work.  It turned out to be the first position that would work consistently for me when sitting on the couch.  But the My Brest Friend was the to being able to breastfeed on any bed, chair or couch.  It placed baby in the right position at the right height allowing me to adjust BB's latch with ease instead of trying to fumble around fixing my positioning while BB's latch was causing nipple trauma.

6. Powerpump for quantity and volume. When I ended up with supply issues because I supplemented with formula and then didn't pump early or often enough while supplementing, I was told to pump for every bottle BB was given. This was bad advice for me because I pumped very little in comparison to how much formula BB could take in at one time. What I didn't know is that it's not enough to pump for the bottle, in order to effectively pump, the mother has to simulate what baby would do if the milk runs out.  Babies keep nursing or they demand to be nursed very quickly after an earlier nursing session in order to increase the mommy's milk supply.  Hence the power-pump.  Ten minutes of pumping followed by ten minutes off then ten minutes back on for an hour signals to the body that more milk needs to be made. Simply pumping for 15-20 minutes is not sufficient if the volume of breastmilk removed doesn't equal the amount consumed in the bottle at the very least.

7. Do not supplement at night. I thought I was going to juke out the lack of sleep during the newborn stage by supplementing formula at night.  The hard to digest proteins keep baby full longer meaning a longer stretch of sleep right?  Except those middle of the night feedings are what drain the breast at the height of milk production keeping milk supply up.  Until I dropped the night supplementation, I wasn't able to close the gap between the amount I pumped and the amount BB drank everyday. This was a contributing factor to my low supply.

I sadly, before I knew, gave the "supplement a bottle of formula at night to help baby sleep longer" spiel to other moms in my birth club and though their babies started sleeping through the night, they eventually ended up with supply issues or dried up completely.  For that I will forever feel like an @$$.  I am so sorry other mommies.

8. Exclusively pumping doesn't work for many mothers. Like many women, I thought, after the extreme nipple pain and other breastfeeding complications that exclusive pumping is the way to go. Though pumping is very efficient for some women, for most of us, since the pump doesn't completely drain the breast, our milk supply will suffer.  Plus, the lack of skin to skin and hormonal rush from being near baby doesn't exist when pumping so it's not enjoyable and harder to stick with.  There was just no way I was going to get up in the middle of the night every night to pump if baby was still sleeping (from being formula full).  It defeated the purpose.  And also depleted my milk supply.

9. Bedsharing is fantastic when done safely. I was against bedsharing before BB came along despite my mother's insistence that bedsharing is best for mommy and baby. (She told me that it would make BB feel abandoned if I put him in a crib in another room by himself.) Later I researched it and countries that have an almost 100% bedsharing culture have no incidence of SIDS.  I spoke with a few nurses and they said that bedsharing, if done safely, can reduce incidence of SIDS because the baby's breath ends up in sync with the mother. 

When we switched to EBF and I realized how important the night nursing would be when I went back to work and had to pump during the day, we started bedsharing so I could dream feed during the night nursing sessions.  It worked seamlessly. Everyone got to sleep, my milk supply is in complete sync with his demand (I actually pump exactly what he drinks while I'm away from him, give or take an oz) and it feels so natural. And there's no better feeling than waking up with BB snuggled next to me. I should have done it much sooner.

Of course, we safely bedshare and I always have his Snuza clipped to him at night.

10. I will never regret breastfeeding.  There are days now that I am so thankful I stuck with breastfeeding after wanting to quit time and time again in the beginning. There were so many reasons I could have quit, from slow supply from the c-section, low supply from the supplementing, having mastitis twice, going back to work and my body not being very good with the pump. 

And don't get me wrong.  I don't think there's anything wrong with formula.  I was a Full Formula baby.

But the experience I have nursing Baby Buckshot now is amazing. It's hard to describe the feeling I get when he looks into my eyes while he's nursing, or the experience of calming him down when no one else can by simply holding him close and feeding him from my body.

I wouldn't have believed anyone if they told me in the early weeks that one day I'll miss breastfeeding my child but I know now that I'll be sad when BB is fully weaned and I'll miss it dearly.

Birth Story: The Short Version

When people who haven't had children ask me now how my labor was, I give them this story:

DH asked me to not give birth until my due date, September 9th. He had a project he worked on all year long and people flying in from all over the country at work to bring it all together on September 9th.  As long as I could hold on until then, he could leave on Paternity in good shape.

I told him, "That really isn't up to me sweetie." 

But apparently our child is a considerate little bean because he waited until the evening of September 9th, when Daddy had met his deadline and felt at ease, to break my water. 

But my water breaking, I mean a confusing trickle.  It didn't happen like in the movies.  When it happened, DH looked at me and asked what was wrong because of the look on my face and not a puddle on the floor.  I said, "I think my water just broke?"

And when we got to the hospital at 11pm, I still wasn't 100% sure my water had broken.  We waited to get the fluid tested.  And then it was 25 hours of labor. Everything we expected, nothing we planned for.  That Birth Plan I spent so long on was as good as toilet paper. 

But we knew that Little Bean might be too big for me to vaginally birth and that a C-section was highly likely.  They thought he would be in the high 7 lb to low 8 lb range. I did want to try to have him without surgery though.

So, after hours of labor without an epidural, the next day I had them juice me up.  And it was amazing.  I was finally able to sleep through contractions.  I even had visitors.  My labor wasn't progressing naturally and there's a 24 hour clock that starts when the water breaks to when the baby should be born to avoid high risk of infection. They administered Pitocin to induce productive labor. At hour 23, we started pushing for the next 2 hours only for Baby Buckshot to end up stuck in my pelvis.  

The experience of a c-section is surreal.  Completely drugged up which being shoved and yanked, what I finally remember is hearing him cry when he was removed from my body and the doctor saying "He's bigger than we expected."  Yeah, 8 lbs 12 oz to be exact.  There was no way I was going to birth him out of my 5'2 frame.   Apparently he was very long and had big feet for a new baby too. 

But Mommy drugs are a weird thing.  I don't remember any of the unpleasantness of my labor experience, the same way I don't remember how uncomfortable I was during pregnancy.  This might be my sleep induced haze talking or my breastfeeding frustrated mind talking but it just wasn't that bad.

Birth Story: Part 3 - C-Section and the Technicolor Dream

I can't describe the disappointment I felt when the OB told me that the baby hadn't descended and that my only reasonable option was to have a C-Section.  I'm sure I could have said no and insisted on continuing to push but by the time the 25 hour mark came up, I was so tired and all the pushing felt so futile.

I relented and now have no regrets.

During the pushing, the nurse had removed my catheter to make more space for the baby to pass.  As a result, they had to reinsert the catheter before surgery which proved to be a difficult task because the baby's head had been pushed far enough to block access to the bladder. I'm not really sure how they handled this issue because I was exhausted and ready to sleep.

They wheeled me into the operating room and after a nifty bed switch with what felt like an inflatable raft, the anesthesiologist administered a local anesthetic which allowed me to stay awake during the C-Section without me feeling any of the pain.

Did I mention that before receiving my epidural I had an extreme case of involuntary shaking that continued after I had the epidural?  It scared the living daylights out of me at first because I thought I was seizing.  Turns out it was just my body's way of dealing with pain.  I started shaking uncontrollably again in the OR.

Now, a C-section is an odd experience.  They put up a barrier preventing any glimpse of anything below the shoulders.  The anesthesiologist talks and directs the staff like you aren't even there on the other side of a flimsy cloth wall.  I felt no pain but pressure but did feel violent pushing and yanking of my insides while my body shivered and shook.

Had I not already gone through a whole day of labor, experienced vomiting and someone manually voiding my bowels during pushing already, my birth story would be of this C-section alone where I was completely disconnected from my body and the moment.  Where labor and pushing were visceral, the C-section was totally clinical with an unreal dream like haze. When my baby was yanked from my body, the only way I knew that it was him and not some organ was that I heard his cry.  The only way I knew it was my baby was because I felt the yank vaguely in the lower parts of my body.

I heard the doctor say, "He's much bigger than I expected.  If I had known, I would have made a bigger incision."

I heard the someone else say, "Those are really big feet."

I heard my husband say, "8 pounds, 12 ounces?!"

I hear another voice say, "22 inches."

And I heard someone ask me if I wanted to hold him and I had to say "No."  I couldn't hold my baby. I felt weak and out of control from the anesthesia, my shaking had me worried that I would drop him. Instead, my husband held my little boy next to me and I was able to kiss him before he was taken away to recovery for my husband to do skin-to-skin with him and I stayed to be stitched up.

Then I passed out.