Breastfeeding

I had always know I wanted to have children but it had never crossed my mind how I would feed them breast or bottle I hadn't given it a thought.

It wasn't until I fell pregnant that I had a natural urge to want to give breastfeeding a go and make it work.

After a week of pre labour and eight hours of established labour our little bundle of love was born; for nine months I had dreamed of this moment, of putting her to my breast and her latching instantly and feeding like a dream.

But she didn't.

She kept falling asleep.

She couldn't open her mouth wide enough to get a decent latch.

24 hours went by and she hadn't had a proper feed.

I felt so inadequate, I could sense the worry from my partner.

I just wanted to cry.

The midwife tried to assist but my baby was distressed and I was distressed. This wasn't how I pictured her first hours in this world.

They let me go home to try in a more relaxed environment, but my baby still wasn't latching properly at home. We ended back in hospital and I was shown how to hand express to get some colostrum, that good old liquid gold, and used a syringe to give it to my daughter.

Eventually we cracked a latch, and I felt so much relief. I had read that the first few weeks the nipples would be sore. So I pushed through the discomfort and used a range of remedies to ease the pain.

However six weeks came and the pain hadn't eased at all; my nipples were so tender I winced as water fell onto them in the shower, even wrapping a towel around me after a shower was excruciating.

I came to the point where when I could see my daughter's hunger cues my body would tense up and I would become filled with dread, knowing that when she latched on it would feel like the inside of her mouth was full of sharp blades. Whenever my nipples were exposed to cool air or if I was cold even with clothes on they would become so painful and ache.

But I persisted, health visitors and midwives said it would pass, that the latch looked fine and everything looked OK.

Why didn't I just give up? I had such a strong will power to give my daughter the most natural start in life and it was my personal choice. I deserved that choice. I wanted it to work out.

I visited my GP and was told to give up, that I had tried and that they didn't know what was wrong.

The thing is I had such a huge nagging inside that just told me 'this isn't normal, something is wrong here and you need to find out what!''

I did a lot of my own research, looking up the symptoms that I had and found that I had nipple vasospasm, so I took this information back to the GP and was given some temporary medication to help with the symptoms. But it didn't find the cause of these symptoms.

I couldn't carry on, and no way could I quit, so by now my daughter was 8 weeks old and I began to exclusively pump my milk and feed my daughter this way.

I felt so lost, none of the women in my family breastfed longer than a couple of weeks and hadn't had any issues. My friends who breastfed didn’t experience what I had so I had no knowledge on what I could do.

So I turned to Facebook groups and found a local breastfeeding group in my area.

I can still to this day remember the first time I attended the group, I can see my daughter in her tiny white cardigan and summery playsuit, only 9 weeks old, snuggled in the pram. This is where I met my saviour! A lactation consultant — I had no idea such a profession existed! This lady diagnosed my daughter with posterior tongue tie. I felt such a huge relief, but dread at the same time; my poor baby has tongue tie.

Until then I had never heard of tongue tie. She did an examination of my daughter's mouth, showed me the tie and said with a simple procedure it could be corrected.

I was absolutely elated!! I no longer felt alone, lost, helpless and that I was crazy for not giving up.

So back to the GP we went and got ourselves on a wait list to get the tie corrected. This was the hardest choice I ever had to make, but it was over in a heartbeat and immediately after the procedure my daughter latched on and had the best feed of her life. It felt entirely different and pain free!

But the struggle wasn't over yet.

My nipples had incurred so much damage that they needed time to heal, my daughter needed to strengthen her tongue to adapt to her new range of movement and this would take time. I continued to exclusively pump and every so often would bring her to the breast to see if there was an improvement.

At 12 weeks old finally we were able to breastfeed pain free and haven't looked back! She is about to turn two years old and now we are going through the process of gently weaning.

I wanted to share this experience to bring more awareness to posterior tongue tie; for any mothers out there who are going through this or who have already, you are not alone!

To all the mothers out there experiencing challenges with breastfeeding, trust your instincts, source support from as many varied professionals as possible, and stay strong!