Sweet Yet Sour

It was a foregone conclusion for me that I would breastfeed Anna upon her arrival.  I never understood why people would opt for formula.  Breastmilk is free, always available and it looked easy.  Whoa Nelly was I wrong about the “easy” and “always available” part!  Now I know that breastmilk, while free, comes with a price.

During my eighth month of pregnancy Mike and I took a “Breastfeeding Preparation” class one Monday evening.  That day, I went to my boss and told her I needed to leave the office early to make it to the class.  Her response was, “Babies don’t suck like men, they suck hard.” Okay, thanks for the info…  (And they say that “kids” say the darnest things!  What about adults?)

My sister kept telling me that next to riding a bicycle, breastfeeding was the hardest thing she’s ever had to learn.  So I decided to take a class.  The class should prepare me, right?

In class we discussed why breastfeeding is good for both mom and baby and the physical process of when the milk comes (hormones, etc.), what it contains, etc.  We were given fake boobs (see Mike’s picture of ours here) to put into our baby doll’s mouth and we learned how to hold the baby while nursing.

After class, I felt prepared and ready for what was to come.  I knew how to hold the baby and direct it towards the boob and what breastfeeding was going to be like.

Here’s the first problem – the babies in class were fake.  They don’t move, they don’t scream and they don’t wave their little arms and legs around all while bopping their heads around like baby birds.

The second problem with class was that the fake boob and the nipple thereupon was not attached to me and my nerve cells, unlike my real boob.  The dula who taught the class kept saying “Breastfeeding should not hurt.”  This is cute, but it’s a lie.  It will hurt, at least for the first few weeks.  Anyone who tells you different has either not breastfed, does not have nerves in their nipples, or is lying to bring you into the breast feeding fold; I call these last people “breastfeeding Nazi’s” (BNs).

There’s a whole bunch of things that the BNs do not tell you.  I’m here, my fellow women, to give you the truth, because I know you can handle the truth and I know that you want the truth.These truths about breastfeeding are as follows:

1. Breastfeeding will hurt.  There’s just no way around it.  There’s a lot of nerves in those nipples and my boss was right, babies suck as if you are the thickest milkshake on the planet and there’s a chunk of strawberry stuck in the straw.  For weeks, I would literally cry myself when the baby began to cry for her feeding, and would then curse from the pain when she finally got latched on and started eating.  This will make you want to stop breastfeeding altogether and go the formula route.  If you hang in there though, it gets better.  Fortunately, once you and the baby get the hang of things, it stops hurting and in the meantime, there’s cooling pads, lanolin and drugs (Ibuprofin is your friend).

2.  The baby, who will be desperately hungry, moves, a lot.  This, along with the fact that both you and the baby are not versed in the correct manner of how to do things will make this whole process frustrating for everyone.  The poor baby is trying it’s best to get some food, but it’s not sure how to get the milk that it can smell somewhere near it’s nose.  In order to get the milk in the baby you need to somehow wrestle the baby so that you can pin the arms and legs that are flailing wildly, while trying to control the baby’s bobbling head, and if you have been taught correctly, you also have to somehow grab and hold your boob at the same time.

During this you are also supposed to be holding the baby correctly, and if you listen to the BN that was my in-hospital lactation consultant, you can’t use a pillow to support you or the baby.  Apparently no one is supposed to be comfortable during this process.  Trust me ladies, screw that crap, use a pillow, and if possible the hands of anyone in the room to get that baby to stop moving and into a semi head lock onto your boob.

3. You will need to buy lanolin for yourself and you will need to use it often – your nipples will thank you.  This stuff works to keep those poor tender nipples from becoming too painful.  Although I am frankly a little puzzled as to how someone figured out that lanolin works on this area. Did the thought process go something like this: “Hmm, my nipples really hurt.  Perhaps I should go over there and rub myself on that there greasy sheep…”?  And if this is true, were the Scottish the only ones who breastfeed comfortably until this information spread?

4. There is not one, but many holes in your nipple for the expressing of milk.  Until I saw this for myself, I was under the impression that the milk just came out in a huge stream like water out of a fire hose.  Wrong! There are multiple holes, and sometimes they all go at once (which looks like something like a sprinkler head) or they’ll switch off and on.  Some squirt up, some squirt down and some squirt straight out.  I have no idea what the biological advantage is to this set up, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.  It does however make you briefly feel like a circus freak until you hear from other women that this is normal.

5.  You will need an entirely new set of shirts to accommodate your new status as a breastfeeding mom.  The purpose of this new wardrobe will be to optimize the time it takes to get ready for a feeding, while having enough pattern and texture to hide the milk that you leak and conceal your constantly perky nipples.  I myself spent a trip to Ross with my sister pulling down on the V-necks of shirts, saying things like “I don’t think I can my boobs out quick enough in this one.”  Imagine that!  I spent almost my entire life trying to keep the boobs in my shirt (although with my size this wasn’t a huge problem), only to come to a point where I can think of nothing but whether or not they will be easily accessible.

You will leak milk all over yourself.  Accept this and simply buy shirts in patterns and dark colors where the wetness will not be so visible.  I myself took Anna and the dog out on a walk once and had a lovely conversation with a neighbor only to discover that I had spent the entire conversation with a huge (and very obvious) circular stain on each boob.  Nursing pads help, but sometimes when there’s a lot of milk, they are no use at all.

6. The milk is not always available.  It takes a little coaxing and then the milk will start to flow.  This is called “let-down”.  Sometimes, I can get let-down as soon as I hear the baby cry, when I hear other babies cry, and sometimes when I even just think about the baby.  Once let-down does it’s thing, the milk starts flowing whether there is a baby there to drink it or not.  Just last night I was getting out of the shower, thought about Anna briefly and then had to rush back into the shower and stand there until the milk stopped squirting out.  And then I had to take another shower to get all the milk washed off.  And then there was the other day when I was in a movie theater listening to the “Don’t make your own soundtrack” message before the movie and there was a baby crying in amidst the noise…

7. You will at times feel like a milk cow.  During the first few weeks when all the baby does is pee, poop and eat, you will feel like you are Bessy the cow with no other purpose than to express milk.  Thankfully, once the baby starts to smile at you and interact, your cow feeling will go away.

Unless you are like me and you watch “Dirty Jobs” frequently.  There was an episode a few weeks ago where the host, Mike Rowe, went to a dairy farm and into the “milking room”.  The farmer started talking about how they get the cows to achieve “let-down” and I started to really feel for the cows.  The worst part was when they showed Mike how to get the hair off of the cows’ nipples.  Apparently it’s for hygienic reasons; they need to get all the hair off the cow nipples since the hair gets dirty and could contaminate the milk.  Anyway, the process to get the hair off is to fire up a torch and pass it quickly and closely to the cow nipples to singe the hair off.

Great! Now I have to go find a lighter…