HI everyone,
I am 17 weeks up the duff with DC2 (yes, I know, ages to go yet.... but I'm seriously stressing about feeding!) My experiences with my first DS were, well, appalling. Basically a miserable failure - not sure what was wrong, but I had the whole gamut of new lipstick nipples, blanching, cracks, scabs, and awful pain (to the extent I would have to wad up paper towels and bite on them while feeding - not just initial let-down pain, but constant pain like someone was wrenching at my poor nips with a pair of pliers). Plus DS had something wrong with his latch, so in the first days after birth he would spend up to an hour at the breast, only to drop off exhausted and then wake 10-15 minutes later still starving. He would get jaw spasms, become too tired to feed, etc. He ended up severely dehydrated (and with jaundice), under phototherapy and a gnat's off needing to be tube fed because he was almost too weak to take a bottle.
I don't know what I could have done differently to make things better. I even stayed extra time in hospital in order to try to get it right (not that the BF support in hospital was any good).
I managed to express for 12 weeks, at which time I think DS got physically bigger and so was able to latch on without me suffering! We managed to BF until he was 18 weeks, when my milk supply just packed in (probably - according to the lactation consultant I ended up seeing - as a result of too-infrequent expressing in the very early days).
DS will be 2.5 when the new one arrives, and there's just no way I will be able to keep up that regime of expressing if I have the same troubles with no. 2.
I read advice on here on how to successfully BF, and some posters say things like "for the first few weeks all you should be doing is sleeping and feeding your baby". How do I do that with a demanding toddler in tow? Plus I have no family support other than DH - no mum or MIL to help, etc.
Any thoughts on how I can make this work? I want to, but not at the expense of my sanity!