Is it normal to be so emotional about breast feeding?

[Writerwannabe83]

Hello everyone. This is my first post on the Feeding Forum and looking for some kind words and reassurance please.

I had my baby by ELCS last Friday and was kept in hospital until late Sunday night. Trying to establish BF was extremely difficult in that baby was very lethargic, vomiting after every feed and very difficult to attach. I was lucky if he was feeding once every 6 hours. He had to be seen by the Neonatal team 3 times because of concerns - he ultimately lost over 8% of his body weight within 48 hours and suffered premature jaundice.

I got very upset and disheartened by my BF difficulties and had a complete breakdown on the ward at about 4am on the Sunday morning - I was in absolute pieces, crying my eyes out, I couldn't talk, I was a mess, just walking around the labour ward totally distraught with a screaming baby, desperate to find someone to just make him stop crying. A member of staff found me and amidst my tears I just handed my baby over to her and told her to 'do something with him'. She offered to give him a cup feed of Aptamil (25mls) and as I agreed to it I felt like a complete and utter failure as a mother. I still cry now when I think about it.

For the duration of Sunday I just didn't stop crying, I felt like I was a terrible mother because I couldn't breast feed, I felt like I'd let my boy down, my husband down and that I was just useless. It was really, really awful. The doctors kept telling me to give bottles, which didn't help, but at my most vulnerable/desperate point I agreed to it - and as I watched the midwife feed my baby I just broke down again.

I spent all of Sunday in tears and like I said, if I even think about what I did (handing him over to the staff because I couldn't cope with his frustration and screaming) I cry. The staff were really supportive when I explained how I felt and they all said I was being too harsh on myself: they said that it was understandable that I'd hit 'breaking point' as I was in a lot of pain from the CS (I had been refusing strong pain relief because I thought it was affecting my baby), I'd had less than 6 hours sleep in 2 days, I was worried about my baby's health and that I was naturally very hormonal in ways most women are after birth. But in my head I can't forgive myself or justify what I did.

We came home on the Sunday night though with the general idea that we would switch to Formula and I felt pretty awful. I was in tears on the journey home. However, when we actually got home I realised that I wasn't ready to give up yet and with the AMAZING support of my husband we managed to turn a corner. We haven't used formula at all since coming home and baby is hopefully heading in the right direction. The Midwife is visiting tomorrow to re-weigh him and I'm praying his weight will be on the increase, I will feel so, so disheartened if not because I know it means I will still have failed.

I'm still having some problems with him latching on - my nipples are so, so sore but I'm determined to persevere. I have just spoken to my local Health Visiting Team and they have given me a number of the Breast Feeding Support Home Visiting Team so I'm going to call them and arrange a visit. After such a horrible start to BF I just need someone to tell me that what I'm doing is right.

I'm sorry this is so long - I don't even know what the point of it was really. I think I just needed to get it off my chest.

Hi OP. It could have been me posting this, eight months back. I just wanted to say how well you are doing - and the relentless feeding is a bloody good sign! They have stomachs the size of a golf ball and they will never grow so far or fast again on such little storage capacity. Stick the Moses basket by the bed of sofa, grab a load of drinks and snacks and just go with the flow. Doze when he is asleep, eat when he eats and enjoy the squishy newborn cuddles. It does pass (all too quick) and being kind to yourself now will pay dividends in the long run.

Congratulations on your new baby. :-)

Reading your posts Writer brings back so many memories!!

I remember feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and frustrated and constantly tearful all the time !!

Do use a dummy if it helps, my dd had one and it saved my sanity on more than one occasion, I think as long as they are not used excessively they can be very useful!! And yes to cancelling visitors - unless they are the kind that bring cake, will do the washing up and make you tea!!

Hope your o.kay, you are doing really well

Morning again everyone. Baby managed another 2.5hr sleep so I feel a bit more rested now. I text my planned visitors at 5am and cancelled them. Today is going to be a day of staying curled up in bed with DH, watching ?Box Sets and just focusing on feeding.

He had a feed this morning at 9am but then had two big vomits - I'm hoping it's just down to his belly being so full of milk after feeding all night. He fell asleep afterwards but I'll try waking him soon to try and feed him again, I don't think he kept anything down.

Great tip about only changing dirty nappies overnight, we will definitely try that tonight!!

Good decision on the guests, hope you have a reasonably restful day. And baby keeps milk down ! So annoying when they puke up all that precious BM. I used to want to cry when DS did that. Such a waste!!!

They do bring their milk back up a lot at this age, their little tummies are just so tiny. Don't worry about that either, he will let you know if he's hungry! Sometimes it looks like a whole feed but may well not be so if he still seems to be content even after bringing up his milk I'd just leave him be until he asks for more.

Your plan for the day sounds perfect. Isn't it crazy when you are actually pleased at sleeping for just 2 hours?! Just enjoy your cuddles, this time is actually gone so quickly, with my first it seemed a living nightmare but with my second I relished every bleary eyed moment of it because this time I knew how quickly things would change. Take care. xxx

I understand your reluctance to bedshare, it was something I thought I wouldn't get into until a week after we were home with my eldest we ended up in a different hospital with a mystery virus and the nurses put her in with me and talked to me about how to do it safely.

There's a report where they looked into bedsharing deaths and took a two year period and couldn't find a single one from breastfed babies. They only did it to prove a doctor wrong who hadn't checked and said he didn't think they would find one. It can be done safely, it can make breastfeeding so much easier and it can give you some sanity back. 90% of sleeping deaths (SIDS and accidents) are in a baby's own bed, it's so unusual that it sticks out when it's with parents but I've always thought that if SIDS is going to happen it's going to happen and I'd rather they were with me if it did.

Don't worry about the vomit, it always looks worse than it is. One of mine would bring everything back up and it would mean both beds needed changing, the floor needed cleaning, both of us needed to change our clothes and, as I was in hospital at the time, the nurse needed to too! She did that a couple of times a day.

You are doing really well. Just thought I'd add my two pence worth on a few things:

• Don't worry about waiting until a reasonable hour to text and cancel things if you need to. If people are daft enough to keep their phone on and by their bed (barring those you know have to for poorly relatives or whatever) it's their look out. I think a text at 4.20 can explain why you are cancelling more than words themselves ever can!

• I agree re nappies. If he is getting distressed, or waking up more, from a change at night then it is perfectly fine not to bother unless it is dirty or so full it might leak (which should be rare from wee in a newborn. Ok, the nappies are slightly larger, but think how much toddler wee a nappy routinely holds in a 3 hour period!). I have rarely changed nappies at night from very early on and it never bothered either of my two.

• I wondered about saying this last one, but it might be helpful (though it might be useless and you might not feel it applies to you at all!) so I'm just going to and it's meant in a spirit of support! IIRC you have a professional background and have spent quite a number of years in a job where you have to be fairly analytical and precise. Now that your son's weight is on the up, try not to carry toooo much of this way of thinking over into parenthood. So many of us (me with my first, my friends, people I see on here) carry this way of thinking from our professional lives into motherhood. We record, we analyse, we look for problems and we try and apply solutions (then get fed up when our carefully analysed solution doesn't work!). We worry ourselves silly every time something happens that isn't quite in line with what we know and researched. Life gets a lot easier when you learn to loosen that analytical grip and just roll with a more emotional based response. Because they are people, and people are unpredictable and because, actually, amassing loads of 'data' just uses up emotional energy. Does any of that make sense at all?

Your last paragraph makes perfect sense!! The weird thing is that despite my professional background I still feel completely clueless! I spend a lot of time with new mothers/new babies and giving BF support and when I look at my situation from a professional angle I know that I'd be as reassuring to the mother as you all have been to me - but now that I'm the mother instead of the professional I just feel lost and down on myself. It's a very weird feeling.

That is utterly normal. My friend who is a nanny, who had looked after dozens of babies quite intensively, felt the same . The hormones are all over the place (so there is a reasonably good chance you would cry at a cute advert, or a kitten, or other such rubbish), the stakes are much higher and suddenly it all seems too much. That's kind of why just letting the river of time carry you is sometimes a good plan. You'll hopefully look back in a month and think 'wow, we've come so far'.

Is your son unsettled in the day BTW? A soft sling can be a god send if you have one of those babies. DD1 was and people used to joke they didn't see her face until she was three months old!

Thankfully he is really settled in the day, he sleeps through most of it and goes longer between his feeds - he just has a personality transplant when the clock chimes 9pm

I have just fed him and as hard and as soul destroying as it's been over the last week, there is no feeling like it when I see him settled at the breast and feeding from me, it quite overwhelms me actually.

I got mixed views from various people re waking a sleeping baby to feed them, but you may at some point, if the days continue to be sleepy and the nights not, want to see if you can get him to take more food in the day. It could be that he's hungry come 9pm if he's not had so much milk up to that point? Just a little thought. But please don't go by this - you'll know what to do and when. I'm very very aware that you get so much blooody advice and most of it isn't not all is helpful.

Hope the sun is shining where you are. Are you getting much fresh air at the mo?

Writer I remember the days and nights being upside down and being totally bewildered about how they would right themselves again or if I would just be stuck in a nocturnal world forever! He did just switch at some point and started sleeping at night and spending more time awake in the day. It's so disorientating and confusing but it does get normal again.

Writer - we are continuing to see improvements here. Today we met other friends with babies in a local pub for lunch and I managed to breastfeed him discreetly in public - a HUUUUUGE achievement from this time last week where I was in tears all the time and he was only latching from one side and then from neither.

Nights seem to be ok - I know it's technically too early for a routine but he seems to feed around 3 hourly in the night and sleep for 2-2.5 hours at a time in between, from 8am-8pm

Keep at it - it's so hard!

I have just fed him and as hard and as soul destroying as it's been over the last week, there is no feeling like it when I see him settled at the breast and feeding from me, it quite overwhelms me actually.

This. This just put the biggest grin on my face :o This is what makes the whole struggle worth doing, and is the reason that longer-term breastfeeders get so evangelical about the whole thing

I managed to breastfeed him discreetly in public

This has also made me grin mrsmugoo :o :o

Just a quick note to say that the OP encapsulates all that's wrong with the breastfeeding culture at the moment. The pressure put on women to breastfeeding or feel like a failure is ludicrous. As long as the baby gets the nutrition it needs, you need to give yourself a break OP.

I'm glad you've had progress mrsmugoo - it's great you've made such an achievement. I suppose it's the milestones like yours that we can use as markets to see how things are getting better

home - I didn't feel like society viewed me as a failure at all, that's not why I felt as bad as I did. I felt so upset because breast feeding is something I really wanted to do, it's something I felt passionate about. I wasn't choosing to do it for society's approval but because it's what I wanted for me and my baby. When I cried at seeing the midwife give him some formula it was because I felt I had given up and I had let myself down as well as my son.

Yes, establishing breast feeding has been hard as my posts have been shown, it has been more physically and emotionally draining than I ever thought it would be, but that to me is not a good enough reason in my eyes to give up on something at this very early stage on something I really want to do.

I 100% agree with this.

Even after another had hour battle with him arching his back and turning his head away despite being starving - I'm not giving up and reaching for the bottles.

Not least because I don't want to have to spend the next 6 months sterilising and cooling bottles when I have breast milk on tap (and for free)

Ps) does anyone else get annoyed when comments are made to imply that dad's can't bond with their babies if the mother chooses to breast feed?! It drives me mad! It's just so rude! I've just had someone make such a comment to me and it's really annoyed me. My DH does so much stuff with the baby and they have a lovely relationship! I told my friend there's more to bonding than providing milk. I have actually come across women in the past who have given up breast feeding for this reason and it always upsets me....more so because the partner is usually the one to have planted the seed or come up with the idea. Thankfully my DH has said that he wants our baby to have the best start and if that means he can't sit with a bottle in his hand then so what?! Her comments have just upset me a little.

Yes, it annoys me too. Especially since it is bollocks and essentially an absorbed message from formula companies.

What annoys me most is the number of women I know in RL who put themselves to extra effort that they did not really want to to express or mixed feed so that the dad could 'bond' by giving a bottle (specifically not commenting on those who are keen to express or whatever), only to find that either: (1) the novelty was short lived, and they were stuck in a more time consuming routine for no reason; or (2) the dad thinks that giving the bottle means that they have done their bit and slacks off everything else.

Yep, roll your eyes and ignore. Its a load of rubbish

I was unable to ignore unfortunately but I kept my response civil and to the point.

The feeding frenzy has begun over here and I just don't understand where he puts all this milk. He fed on the left side for 20 minutes then an hour later went on the right side - he has been on there now for almost half an hour and is still going strong. I know they say you can't over feed a breast fed baby but this is ridiculous. Whenever I take him off the breast he always brings up a good amount of the feed so it must be that he's taking too a much in? We are getting through nappies like I can't believe. We've had 7 dirty nappies so far today and I'm anticipating many more throughout the night.

He's just such a greedy little boy. The good side though is that the more he feeds the more chances we have to perfect our technique - it's a lovely learning curve we are on together

Tbh I was never very good at ignoring either.

Ds4 was like that, clusterfeeding from about 6 untill he passed out at around 11!

Yes! Or, worse, that the grandparents/aunt/uncles/random friends need to bond with this tiny new person. Fuck off and let the parents have a chance, your baby will be around for the next 80 years for the rest of the world to have a shot!

The food thing doesn't stop, my 16mo today ate a bowl of cheerios with 5oz cows milk to drink and half a banana for breakfast, got through 8 mini rice cakes and 2 biscuits at toddlers, a scrambled egg with a slice of toast and another half a banana for lunch, 5 organix biscuits (possibly more) at my mum's when I went for an eye test, then half a large fish cake, a handful of chips, some peas, a yoghurt and a digestive for dinner :o they have hollow legs and arms, I'm dreading the teenage years :o