A baby feeding story shared by a customer recently…
She writes: “I have a precious wee girl who is six weeks old tomorrow, she was born via elective c-section on her due date as she was breech. My three boys who are all quite a bit older (12,11,10yrs) were all born naturally, so lets just say it was an experience i’d never really thought i’d end up having.
The birth went really well, and my recovery has been great too. I stayed in Hospital for 2 nights then transferred to a birthing unit (I will not disclose which one) for the following 48 hours. I thought that breast feeding seemed to be going well and baby was latching well – it was all good. When bubs was 4 days old one of the midwifes at the birthing centre informed me that ‘she should not be making sound’, I had queried that earlier while at the hospital only to be told that some babies do that and it was not a problem because she was latched well and feeding well. Anyway shall we just say that it all went downhill from there!
I ended up with severly cracked nipples, and was having vapour treatments on them at the birthing centre (having to get someone to drive me there and make sure hubby was there to look after the kids), anyway my nipples weren’t healing and then we discovered that I had a staf infection, on antibiotics I went, by now I was expressing and bottle feeding my wee treasure. After a week of antibiotics I still wasn’t healed so I ended up on 2 different antibiotics. (what a nightmare).
My midwife was awesome!!!! She arranged for me to see a lactation consultant (which I wanted to do) to try to get bubs back on the breast when I finally was healed. When I met with the consultant (she was lovely) she said I can see what the problem is – your baby has type four tongue tie – I felt awful, they had asked me that on the phone (lactation consultant) and I said ‘no she can poke her tongue out without any problems), but I didn’t realise there were different types and type four is very hard to diagnose! Because her tongue doesn’t cover her bottom gum when she is latched on – this is what was causing all the damage (craters) to my nipples.
My precious wee girl is booked in to have her tongue tie snipped on the 5th, they say we’ll be away laughing as soon as it’s done – I really hope so as I really want to breastfeed my baby and i’m finding expressing and bottle feeding really hard. I must admit though i’m really nervous because by the time she has this done on Thursday it will be a good month since she was on the breast – I hope she goes back to it.
Kelly
