Geek parenting: annoyances become puzzles.
I still owe a birth story. But this post isn't it.
I'm breastfeeding Beka, and we were experiencing a bit of a latch-on problem, meaning she was getting red-faced, screaming frustrated, and I was experiencing no small amount of pain, both at every feeding.
From my point of view, she would open her mouth nice and big, exactly like she's supposed to, take a big bite of boob (like she's supposed to), take one suck, stop, think about it, then pull back to chomp on ONLY the nipple itself. Which, for those of you who don't know, is not only counterproductive in terms of getting milk out of the boob efficiently, but hurts like HECK.
She did this consistently for about twenty minutes at the beginning of each feeding, screaming when I took away the nipple and seemingly utterly refusing to take a nice big bite even though I knew she could. Eventually she would settle into a halfway-decent latch (more than just the nipple, but about half the boob volume she CAN nurse on), which hurt but not LIKE HECK, and feed like that. If I squashed the boob flat with one hand (in the same direction as her mouth), it hurt little enough that I could take it for the time period of the feeding.
This was, for obvious reasons, nerve-wracking. It also led to exciting side-effects. At one feeding, for example, when she finally settled in to nurse and I was checking the corner of her mouth for milky bubbles, she pulled off to display a wash of bright red blood all over her mouth and my boob -- umyeah. They call them 'cracks' technically, but what she did was raise a blood blister through the way she was sucking, and then it popped. Meanwhile, I got heart palpitations trying to figure out if it was MY blood or HER blood ...
So yesterday we bought me a nipple shield. All I hoped for from it was an extra layer of chomp-protection to give me a bit of a rest. However, on its first offering, she NOMMED onto it and instantly went right to the 'I am a breast pump going chug chug chug chug' phase of the feeding. I was amazed. And pleased, of course. Plus it didn't hurt nearly as much.
I did all subsequent feedings with it that night, and a new puzzle arose -- she didn't sleep nearly as long (like, by half), so I was up and down with her all night to settle fussing and feed her again. About 4:30 I thought I'd try a feeding without the shield, just to see, and although she did have a bit of her Old Trouble before settling in, she fed a lot longer and stayed asleep for hours. So this morning I started her with the shield, and when she started to taper off, took it off and finished the feeding naked; the total feeding length was back up to her usual, and she went down like a champ right after, as per her pre-shield usual.
Then I read about nipple shields in our How To Breastfeed book from the hospital, and discovered something interesting. Among other things they do, they reduce flow rate. Looking back at her refusal gestures, and knowing how fast my milk came in (and how easy it is to express), I'm now hypothesizing that part of the problem is that when she got a good, solid grip, suddenly a firehose of milk hit her in the back of the throat, which probably anyone would find disconcerting. Her pull-offs and improper latches may have been an attempt to get less and control the flow rate.
Since we've proven it works for starting the feeding, and have largely shown that with the shield on she can't strip the boob (to get a full, deep feed), we're going to be doing half-on, half-off for a while to get the best of both worlds. As she ages and gets in practice with this (and my breasts adjust and stop providing oversupply), she'll probably relish the gushing, at which point we can quit using the shield.
So it looks like we've got that one solved, though I'll need a few more days of consistent data-collection to be sure. I'm so glad I was finally able to frame it as a puzzle, because the escalating cycle of scream/pain/scream/failure was really starting to get to me. As stupid as it is to end up feeling angry at a newborn, it was still hard to avoid doing so by reflex. I *knew* it was probably something I or my boob was doing without knowing we were doing it, but it LOOKED like her recalcitrance.
I'm glad it's not. I'm also glad that feedings now no longer have to employ some of the same patterned breathing and distraction techniques that I used getting through contractions ...
I'm breastfeeding Beka, and we were experiencing a bit of a latch-on problem, meaning she was getting red-faced, screaming frustrated, and I was experiencing no small amount of pain, both at every feeding.
From my point of view, she would open her mouth nice and big, exactly like she's supposed to, take a big bite of boob (like she's supposed to), take one suck, stop, think about it, then pull back to chomp on ONLY the nipple itself. Which, for those of you who don't know, is not only counterproductive in terms of getting milk out of the boob efficiently, but hurts like HECK.
She did this consistently for about twenty minutes at the beginning of each feeding, screaming when I took away the nipple and seemingly utterly refusing to take a nice big bite even though I knew she could. Eventually she would settle into a halfway-decent latch (more than just the nipple, but about half the boob volume she CAN nurse on), which hurt but not LIKE HECK, and feed like that. If I squashed the boob flat with one hand (in the same direction as her mouth), it hurt little enough that I could take it for the time period of the feeding.
This was, for obvious reasons, nerve-wracking. It also led to exciting side-effects. At one feeding, for example, when she finally settled in to nurse and I was checking the corner of her mouth for milky bubbles, she pulled off to display a wash of bright red blood all over her mouth and my boob -- umyeah. They call them 'cracks' technically, but what she did was raise a blood blister through the way she was sucking, and then it popped. Meanwhile, I got heart palpitations trying to figure out if it was MY blood or HER blood ...
So yesterday we bought me a nipple shield. All I hoped for from it was an extra layer of chomp-protection to give me a bit of a rest. However, on its first offering, she NOMMED onto it and instantly went right to the 'I am a breast pump going chug chug chug chug' phase of the feeding. I was amazed. And pleased, of course. Plus it didn't hurt nearly as much.
I did all subsequent feedings with it that night, and a new puzzle arose -- she didn't sleep nearly as long (like, by half), so I was up and down with her all night to settle fussing and feed her again. About 4:30 I thought I'd try a feeding without the shield, just to see, and although she did have a bit of her Old Trouble before settling in, she fed a lot longer and stayed asleep for hours. So this morning I started her with the shield, and when she started to taper off, took it off and finished the feeding naked; the total feeding length was back up to her usual, and she went down like a champ right after, as per her pre-shield usual.
Then I read about nipple shields in our How To Breastfeed book from the hospital, and discovered something interesting. Among other things they do, they reduce flow rate. Looking back at her refusal gestures, and knowing how fast my milk came in (and how easy it is to express), I'm now hypothesizing that part of the problem is that when she got a good, solid grip, suddenly a firehose of milk hit her in the back of the throat, which probably anyone would find disconcerting. Her pull-offs and improper latches may have been an attempt to get less and control the flow rate.
Since we've proven it works for starting the feeding, and have largely shown that with the shield on she can't strip the boob (to get a full, deep feed), we're going to be doing half-on, half-off for a while to get the best of both worlds. As she ages and gets in practice with this (and my breasts adjust and stop providing oversupply), she'll probably relish the gushing, at which point we can quit using the shield.
So it looks like we've got that one solved, though I'll need a few more days of consistent data-collection to be sure. I'm so glad I was finally able to frame it as a puzzle, because the escalating cycle of scream/pain/scream/failure was really starting to get to me. As stupid as it is to end up feeling angry at a newborn, it was still hard to avoid doing so by reflex. I *knew* it was probably something I or my boob was doing without knowing we were doing it, but it LOOKED like her recalcitrance.
I'm glad it's not. I'm also glad that feedings now no longer have to employ some of the same patterned breathing and distraction techniques that I used getting through contractions ...