Our breastfeeding journey was not easy from the get go. To say that it was challenging is an understatement. It was difficult, and the pandemic presented additional challenges an already difficult situation.
Few hours in as a new mother, the neonatal nurse told us my baby couldn’t latch because of a tongue tie. The same observation was soon confirmed by the hospital pediatrician. Our baby cried loud and long every two hours or so. He was hungry, and I tried so hard to get him to latch even though I had some complications after the long labor. I could barely move my arms due to a port access in the crook of my arm necessary for a CT Scan. Due to the pandemic, the maternity ward had only one lactation consultant per shift. We didn’t meet her until our third day in the hospital and by then my milk still hasn’t come in. My husband was helping me use the manual pump we were given to get the colostrum - it was all they had, until the lactation consultant provided the hospital grade pump after her visit. By then our baby was already dropped five ounces. I finally agreed to supplement him with formula even though I was hesitant to let him be bottle fed as I truly wanted to breastfeed and didn’t want him to get nipple confusion (and later on would find out that may not be a big deal) But we couldn’t take the heartbreaking crying and relented. Thank goodness for formula!
Few hours in as a new mother, the neonatal nurse told us my baby couldn’t latch because of a tongue tie. The same observation was soon confirmed by the hospital pediatrician. Our baby cried loud and long every two hours or so. He was hungry, and I tried so hard to get him to latch even though I had some complications after the long labor. I could barely move my arms due to a port access in the crook of my arm necessary for a CT Scan. Due to the pandemic, the maternity ward had only one lactation consultant per shift. We didn’t meet her until our third day in the hospital and by then my milk still hasn’t come in. My husband was helping me use the manual pump we were given to get the colostrum - it was all they had, until the lactation consultant provided the hospital grade pump after her visit. By then our baby was already dropped five ounces. I finally agreed to supplement him with formula even though I was hesitant to let him be bottle fed as I truly wanted to breastfeed and didn’t want him to get nipple confusion (and later on would find out that may not be a big deal) But we couldn’t take the heartbreaking crying and relented. Thank goodness for formula!
We took our sweet baby for his tongue tie to be clipped when he was six days old. I cried as he cried after the tie was clipped and as I saw blood flowing from his mouth while I breastfed him to help heal the tiny incision. Despite the tongue tie release, we still struggled. We found out our baby has torticollis, a stiffness in the neck muscles, most likely due to the length of time he was in the birth canal and the challenges we had in the birthing process. The torticollis prevented him from having a comfortable position during breastfeeding, and caused him to ingest more gas than was necessary. We had to perform physical therapy exercises ourselves after seeing a pediatric physical therapist virtually, to help with the torticollis. No one was accepting in person appointments. His latch was still shallow and very painful, but he was starting to gain weight. I plodded on and applied nipple cream and wore silver cups to soothe my nipples in between feedings. By then I was already used to the sight and feeling of my wounded nipples and the big blister on my baby’s lip. When he was a month old, I suffered an incredibly painful clogged duct. My husband picked me up from the floor crying in pain and he took the day off. I slept for two hours that felt like a glorious 8 hours and woke up feeling better.
Shortly before his second month we finally discovered that he also had an upper lip tie, which explains why he still had a shallow latch and always had a blister on his upper lip. We had another tongue tie release and included the upper lip tie. Things started to improve, and we no longer struggled to latch.