It was a classic setting. My husband, my brand new baby boy, and I had just come home from the hospital. After a sleepless night–but a good night, nonetheless, as we were in familiar surroundings–I woke and snuggled up in bed to nurse my sweet new baby boy.
But, he wanted nothing to do with it. As soon as he saw my breast, he fussed and turned away.
After about an hour of trying, we called the hospital and asked what we should do. The consensus was to take him back to the hospital.
Well, it was a rainy July 4, and a Saturday to boot, so we had to go to the emergency room.
My poor sweet baby boy was instantly diagnosed with jaundice and a lactation consultant was called to speak with me.
The instant the lactation consultant saw me, she exclaimed, “Oh my goodness are you ever engorged!”
She poked at my breasts and shook her head. My breasts were essentially the size of basketballs–so full that the milk was backing up into several, painful, larger-than-golf-ball sized lumps in my armpits.
“You’ve got hyperlactaion,” she uttered after a short examination. Then she called for a breast pump to be brought to me.
I praise God for that hospital grade Medela breast pump that came to my rescue that day. It relieved the tremendous pressure which I had previously thought was normal. Plus, it provided fresh milk for my poor little boy to eat.
Every three hours that night, I pumped, tried to breastfeed my baby who still wanted nothing to do with it, then bottle fed him pumped milk through a bottle.
The next morning we were released from the hospital–again. This time armed with more knowledge as to what was going on with my body.
When we got home, my hubby went out and rented a hospital grade pump so I could relieve the pressure and feed my baby. After about a month of renting, we went ahead and bought a Medela Freestyle pump.
I wish I could say that the Little Mister and I finally succeeded at breastfeeding. But that’s just not how our story went. I tried every day for hours to get the Little Mister to breastfeed, but he screamed each session and refused to properly latch on. We attended many lactation consultant meetings, met with other breastfeeding moms, and tried as best we could. But I was never able to successfully breastfeed my firstborn baby.
With a strong desire to provide him nourishing breast milk, I instead pumped my breast milk for him.
What was weird was that I quickly discovered that, even though I was only pumping two to three times per 24 hour period (I’d usually only pump when the pressure became too painful), I produced enough milk to feed my son six times over! Hence the reason I was told I had hyperlactation–I had an abundance of milk.
Other issues I had was waking up with my entire shirt and sheet soaked, my breasts would violently squirt milk pretty much no matter what (well, when they weren’t covered), and I’d go through a ridiculous amount of breast pads (I’d stuff about three thick cloth ones into my bra at a time).
After feeding my son, I would freeze my milk for future use. A vast majority of it was donated to our local milk bank.
After almost a year I decided to wean my son from breast milk (at the same time our doctor said he could switch to cow’s milk) because pumping was very annoying and because our freezer was SO overrun with milk that he had enough for another year anyway!
Wow! I cannot imagine! I have to say that I’m envious of your problem as I worked for months on end to bring my supply up to breastfeed my triplets. I finally succeeded (they’re 2.5 years old and still nurse, the little boogers 🙂 ). But…wow.
Of course the grass is always greener on the other side and I am *sure* you would have happily done without wet sheets, a bazillion nursing pads and the interruption of your breastfeeding relationship with your son! I commend you for pumping for a year – I always say pumping is harder than breastfeeding – and for donating so.much.milk!!!
Great job, mama! 🙂
I guess it was hyper-lactation. My baby did have jaundice and he had picked up strep form the needle in the internal fetal monitor. But I was a la lech league trainer and this was my fourth child to breast feed. You can imagine how shocked I was when he screamed every time I even tried to nurse him. Same thing, if it was not a bottle he would howl.
I had never heard of this happening even though I was as a leader, privy to most feeding problems. Because my baby was sick, he really needed my milk. I was also a producer and many times in the past was able to freeze and donate milk. My babies did not gain weight well on formula either. They looked like sausages on my milk. After consulting with the best of the best, I too rented a pump that would do both breasts at a time. In the old days, it was not that way…one at a time. The baby made amazing recovery. After 2 weeks on the pumped milk, the pediatrician was so impressed and asked what I had done to solve the issue. I told him, “There is more than one way to skin a cat, or get breastmilk in a baby.”
Every time i feed, i spray all over my baby’s face and head and caused such fussiness for 1.5 to 2 hours that both of us plus daddy are so upset. During baby’s 2 month checkup, the Lactation consultant recommended block feeding. Helped with the breast engorgement and blocked ducts which happened like every week, but the spraying continues to the point that my baby refuses to feed when alert and awake, now at 3 months. Night feeds are fuss-less, so every time I had to feed when he just wakes up from naps and not so alert yet. Either this, or i had to pump for 2 minutes before feeding.
The ironic thing is that during his first 3 days of life he lost so much weight that the hospital recommended I supplement with formula. I suspect my milk hasn’t come in yet due to serious lack of sleep and lack of food at the hospital stay, and also because we missed the golden baby’s first hour. I was left lying at the labour room with my husband once my episiotomy has been stitched up with no advice of breastfeeding whatsoever. Luckily i had taken prenatal classes and did some skin to skin contact once they returned my baby to me. Baby slept through the next 2 days and I didn’t know baby was hungry. The breastfeeding advice given was minimal during baby’s first 10 hours as he was born at midnight.