beginnings
When our baby girl made her entrance into the world, we were full of hope that she would be able to latch an hour or two after birth during skin-to-skin time, just like the videos in our childbirth and breastfeeding classes showed. This was not the case for our journey—my nipples remained inverted, and our baby girl was visibly frustrated that her fervent rooting resulted in no milk.
After requesting help from the on-site lactation consultant, they assured me that the tiny droplets of colostrum that I was hand-expressing and wiping into my daughter’s mouth were enough for this first day of life. The consultant returned later in the evening with a nipple shield and showed us how to use and adhere it more effectively with lanolin (I would later learn that this 18mm shield was too small for what I needed, and that is why it caused me so much pain—but this 18mm size is all that the hospital had on hand to offer me).
Our baby girl was able to latch onto the shield, but she was frustrated that the milk wasn’t flowing fast enough yet—I was still producing just droplets of colostrum. When a second lactation consultant came by the following morning, they brought several tools with them. First, a breast pump. Second, a syringe with a long, skinny tube. Third, a syringe with a thin, hooked tip. The consultant showed us how to use the hospital-grade breast pump to get my milk to come in. On that second day, I was pumping for ten minutes per session and getting 8ml of milk using the 24mm flanges provided to me.
To get our baby girl to latch onto the nipple shield and feel satiated, we used two of the consultant’s suggested methods. First, we filled a syringe with colostrum and attached the long, skinny tube to it. The consultant showed my husband how to place his index finger and the end of the tubing against the roof of our baby’s mouth to encourage her to suckle. We then slowly released the milk into her mouth and, sure enough, our baby began suckling and getting her fill!
After a couple feedings using this method, we gave the second suggested method a try. We filled the thin, hooked tip syringe with milk and manually filled the nipple shield that I was wearing. This provided our baby with instant gratification when she suckled, and encouraged her to continue nursing after the milk was emptied from the shield and she needed to work at my breast. I was so relieved when I felt—and saw—her expressing milk from my breast on her own. We were discharged from the hospital the next morning with our small bag of tools and looked forward to what we hoped would be a successful breastfeeding journey.
It would take us a while to get there, and that’s okay.