Tell a friend about the
Militant Breastfeeding Cult

Nursing Baby Wilhelmina

my first child, by Heidi A. Little, MBCGuru

When I became pregnant with my first child in 1991, I knew I would breastfeed. It's best for baby, after all, and I wanted to give my baby the best. My water broke in the early morning hours of October 29th. I didn't go into labor, so my doctor started an induction around 8AM. After a couple doses of Nubain to dull the pitosin heightened labor, my little girl was born at 3:57PM, weighing 6 pounds, 6 ounces. I only gave her a quick hug before they whisked her off to the nursery. She was healthy. This was standard hospital procedure in the antiquated Naval hospital where she was born. This delayed our first nursing by at least a couple of hours.

While in the nursery, they determined her blood-sugar was low. Their answer -- formula! "Only an ounce," they told me while they assured me it was necessary. They first brought Wilhelmina to me to nurse about 2 hours after she was born. She was sleepy and didn't nurse well and I felt very awkward. She stayed with me for a while before going back to the nursery to be checked again. More low blood-sugar, more formula. She fussed on and off during the night, so I tried rocking and walking her. The staff had us on a 4 hour feeding schedule. I was anxious to get home to nurse her on cue. Finally her blood-sugar evened out and she didn't need any more formula. My doctor signed us out 24 hours after her birth, and we went home the evening of October 30th: daddy, mommy, and baby with our free samples of formula and little bottles of glucose water. When we got home, I dressed her for bed (I have pictures of her screaming during the process) and nursed her.

My milk came in a few days later. I was somewhat engorged. One breast was so firm she couldn't latch on and I had to pump just a little milk to soften it up before she could feed, so I started stockpiling little bags in the freezer. The next two weeks were a struggle. I tried to feed her on demand, but whenever she fussed before 2 hours had passed, I put her off. I figured she couldn't be hungry that soon and if she was then she needed to learn to take a full meal at her feedings. The problem was, she was a sleepy nurser. No sooner did she start to eat, then she dozed off. I worked at keeping her awake, stripping her down and tickling her feet. It didn't work very well and that upset me. We got into a cycle where she was too tired to nurse well, and too hungry to sleep well. When she was awake to nurse, she typically stiffened up in my arms, making it difficult for me to feed her well.

As all new babies, she didn't sleep for long periods of time and I was exhausted from getting up with her night after night. One night, I had my husband get up with her and give her a bottle of expressed milk. I pumped in the dark quiet of my bedroom so I could get back to sleep more quickly. Unfortunately, my husband decided to make bacon (at 3AM) and proceeded to turn on lights and bang pans, stimulating Wilhelmina. Needless to say, she woke up at 3AM each of the nest few nights, but I wasn't about to let my husband have her again, so I did the night duty by myself, becoming more exhausted, and frustrated, by the day.

Wilhelmina wasn't back to her birth weight at her 2 week appointment. I was disappointed. Luckily, the doctor didn't advise supplementing and just scheduled a weight check for the following week. As I left the appointment, I stopped in the Navy cafeteria where I ate chili for lunch. Really good chili, too! That night, when Wilhelmina woke around midnight, she refused to nurse. It was a long night of her crying, refusing to nurse, and dropping into an exhausted sleep only to wake again a short while later. The morning was no better, she still wouldn't nurse. I put a call in to the doctor who told me that the chili had probably affected the flavor of the milk and not to worry about it, she'd nurse again soon. But I did worry. I was sure it would damage my milk supply and I just knew it couldn't be good for her to go that long without anything to eat. I had read somewhere that sometimes a baby will drink expressed milk from a bottle even if she doesn't like the flavor from the breast, so I pumped and tried to feed her. At first she wouldn't take it, probably picking up on my stress. Finally she drank it all down. I was very relieved. It was about 12 hours since her last good meal. After that, things returned to normal, or at least as normal as they get for a 2 week old baby. Unfortunately, I just didn't understand that -- or her.

By her 3 week weight check, Wilhelmina was back to her birth weight and the doctor was satisfied. He sent me home with the instructions, "keep doing what you're doing." That was a confidence boost -- after all, my doctor thought I was doing OK, even when I felt totally lost.

She was only about 4 weeks old when she learned to sleep through the night. One night she woke me up and I was so exhausted I was slow getting to her. By the time I leaned over her bassinet to pick her up, she had fallen back to sleep. A couple hours later she fussed again. I remember saying, "I'm coming, Mina," but I never made it. I couldn't get up. When morning arrived, I was surprised! And very glad! It continued, so I moved her from her bassinet in my room to the crib in her own room.

Wilhelmina was no longer falling asleep at the breast during regular feedings, which was good, but she was still slow about nursing. My friend told me I shouldn't let her nurse longer the 15 minutes on each side, maybe 20. So, after 15-20 minutes on one breast, I unlatched her and switched her to the other side. I seemed to have enough milk, though I was never really quite sure, and my daughter seemed happy enough. I trained her to take a pacifier during this time, also, to help her stop fussing between feedings. I tried to feed her on cue, but to me that meant no closer than 2 hours apart and 15-20 mintues per side, so I needed something to help her make the time. Nursing for comfort was not allowed. That's what pacifiers were for. Also, I occassionally gave her water to drink (those little bottles from the hospital) to stop the hiccups she got so frequently. The hiccups made her spit up and that bothered me.

When she was just 5 weeks old, my husband and I were offered tickets to a Navy submarine ball. We saw this as a great opportunity, so we called in a babysitter and went out for the night. There was plenty of expressed milk in the freezer for Wilhelmina's bed time feeding, so the babysitter fed her a bottle. She was sound asleep when I came home, so I pumped my breasts, froze the milk and went to bed.

One other night stands out in my mind. It was Wilhelmina's bed time. I dressed her and turned out the lights in her room. I rocked her while she nursed. After she had completed her allotted time on each breast, I unlatched her and continued to rock her. I remember watching her tiny face relax and feel her weight sinking into my arms. I also remember telling her she had to go to bed and fall asleep on her own, while desperately wanting to hold her and rock her to sleep.

The end of that month saw my husband leaving for a sea tour and Wilhelmina and I were alone. I really struggled. I didn't understand my baby. I got angry at silly things, particularly when she stiffened or kicked the side of the chair when I nursed her. I started seeing a councelor. She commented on the wonderful bond she saw between my baby girl and me, but I was dumbfounded. Was that really a bond? I didn't feel it.

Wilhelmina got her first airplane ride just before she hit 3 months. We flew to my parents house for a weeklong vacation. While I was there, she got a bottle of expressed milk from my dad while I worked out at the gym with my mother. A couple days later, she was acting very fussy -- hungry -- and my milk didn't seem to satisfy her. I didn't fully understand the supply-demand process of breastfeeding, so I didn't realize if I nursed her a lot more, my supply should pick up. Of course, with the limited nursing and early sleeping through the night, I may have limited prolactin receptors and thus limited my milk supply, too. It's impossible to say in hindsight. When my mom came home from work that day, she thought Wilhelmina seemed hungry, too, so I made up the sample packet of formula I had brought along "just in case" and then went to the grocery store for more formula and some rice cereal. She was really too young for the cereal, but that's the way my mom had done it, and I had no other advice at the time.

I started by replacing one breastfeeding per day with one formula feeding from a bottle. It immediately created problems for nursing as she tried to take my nipples like the artificial nipple on the bottle. I switched bottle nipples a couple of time until I found one that worked. Nursing her still wasn't quite the same, though. One bottle/day quickly became two. Two turned into three, then four. It sort of just "happened." She chose it, not me. She liked it better. She could look around while feeding and it was definitely faster and easier for her. Each nursing became more of a struggle while she squirmed at the breast. Finally Wilhelmina was only nursing once per day -- in the morning when she woke.

Then came April. One morning when I got her up we headed to the couch as usual and curled up to nurse. She wouldn't. I put her back into her bed for a while, then tried again. No go. She got a bottle of formula and that was the end of breastfeeding Wilhelmina. My mother, who was at my house that morning, tells me she still remembers how "angry" I was with Wilhelmina. But I wasn't angry. I was disappointed. I had intended to nurse her for a full year, and I didn't even make 6 months. I felt like a failure beacause I was unable to give my daughter the best.

I have since nursed 4 babies successfully well past their 1st birthday, so I know I can do it. Looking back, there were a lot of little factors that contributed to ending my nursing relationship with Wilhelmina early. It started in the hospital, when they didn't allow me to hold and nurse her right after birth, then gave her 3 or 4 formula supplements. It continued at home with the occassional bottle feeds I gave her in the first few weeks and the pacifier I gave to her as well as the restricted nursing style I adopted. Early sleeping through the night, which dropped the number of nursings in each 24 hour period didn't help. By the time she went through a growth spurt at 3 months, I was set up for needing formula. My milk supply was on the edge, I had limited my prolactin receptors, Wilhelmina had experience with artificial nipples. The samples from the hospital made it easy.

I missed a lot of wonderful moments in those early months and I'm afraid Wilhelmina did, too, as I stressed over breastfeeding and tried to control even that aspect of my relationship with my daughter. I have had to work at building a foundation that began shakey. Wilhelmina is a wonderful 9 year old now, but I look back on that time with regret. I would do so much differently now, to give her what I knew she needed. But hindsight is 20/20 and I can think about the time we did have nursing, curled up together on the couch or in the rocking chair. We did have our good times. One of her very first smiles was when she was hungry and I opened my shirt -- she gave me the biggest grin when she saw her food source. In the early months she woke around 6:30 to nurse and we would have a nice peaceful time in the rocking chair before I put her back to bed for another hour. I'm glad I was able to offer her that.

[ back ]