When I was pregnant with my first baby, 4 years ago, I had it in my mind that my baby would be breastfed for the first year of his life. I really thought the whole thing would be so easy and the hardest part would just be me making the decision to actually do it.
I was so wrong and there were so many things I was unprepared for. Not only that, but there were some things in nursing that no one could have really prepared me for, either.
Sure, I took the obligatory breastfeeding class at the hospital while I was pregnant. I even made my husband go along with me, but we giggled a lot. {I know you did some, too!} 🙂 At the end of our class, I had learned a lot, but I’ve realized a few things that class could not have prepared me for.
5 Things No One Can Prepare You For in Breastfeeding
1. With your first child, those constant nightly feedings can be absolutely brutal. No one can prepare you for the newborn fog and the feeling of helplessness you get from exhaustion. There will be nights you might even feel like you just went to sleep when you hear your baby up again, ready to nurse. You can’t comprehend how tired you will feel until you are in that moment.
2. No one prepared me for the amount of time I’d spend waking my baby up, keeping him awake, or waking him BACK up to eat. I’ll never forget laying my only-in-a-diaper baby on the cold coffee table just for a second because it was supposed to wake him up. Thankfully, it worked!
3. It’s definitely not easy. Now everyone is different but this was the case for me. The first two weeks were the hardest. I wasn’t prepared for complications. I wasn’t prepared for it to hurt so much. I wasn’t prepared for engorgement. Thankfully it does get easier.
4. You need support. If breastfeeding is something you really want to do, and is important to you, then you need to find someone who supports you. Hopefully it’s your significant other and if not, hopefully you have someone close to you in your life who can be your cheerleader. Otherwise, it’s so easy to quit when things get hard. Of course, quitting is perfectly fine, but you’d hate to regret quitting later on.
5. I never knew how much my child was eating. I was secretly jealous of the formula feeding moms because they knew exactly how much their baby was eating just by looking at what was left, or not left, in the bottle. I felt like I was always just hoping my baby was satisfied, gaining weight, and I was doing a good job as the nutrition provider, yet never REALLY knowing.
What about you? What was something no one could have prepared you for in breastfeeding?
I think there were MORE than a few things I was not prepared for but one that a lot of people don’t talk about is feeling, at times, that your body is not your own and that being frustrating. Sometimes your body just feels like it is along for the ride with the boobs…the leaky boobs, the achy boobs, the boobs that really can get in the way of feeling like yourself and….I will say it…the boobs that can get in the way when you want to be intimate with your husband (“Not now honey, they are leaking again!”).
I had a harder time keeping myself awake than I did keeping my newborn awake. It was partly the exhaustion but I think it was mostly hormonal. I could feel completely rested, sit down to nurse her, and within minutes I was dozing off. I felt drugged. Eyes rolling back, head bobbing around and jerking up, straight up passing out while feeding her. DH used to sit with us and make sure I stayed awake.
Hi Bri! I thought that was only me!! I seriously thought something was wrong with me. How did you overcome this? I have a 2-wk old so I really could use any advice!
I am one of those that “loved breastfeeding”. I could go on and on about how appreciative I am of the fact that it came easy to us, but I won’t. I won’t because it was hard. Beautiful AND Hard.
I got to a point where my daughter (who latched the moment she came out) would scream and push away from me in extreme pain and disgust. I was five weeks in and about to go back to work so I needed to get the situation figured out. I went to see the lactation consultant at our pediatrician’s office. She was wonderful- nothing like the ladies in the hospital that never stopped in to check on me because the baby latched so their job was done. ( I realize that not all nurses handle it that way- it was just my experience in the hospital.)
She taught me that I was causing my baby to have gas and that there was a way to avoid it. Rather than timing her feedings and making sure she ate on each side for a set amount of time, I let her nurse on one side until she stopped. At that point, I let her try the other side and if she was finished, I let her stop. This took away the timers, and the stress and the dreaded gas. Instead of getting the watery, gas causing milk she got the good stuff that comes at the very end. My daughter started sleeping more and was generally happier to be around and it allowed me to enjoy feeding her.
To this day, breastfeeding tops my favorite “babyhood” memories!