When I was about five months postpartum and exclusively breastfeeding my son I started having pain and discomfort while nursing, I found a lactation consultant who quickly showed me how I was incorrectly positioning my baby causing him to have a harder time drawing the milk down and emptying the breast.
I stopped going to work. I slept with my baby. I kept him on my body all day and night. Breastfeeding was STILL hard. Why? Because it’s not only babies that need support. It’s mothers too. We aren’t meant to be alone with our baby nursing him all day while no one takes care of OUR basic needs. Thank you for another important take on our twisted mothering culture. Keep going!
I’m doing that right now! I am really enjoying breastfeeding but I’m very behind in maintaining the house, plus it gets a little lonely during the day.
My baby is 3 months and cries every time I set him down to try and do something. I baby wear but there are a lot of things that I can’t do wearing the baby (like clean the bathroom or cook on the stove).
Thankfully I figured out a safe way to co-sleep but this was VERY frowned upon by the hospital - they even made me watch a silly educational video about SIDS which of course says it dangerous to sleep with the baby.
It feels so natural to sleep with my baby and I couldn’t imagine laying him in his crib at night.
Great piece. I agree. We need to change the messaging to say: it’s not your fault if you couldn’t or can’t, but breast really is best. If we can’t even say that, for fear of offending people, how can we make progress? Also I was SHOCKED by the number of people, funded by formula companies, who were all up in the comments section on my latest Instagram post on this topic, spreading misleading information. There really needs to be more regulation.
Yes to this! I know. We are scared to offend parents who can’t breastfeed but science is science. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed your kids. Great piece! The community has to support mothers to have the rest and resources to breastfeed. And support with latching etc from day one. And not ONLY at the hospital, but in many spaces early mothers are in. Where I live we have pretty decent support for free, sadly with big wait lists at times, but breastfeeding rates are much higher due to support and paid leave. Also the importance of the village! Even WITH paid leave and other supports BFing plummeted in covid times when mothers couldn’t access the same community based support.
And also sooooo much lobbying and such by formula companies. Makes me sick when I see free formula samples at the Drs advertised without any kind of promotion of BFing
I’m glad you got help from the lactation consultant. Unfortunately I did not find them helpful. I found that they over-complicated the process and made me anxious.
I took a breastfeeding class and had a bunch of different consultants tell me all contradictory things. It was difficult for me until I threw out all of their advice. Then I started using the laid-back position (which was never taught) and stopped obsessing about the “latch”.
I also stopped forcing my baby to burp. I think that was stressing him out. He loves to fall asleep while nursing and just letting him be makes the whole process much more peaceful.
One key element in my breastfeeding is co-sleeping and the side-lying breastfeeding. It’s made the rest of my breastfeeding journey fall into place naturally. I can’t imagine having to get up each time my baby wants to nurse at night, I think I’d be a basket case by now if I had to get out of bed each time.
I had the same thought about having to get up each time I breastfed! Successfully breastfed 3 babies now with the support of co-sleeping and side lying breastfeeding. I'd not have it any other way!
Oh yes. Winter now where I am - I adore every moment my baby and I are snuggled together, her little body cuddled into mine as she feeds to sleep. Side laying feeding is the best.
Love this! I get a surprising number of comments about “still” breastfeeding my 6 month old, usually from friends who didn’t breast feed for that long. So many give up in the early weeks when it’s a bit harder, but I agree a lot of the challenge has to do with lack of education and exposure
Making it 6 months is a huge accomplishment these days. Those comments are just from women who are jealous! I’m at month 4 of breastfeeding my first. I’m chuffed I made it this far and hoping I can make it last a lot longer. I’m really enjoying it!
Ya I think they’re feeling some sadness about it. I went 2 years with my first and it really became a sweeter experience over time. Stick with it mama!
This is so good. Some unusually high religion circles I run in are incredibly breastfeeding supportive and I credit that deeply with my own breastfeeding success- so many women to observe and learn from and feel comfortable with. But in the more normative groups I run in, I consistently meet far more women who “couldn’t breastfeed” than those who could! Not just women who chose not to but who have had it framed to them as biologically impossible. There is no way this is right! It seems so obvious to me that this speaks to something being deeply wrong!
We’d expect to see a small number of women be unable to nurse. It certainly does happen. But when I was nursing in the early 90s, the MAJORITY of moms I met told me they hadn’t been able to nurse. Yet all the women I met in the birth and breastfeeding groups did manage with very few exceptions — often those with premies who were bottle fed in the NICU or other such difficult situations.
It is seldom a problem with a women not being able to produce milk. It’s usually terrible lactation management.
I had dreamt of exclusively breastfeeding my daughter, but had so much trouble and was only able to do it a little. The main reason was a prenatal diagnosis in late pregnancy. This was something with a very high false positive rate, that was especially likely in our case to be a false positive, and which was indeed a false positive, but which nevertheless drove the intensive and inescapable medicalization of a perfectly healthy baby.
Despite pretty much every health professional involved agreeing that the odds of a false positive were greater than half, and that even in the case of a true positive, by baby would be stable at birth (barring other unrelated issues) and likely for the next few days at least ... the harm of immediate mother-baby separation was given no more than lip service. I was forced to change my delivery plans (travelling to another city and accepting an unwanted induction) to minimize mother-baby separation. My baby was separated from me at birth anyway and hospitalized for like a week for literally no reason.
I was not able to overcome all the physical and emotional harms that ensued and our feeding relationship suffered. Makes me sad. Not feeling defensive about your article in the least, just sharing/venting I guess.
The crazy number of women claiming to be "unable to breastfeed" I think mostly comes down to unnecessary anxiety about production. But additionally I theorize that folic acid in prenatals (as opposed to methylated folate) is causing an awful lot of tongue ties in babies, making breastfeeding painful.
But every food containing grains is fortified with folic acid, unless you go out of your way to find unfortified flour, rice etc. and make everything youself...It is very hard to avoid.
Yeah, I plan on looking more into this question. It is curious as to why this is so common now. There is some evidence that endocrine disrupting chemicals can be at play.
This was a really interesting read, and I agree with the main point of it, that new mothers need more support, whether that's for breastfeeding or for healing after childbirth, or for bonding with their babies. Modern capitalist society is doing terrible things to women and their babies, I agree.
I do think we need to be careful with blanket statements about "Western" vs "non Western" women; one anecdote about a woman in Africa should not lead us to believe that all women in Africa are breastfeeding, or want to/can, and the same goes for women all over the world in "non Western" countries. On the other side of the coin, I live in Norway, which is very much a Western nation, and we have some of the highest breastfeeding rates in the world. I breastfed both my babies for 18 months, exclusively for the first 6 months, and never really pumped that much or had a need to give them formula. I loved breastfeeding and didn't have many challenges with it at all. The same was true for most of my close friends here. Norwegian culture is very pro-breastfeeding and all of our hospitals are "baby friendly", which matters a lot, of course. But I think the main factor here is that we get nearly a year of paid maternity leave, and paid time away from work to nurse and pump after we return to work as well. If I had given birth to my babies in the U.S. where I'm from, I have no idea if my experience with breastfeeding would have felt as easy and natural, but I highly doubt it.
I do agree with you that often the reason women think they "can't" breastfeed is because they haven't been properly educated about the physiological requirements of breastfeeding (feeding in the first hour after birth, feeding on demand, etc), supply and demand, etc. But I also think that, at least in the US but definitely in other countries as well, there are so many social and economic demands that inhibit breastfeeding, and often that is simply because women can't afford to stay home or don't get any maternity leave and are forced to switch to formula, which is often heartbreaking for them. It's a well-known fact that in many places, there is a class/income divide between women who do and don't breastfeed, and it's poorer women who stop sooner or don't at all. So I think if we're gong to talk about what kinds of support women need to be able to successfully breastfeed, it's important to get specific about what that kind of support actually looks like. And very often, it's policy-related. Women need universal access to long paid maternity leave so that they can focus fully on their baby, including feeding their baby, without the stress of losing income or even their jobs. And once all women have equal access to the same family policies like paid leave, elements of early parenthood like breastfeeding become more normalized and therefore women get access to more social, cultural, and community support.
"If a significant amount of women in a population are actually unable to breastfeed their babies then this is a medical crisis and should be treated as such." Bingo!
I have had the privilege of working with breastfeeding mothers for over 30 years. I have seen a few things that I think may be adding to difficulties - high rates of metabolic disorders, and higher age for first birth. Many women I work with start off with strong intentions to breastfeed, but those who fall into these categories sometimes struggle. It's tricky because not ALL women with these factors struggle, but it seems to be a higher percentage. Add to that, the typical things you mention, like the propensity towards mother/infant separation and I do see higher rates of difficulty, at least in the population I serve.
I really appreciate your comment— I think I may have fallen into that difficult category and I’ve been looking for answers ever since to why I (then a first time mom at 39 with GD) had an absolutely nightmarish experience trying (and failing) to breastfeed/produce milk in spite of help from hospital lactation, doula help, a private IBCLC, and a deep desire to do so. None of the providers I talked to could give me any answers beyond a gentle shrug of “sometimes this happens.” My child is now a happy and healthy toddler but I was devastated to be unable to feed her myself.
Oh Julia, I’m so sorry for your experience. It’s super frustrating when you have a goal and then you can’t meet it through no fault of your own! It’s not unlike a mom who really is hoping for a natural childbirth, and then ends up with a cesarean, again because of some unforeseen circumstance. Studies on breastfeeding and milk production are SO lacking. Thankfully we are learning more each year and hopefully we will learn how to ameliorate these challenges at some point soon. If it’s any consolation-2nd milk supplies are typically better. 😊
Would increasingly medicalised births have something to do with difficulty breastfeeding? I'm sure I've read somewhere how it can delay milk production (particularly if the birth was perceived as traumatic). I think anecdotally all the mothers I know who couldn't breastfeed had a caesarian.
Oh brother! It just blows my mind that western countries that have always been presented as more advanced have such appalling lack of knowledge and basic care when it comes to childbirth and all that comes with it. I'm so sorry. It shoudn't be that way. If I can help with my experience as trice mother whose ta-tas have many years of working experience, please don't hesitate to ask. No woman should pay for such help.
This is a great article! Why is it that it's expected that babies should be separated and sleep trained, and that mothers struggling with breastfeeding from a lack of cultural and medical support are told to simply switch to formula? It breaks my heart some of the conversations I have had around breastfeeding with friends, clients, colleagues. Things piece very much reflects on and it highlights how much women and babies need a shift in the way breastfeeding is treated.
This quote nails it, “We don’t know and shouldn’t it be a priority to actually determine that number and treat it as the medical emergency that it represents!?”.
I began attending LLL meetings several months before I gave birth. I closely observed the other moms nursing and asked questions. I read several books. (This was in 1989 — pre-Internet!)
I was very sure I wanted to nurse so I made sure my OB and pediatrician were on-board. I had a LLL leader’s number to call to ask questions.
I made sure the nurses at the hospital knew I wanted to nurse exclusively with no water, formula or pacifier. In those days, you could not trust the nurses so I went home a few hours after giving birth.
I nursed my daughter for more than 3 years. Same when my son came along. Few things in life have brought me more joy.
One of them, though, was watching my daughter do the same thing with her children!
Loved this piece. I was very fortunate to have access to a “breastfeeding moms group” that met once a week with my first. It was a bunch of moms and babies in a room and everyone had a chance to ask a question. All the moms were at different points of mothering. For some it was their first. Others their fourth. It meant you got sane advice - and felt saner yourself. It was a game changer for me in terms of hearing differing opinions. Most moms just said “do what works for you” rather than parroting medical advice. Was an amazing experience for me and set me up for breastfeeding success - 3 babies for over a year each!
This is good and so important. Another serious negative contributing factor to this crisis is how unavailable lactation consultants are in hospitals. I had to be separated from my baby for 24 hours due to a severe postpartum hemorrhaging that caused me to be transferred to a different hospital and my baby was unable to be transferred with me. I couldn’t start the process of nursing and had no idea how to pump. My mother kept asking the nurses to get the lactation consultant. She asked multiple times over the course of a couple days and it was probably 48 hours after the birth of my daughter that I even saw a lactation consultant and she stayed less than 10 minutes and explained next to nothing. She had me pump but never measured my flange size so I ended up using the wrong size. When my mother complained about it taking so long for me to see an LC the reasoning? “the mothers who are getting discharged today are the priority” And it’s not the LCs’ fault. Hospitals just don’t prioritize their specialty so there aren’t enough of them to see mothers in the hospital. It is a mess. I ended up struggling with low supply and fought tooth and nail to keep breastfeeding. I often wonder how different my breastfeeding journey would be if the hospital had prioritized getting me lactation support.
I’m six months into exclusively breastfeeding my first baby (I’m quite literally side-lying nursing right now) and it’s been an amazing experience - but I had a tough first few days getting started with a painful latch. When I called my hospital’s mother/baby support line, they told me to just start giving formula. I am really fortunate that I could pay out of pocket for a lactation consultant to come to my home, but the lack of support and knowledge around breastfeeding is insane. Thank you so much for your work on this!
I stopped going to work. I slept with my baby. I kept him on my body all day and night. Breastfeeding was STILL hard. Why? Because it’s not only babies that need support. It’s mothers too. We aren’t meant to be alone with our baby nursing him all day while no one takes care of OUR basic needs. Thank you for another important take on our twisted mothering culture. Keep going!
Thank you Steph!
I’m doing that right now! I am really enjoying breastfeeding but I’m very behind in maintaining the house, plus it gets a little lonely during the day.
My baby is 3 months and cries every time I set him down to try and do something. I baby wear but there are a lot of things that I can’t do wearing the baby (like clean the bathroom or cook on the stove).
Thankfully I figured out a safe way to co-sleep but this was VERY frowned upon by the hospital - they even made me watch a silly educational video about SIDS which of course says it dangerous to sleep with the baby.
It feels so natural to sleep with my baby and I couldn’t imagine laying him in his crib at night.
Great piece. I agree. We need to change the messaging to say: it’s not your fault if you couldn’t or can’t, but breast really is best. If we can’t even say that, for fear of offending people, how can we make progress? Also I was SHOCKED by the number of people, funded by formula companies, who were all up in the comments section on my latest Instagram post on this topic, spreading misleading information. There really needs to be more regulation.
Need details- who was up in the comment section but also funded by formula companies 😂
Yes to this! I know. We are scared to offend parents who can’t breastfeed but science is science. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed your kids. Great piece! The community has to support mothers to have the rest and resources to breastfeed. And support with latching etc from day one. And not ONLY at the hospital, but in many spaces early mothers are in. Where I live we have pretty decent support for free, sadly with big wait lists at times, but breastfeeding rates are much higher due to support and paid leave. Also the importance of the village! Even WITH paid leave and other supports BFing plummeted in covid times when mothers couldn’t access the same community based support.
And also sooooo much lobbying and such by formula companies. Makes me sick when I see free formula samples at the Drs advertised without any kind of promotion of BFing
I’m glad you got help from the lactation consultant. Unfortunately I did not find them helpful. I found that they over-complicated the process and made me anxious.
I took a breastfeeding class and had a bunch of different consultants tell me all contradictory things. It was difficult for me until I threw out all of their advice. Then I started using the laid-back position (which was never taught) and stopped obsessing about the “latch”.
I also stopped forcing my baby to burp. I think that was stressing him out. He loves to fall asleep while nursing and just letting him be makes the whole process much more peaceful.
One key element in my breastfeeding is co-sleeping and the side-lying breastfeeding. It’s made the rest of my breastfeeding journey fall into place naturally. I can’t imagine having to get up each time my baby wants to nurse at night, I think I’d be a basket case by now if I had to get out of bed each time.
I had the same thought about having to get up each time I breastfed! Successfully breastfed 3 babies now with the support of co-sleeping and side lying breastfeeding. I'd not have it any other way!
Oh yes. Winter now where I am - I adore every moment my baby and I are snuggled together, her little body cuddled into mine as she feeds to sleep. Side laying feeding is the best.
Love this! I get a surprising number of comments about “still” breastfeeding my 6 month old, usually from friends who didn’t breast feed for that long. So many give up in the early weeks when it’s a bit harder, but I agree a lot of the challenge has to do with lack of education and exposure
Making it 6 months is a huge accomplishment these days. Those comments are just from women who are jealous! I’m at month 4 of breastfeeding my first. I’m chuffed I made it this far and hoping I can make it last a lot longer. I’m really enjoying it!
Ya I think they’re feeling some sadness about it. I went 2 years with my first and it really became a sweeter experience over time. Stick with it mama!
This is so good. Some unusually high religion circles I run in are incredibly breastfeeding supportive and I credit that deeply with my own breastfeeding success- so many women to observe and learn from and feel comfortable with. But in the more normative groups I run in, I consistently meet far more women who “couldn’t breastfeed” than those who could! Not just women who chose not to but who have had it framed to them as biologically impossible. There is no way this is right! It seems so obvious to me that this speaks to something being deeply wrong!
We’d expect to see a small number of women be unable to nurse. It certainly does happen. But when I was nursing in the early 90s, the MAJORITY of moms I met told me they hadn’t been able to nurse. Yet all the women I met in the birth and breastfeeding groups did manage with very few exceptions — often those with premies who were bottle fed in the NICU or other such difficult situations.
It is seldom a problem with a women not being able to produce milk. It’s usually terrible lactation management.
I had dreamt of exclusively breastfeeding my daughter, but had so much trouble and was only able to do it a little. The main reason was a prenatal diagnosis in late pregnancy. This was something with a very high false positive rate, that was especially likely in our case to be a false positive, and which was indeed a false positive, but which nevertheless drove the intensive and inescapable medicalization of a perfectly healthy baby.
Despite pretty much every health professional involved agreeing that the odds of a false positive were greater than half, and that even in the case of a true positive, by baby would be stable at birth (barring other unrelated issues) and likely for the next few days at least ... the harm of immediate mother-baby separation was given no more than lip service. I was forced to change my delivery plans (travelling to another city and accepting an unwanted induction) to minimize mother-baby separation. My baby was separated from me at birth anyway and hospitalized for like a week for literally no reason.
I was not able to overcome all the physical and emotional harms that ensued and our feeding relationship suffered. Makes me sad. Not feeling defensive about your article in the least, just sharing/venting I guess.
Ugh, I’m so sorry this happened to you and your baby ❤️
The crazy number of women claiming to be "unable to breastfeed" I think mostly comes down to unnecessary anxiety about production. But additionally I theorize that folic acid in prenatals (as opposed to methylated folate) is causing an awful lot of tongue ties in babies, making breastfeeding painful.
Interesting; I have read a little about that.
I didn’t take any folic acid and my baby has tongue lip and cheek tie ..
But every food containing grains is fortified with folic acid, unless you go out of your way to find unfortified flour, rice etc. and make everything youself...It is very hard to avoid.
It’s true! I have a chapter in my book Formerly Known As Food about the dangers of excessive fortification especially in baby and kids foods.
Yeah, I plan on looking more into this question. It is curious as to why this is so common now. There is some evidence that endocrine disrupting chemicals can be at play.
This was a really interesting read, and I agree with the main point of it, that new mothers need more support, whether that's for breastfeeding or for healing after childbirth, or for bonding with their babies. Modern capitalist society is doing terrible things to women and their babies, I agree.
I do think we need to be careful with blanket statements about "Western" vs "non Western" women; one anecdote about a woman in Africa should not lead us to believe that all women in Africa are breastfeeding, or want to/can, and the same goes for women all over the world in "non Western" countries. On the other side of the coin, I live in Norway, which is very much a Western nation, and we have some of the highest breastfeeding rates in the world. I breastfed both my babies for 18 months, exclusively for the first 6 months, and never really pumped that much or had a need to give them formula. I loved breastfeeding and didn't have many challenges with it at all. The same was true for most of my close friends here. Norwegian culture is very pro-breastfeeding and all of our hospitals are "baby friendly", which matters a lot, of course. But I think the main factor here is that we get nearly a year of paid maternity leave, and paid time away from work to nurse and pump after we return to work as well. If I had given birth to my babies in the U.S. where I'm from, I have no idea if my experience with breastfeeding would have felt as easy and natural, but I highly doubt it.
I do agree with you that often the reason women think they "can't" breastfeed is because they haven't been properly educated about the physiological requirements of breastfeeding (feeding in the first hour after birth, feeding on demand, etc), supply and demand, etc. But I also think that, at least in the US but definitely in other countries as well, there are so many social and economic demands that inhibit breastfeeding, and often that is simply because women can't afford to stay home or don't get any maternity leave and are forced to switch to formula, which is often heartbreaking for them. It's a well-known fact that in many places, there is a class/income divide between women who do and don't breastfeed, and it's poorer women who stop sooner or don't at all. So I think if we're gong to talk about what kinds of support women need to be able to successfully breastfeed, it's important to get specific about what that kind of support actually looks like. And very often, it's policy-related. Women need universal access to long paid maternity leave so that they can focus fully on their baby, including feeding their baby, without the stress of losing income or even their jobs. And once all women have equal access to the same family policies like paid leave, elements of early parenthood like breastfeeding become more normalized and therefore women get access to more social, cultural, and community support.
"If a significant amount of women in a population are actually unable to breastfeed their babies then this is a medical crisis and should be treated as such." Bingo!
I have had the privilege of working with breastfeeding mothers for over 30 years. I have seen a few things that I think may be adding to difficulties - high rates of metabolic disorders, and higher age for first birth. Many women I work with start off with strong intentions to breastfeed, but those who fall into these categories sometimes struggle. It's tricky because not ALL women with these factors struggle, but it seems to be a higher percentage. Add to that, the typical things you mention, like the propensity towards mother/infant separation and I do see higher rates of difficulty, at least in the population I serve.
I really appreciate your comment— I think I may have fallen into that difficult category and I’ve been looking for answers ever since to why I (then a first time mom at 39 with GD) had an absolutely nightmarish experience trying (and failing) to breastfeed/produce milk in spite of help from hospital lactation, doula help, a private IBCLC, and a deep desire to do so. None of the providers I talked to could give me any answers beyond a gentle shrug of “sometimes this happens.” My child is now a happy and healthy toddler but I was devastated to be unable to feed her myself.
Oh Julia, I’m so sorry for your experience. It’s super frustrating when you have a goal and then you can’t meet it through no fault of your own! It’s not unlike a mom who really is hoping for a natural childbirth, and then ends up with a cesarean, again because of some unforeseen circumstance. Studies on breastfeeding and milk production are SO lacking. Thankfully we are learning more each year and hopefully we will learn how to ameliorate these challenges at some point soon. If it’s any consolation-2nd milk supplies are typically better. 😊
Much love to you-❤️
Would increasingly medicalised births have something to do with difficulty breastfeeding? I'm sure I've read somewhere how it can delay milk production (particularly if the birth was perceived as traumatic). I think anecdotally all the mothers I know who couldn't breastfeed had a caesarian.
Yes, absolutely
Oh brother! It just blows my mind that western countries that have always been presented as more advanced have such appalling lack of knowledge and basic care when it comes to childbirth and all that comes with it. I'm so sorry. It shoudn't be that way. If I can help with my experience as trice mother whose ta-tas have many years of working experience, please don't hesitate to ask. No woman should pay for such help.
This is a great article! Why is it that it's expected that babies should be separated and sleep trained, and that mothers struggling with breastfeeding from a lack of cultural and medical support are told to simply switch to formula? It breaks my heart some of the conversations I have had around breastfeeding with friends, clients, colleagues. Things piece very much reflects on and it highlights how much women and babies need a shift in the way breastfeeding is treated.
This quote nails it, “We don’t know and shouldn’t it be a priority to actually determine that number and treat it as the medical emergency that it represents!?”.
I began attending LLL meetings several months before I gave birth. I closely observed the other moms nursing and asked questions. I read several books. (This was in 1989 — pre-Internet!)
I was very sure I wanted to nurse so I made sure my OB and pediatrician were on-board. I had a LLL leader’s number to call to ask questions.
I made sure the nurses at the hospital knew I wanted to nurse exclusively with no water, formula or pacifier. In those days, you could not trust the nurses so I went home a few hours after giving birth.
I nursed my daughter for more than 3 years. Same when my son came along. Few things in life have brought me more joy.
One of them, though, was watching my daughter do the same thing with her children!
I counseled hundreds of nursing moms, too.
I have such great memories.
Loved this piece. I was very fortunate to have access to a “breastfeeding moms group” that met once a week with my first. It was a bunch of moms and babies in a room and everyone had a chance to ask a question. All the moms were at different points of mothering. For some it was their first. Others their fourth. It meant you got sane advice - and felt saner yourself. It was a game changer for me in terms of hearing differing opinions. Most moms just said “do what works for you” rather than parroting medical advice. Was an amazing experience for me and set me up for breastfeeding success - 3 babies for over a year each!
This is good and so important. Another serious negative contributing factor to this crisis is how unavailable lactation consultants are in hospitals. I had to be separated from my baby for 24 hours due to a severe postpartum hemorrhaging that caused me to be transferred to a different hospital and my baby was unable to be transferred with me. I couldn’t start the process of nursing and had no idea how to pump. My mother kept asking the nurses to get the lactation consultant. She asked multiple times over the course of a couple days and it was probably 48 hours after the birth of my daughter that I even saw a lactation consultant and she stayed less than 10 minutes and explained next to nothing. She had me pump but never measured my flange size so I ended up using the wrong size. When my mother complained about it taking so long for me to see an LC the reasoning? “the mothers who are getting discharged today are the priority” And it’s not the LCs’ fault. Hospitals just don’t prioritize their specialty so there aren’t enough of them to see mothers in the hospital. It is a mess. I ended up struggling with low supply and fought tooth and nail to keep breastfeeding. I often wonder how different my breastfeeding journey would be if the hospital had prioritized getting me lactation support.
Ugh, I’m so sorry this happened to you and your baby
I’m six months into exclusively breastfeeding my first baby (I’m quite literally side-lying nursing right now) and it’s been an amazing experience - but I had a tough first few days getting started with a painful latch. When I called my hospital’s mother/baby support line, they told me to just start giving formula. I am really fortunate that I could pay out of pocket for a lactation consultant to come to my home, but the lack of support and knowledge around breastfeeding is insane. Thank you so much for your work on this!