In light of World Breastfeeding Week, I think it's appropriate to share my own breastfeeding story. Throughout childhood, I cannot remember seeing a single person breastfeed. In fact, including my nursing clinicals and preceptorship on a labor and delivery unit, I can only count on my hands how many moms I've seen breastfeed in my life. Honestly, the first person I'd seen do it outside of the first week of life and the setting of a hospital was my sister, Emily--so I'm not sure why I thought it would come "naturally" to me... and it didn't!

I took the breastfeeding class. My birthing class touched on breastfeeding. The midwife asked me at every appointment if I would breastfeed. I thought Matthew would come out, plop happily on my boob, and suck away. Yeah...right. Matthew plopped alright--right out onto the bed without so much as a nurse to catch him. Because of that "uncontrolled" delivery, I was allowed to see him for all of 2 seconds before he was taken to be examined. I'm not sure how that was a reason he needed to be taken immediately, but it was. I was left with no skin to skin for an hour and there was definitely no magic moment where his little mouth came to the breast like a magnet comes together. I felt cheated! So, here we were in the early morning of a Saturday. The L/D nurse said there was no point in trying to feed him because just-borns aren't hungry. The baby nurse literally *yelled* at me for not eating, drinking, and having him at the breast endlessly until he did latch. There would be no lactation consultant until Monday.

Saturday and Sunday were trying to say the least. Everyone had a differing opinion on how to feed him and nobody truly helped. They would come in and shove his mouth at my breast, then leave. Matthew was becoming more and more yellow and finally by Sunday around 1 AM, he was to the point that he cried all night and I cried with him. It was terrible. My roommate (yes, the hospital Matthew was born in pairs 2 moms with 2 new babies together) even came over to me the next morning and said, " I heard you crying and just wanted to come over an hug you. It gets better, I promise."

Monday morning came. We FINALLY had a helpful nurse. She helped me to express some colostrum and syringe feed Matthew. Also, we had a meeting with the lactation consultant at the hospital. She is one of two LC in a hospital that is set to break it's own record of births this year. Her time was limited to say the least. In our 30 minute meeting, Matthew would alternate between screaming and being super lethargic, but would never latch on. The LC tried sugar water, then a nipple shield, and finally a feeding tube and syringe. I bought a 260 dollar pump (that I hardly use now) and pumped milk to use the feeding tube in various and impossible to do ways. About an hour after our meeting, we were discharged.

That first night home was terrible. Because Matthew was jaundiced, he had to eat every 2 hours to get his bilirubin levels down. Getting him to eat was an hour and a half process. I would try to feed him for an hour and a half, then spend the remaining 30 minutes crying about the mother failure I was. This went on for 3 nights and finally miracle of all miracles, he took the breast with a nipple shield!!!

My sister and nephew came to my house for a week and my sister being a breastfeeding mom herself was able to help immensely. With her help, I ended up using the nipple shield about only half the time. I was exhausted and even though my sister was trying to help, there wasn't much I could retain at that point. With the nipple shield, my nipples got pinched and it hurt immensely. By the time Matthew was 2 weeks old I was using the nipple shield about once a day, but his latch was still poor.

I went to Boots & Booties, a maternity fair for military moms the day Matthew turned 2 weeks old and God sent me a miracle!! I won a lactation consultant service. I called Stephanie, the LC with Welcome Home Baby Lactation Consulting, the day after I received her services. She came to my house less than two hours after I called. She was the biggest comfort to me. She just sat there and watched and helped through an entire feeding. She stayed about an hour after that just talking to me and answering every question I had, big or small. She helped me find my confidence and lose at least some of my guilt and feelings of failure. Without her, I would not be breastfeeding. That's a bold statement to make, but it's true. Without Stephanie, I would have continued to doubt myself and would have doubted myself right out of breastfeeding. While she didn't have to do much physically (just some minor latch tweaking), what she provided emotionally was more than I can ever thank her for. She allowed me to be able to continue to give my child his most basic need. So, if you're reading this Stephanie--THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Flash forward to almost 8 weeks old: Matthew has eaten pretty much everywhere I go. We nurse in public. We nurse in private. In his sleep. On the couch. In the car. Whenever. Wherever.

If someone asked me about breastfeeding before he was born, I would have said, "oh yeah--easy peasy"!

If someone had asked me about breastfeeding at a week old, I would have said, "I can't do this...I don't know how...I'm a failure" ....that is if they could have understood my statement between tearful sobs.

If someone asked me about breastfeeding today, I would be able to say, "Oh yeah, it's going pretty well", while nursing Matthew, checking my bank balance, eating lunch, and carrying on a conversation with that person!

There were so many times I wanted to give up and there were many times I probably should have given myself a little more slack, but I'm so excited that we are about to hit our 2 month mark. It is only by the grace of God that we are and I can't forget that.