My First Breastfeeding Blog......Enjoy!
Well this wonderful journey of breastfeeding is not exactly what every new mother imagined it to be. Sore, cracked nipples, babies that won't latch, engorged breasts, tongue-ties.....who even heard of a tongue tie before being told your baby had one? As a new mother, where do you go for help? Who do you call? What the heck day is it anyways?
I know what it's like to be a new mother. A new and EXHAUSTED mother. I remember wanting to crawl under my blankets and cry and sleep and sleep and then maybe cry a bit more before falling back into a deep slumber. I was so sleep deprived that all the wonderful information that was being shared with me went straight out the window and I was left to 'figure it out for myself'.
When I had my first daughter at the age of 24 years old, I had been a post-partum nurse for over 2 years and thought I had quite a LOT of breastfeeding knowledge and experience. That proved to be very wrong very fast. I loved the closeness I felt when I held my daughter skin-skin, but when I had to latch her to my breast, I wanted to scream. It hurt so badly all the time!! I really did not enjoy breastfeeding for the first month of my daughter's life. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I had the latch down pat, the nipple tip, the fast and bold approach......But no matter what I seemed to do, my poor nipples were cracked and sore and bleeding all the time. I saw an LC in the community who gave me a nipple shield. This was a nice little band-aid and allowed my nipples to heal but didn't really address the real problem. So we continued along for a few more weeks......sore nipples all the time but I had a happy, healthy growing baby (probably thanks to my oversupply!!!)
At approximately 6 weeks post partum, I finally saw a Physician who specialized in Breastfeeding issues. She took one look at my somewhat healed nipples and said "Here, fill this prescription for a compound nipple cream. It will change your life." And was she ever right!!! I guess I had developed a yeast infection in my breasts and had no idea until I saw Dr Evelyn Jain. That little container of cream saved my nipples and pretty much saved my breastfeeding journey with my daughter.
What I have learned over the years is that knowledge is empowering. I now have a LOT more knowledge related to the breastfeeding world. Now my passion is to empower YOU with this knowledge and enable your journey to be as smooth as possible. There will always be a few bumps along the road, but with the right support and sound advice you will be happily Nourishing your babies!!!