We started our journey at 5 lbs 12 oz; already small enough to curl up and fit into one hand.  My baby was diagnosed with IUGR despite being born at 40 weeks gestation. I will never forget my hospital experience and how horrible some of the nurses were. She was born at 5:30 am and the nurses pushed and pushed us to breastfeed her. While I kept trying, my baby would weakly latch and suckle a few times then become exhausted.  We continued  to offer her the breast every hour for 24 hours  and nothing was working and no one was concerned she wasn’t eating anything at all.  I trusted everything was going to be ok.

 On day two a nurse comes in and tells me my baby is hungry and I’m not making milk…but by then it was too late. She lost almost a pound over night and she was too weak to take formula orally. We were rushed by ambulance to a NICU unit one hour away from where I delivered her.

After she was stabilized for severe dehydration and starvation with IV fluids and dextrose, she was fed with a tube. We basically had to teach her how to suck. Squishing her little cheeks together. We were syringe feeding her when she tolerated it. It was 14 days before she finally “latched” and sucked her first bottle down!

We spent 28 days in the NICU before she was able to bottle feed with an NG feeding tube. If my baby was supplemented immediately she never would have endured a horrific admission to the NICU.  She could have easily been taken care of at our local hospital but because she was not supplemented and breastfeeding was pushed at all costs, we are left with the financial and emotional burden of breastfeeding no matter what!  Please don’t let your baby go without feeding, even if your hospital nurses and lactation consultants say your baby will be fine.  This is not true.

                                    Today, she is 3 months old and thriving.  #FedIsBest

My beautiful boy was born on July 13, 2016 at 8:33 p.m. in a Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) certified hospital in Florida. I had every intention of breastfeeding my child, heck, I even wanted to continue beyond age one. I took classes for breastfeeding, read everything I could get my hands on, and I felt completely ready and excited to start this journey with my little one.
From the start we were plagued with latch issues due to a tongue tie and pretty severe lip tie. In the hospital he had his tongue tie clipped and we had three board-certified lactation consultants come into our room to help us achieve a perfect latch. Looking back now, I should have known something wasn’t right. I should have recognized the infrequent urination, the constant nursing (some days as many as 21 times in 24 hours), and the fact his skin hung from his once round body.
Oliver was born at 8 pounds 10 ounces and by 4 weeks old he only weighed 8 pounds 2 ounces; simply maintaining his weight was a constant battle for me.

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I am currently in Denmark, one of the Scandinavian countries which boasts some of the world’s highest breastfeeding rates. It is illegal for baby formulas to be advertised or promoted. No ‘samples’ are ever given from a hospital. As a result, some 98% of mothers leaving maternity wards are breastfeeding their babies. Moving to Denmark while 6 months pregnant, this was one of the many policies that I was looking forward to, having no idea that there could be anything negative about it.

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When I was pregnant, I was determined to breastfeed. It was going to be easy, it was going to be natural. Formula was for lazy people, formula was for selfish women. Formula was poison for my baby. The breastfeeding groups I joined on  Facebook only reinforced these mantras even further. Whenever people asked if I was going to breast or bottle feed my baby, I proudly told them that I was going to breastfeed. Nothing was going to stop me.

I had no idea how ignorant I truly was. Continue reading →