Category: Stories from Mothers

Baby wearing leopard print sunglasses.

I Stopped Pumping and People Were Mad, Spewed Hate, Judgement and Called Me Selfish.

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By Tiffany, Fed is Best Mom and Advocate

When I was pregnant I had already decided to formula feed my baby.  My family (even some cousins) thought it was strange and tried to talk me out of it, and I had family delete me on social media because we disagreed on this topic. My midwife was amazing and encouraged me to consider breastfeeding, but if I didn’t want to, that was perfectly okay. By the time I was 30 weeks pregnant, I changed my mind and wanted to try to see if breastfeeding would work for us.

I delivered after 2 days of labor, 2 hours of pushing followed by 5 hours of waiting then some more pushes, a vacuum, and then some panicked doctors who rushed me to an emergency C-section at 41 weeks plus 2 days. My daughter was immediately sent to the NICU from the stressful delivery.   I saw my baby following the surgery about 6 hours later and she was being tube fed. The next evening, they let me begin to try to feed her which went wonderfully! She latched, it didn’t hurt, but she was still hungry. My colostrum came in quickly, followed by my milk within 3 days in full.

But something was off. I ended up getting ill every time I breastfed her. I would get a fever, chills, and extremely tired every time I nursed her. I would have to sleep about 6 hours to feel normal again. The NICU asked if during the times I was sleeping they could supplement with formula. I said of course! If she needs fed, we feed her!  Putting essential vitamins and nutrients in her tummy is what needed to happen.  Over the course of her five day NICU stay, she breastfed, got breast milk from a bottle, and was supplemented when there wasn’t enough breast milk. I believe that supplementing her was what made her healthy and strong enough to recover and come home with us.

I was “encouraged” to keep pumping, so she could have “liquid gold” and that led to having no time to do anything. I was eating once a day and drinking very little.  I became so ill, my husband spent multiple nights feeding her because I was shaking and couldn’t move due to weakness. I was not healthy at all. I couldn’t be a mother to her; I hated being a mother to her at that time; I regretted her. It was awful. Finally, at 3 weeks I decided I had enough and my health and sanity was crucial for my daughter to have the mother she deserves. I stopped pumping and switched her to formula completely and never touched that pump again.

This was the Best. Decision. Ever. She continued to thrive, continued to eat just the same, and my body and mind healed. I loved feeding time with her and that magical bonding of looking at her, each time, was so very special to me. But people were mad! People argued that I wasn’t doing what was best for her, only for me. People continued to judge and spew hate about making a deeply personal choice that worked best for me.  This is when I found the Fed Is Best Foundation. In their support group, which is private to keep it safe, I found the Foundation encouraged breastfeeding, pumping, supplementing, tube feeding, and formula feeding! They encouraged putting baby’s and mother’s health above an obsession to breastfeed. I fell in love with the information and the people surrounding this movement. I would come to find mothers in similar predicaments were being “encouraged,” but really, they needed a solution – not encouragement to continue something that wasn’t working for them. I brought many struggling mothers to our private support group.  I continue to advocate for #fedisbest because until every mother can achieve the goal of a thriving, healthy baby in the health care system by whatever form of feeding suits their own family and babies the best, we have to work to make changes!

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Tiffany22Meet Tiffany, a new mama to her sweet baby girl and both are thriving and celebrating her first birthday!

Do you need genuine help and support for yourself and your baby?  Please send us a message on our Facebook page.

HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT FED IS BEST

There are many ways you can support the mission of the Fed is Best Foundation. Please consider contributing in the following ways:

  1. Join the Fed is Best Volunteer group to help us reach Obstetric Health Providers to advocate for counseling of new mothers on the importance of safe infant feeding.
  2. Share the stories and the message of the Fed is Best Foundation through word-of-mouth, by posting on your social media page and by sending our resources to expectant moms that you know. Share the Fed is Best campaign letter with everyone you know.
  3. Print out our letter to obstetric providers and mail them to your local obstetricians, midwives, family practitioners who provide obstetric care and hospitals
  4. Write your local elected officials about what is happening to newborn babies in hospitals and ask for legal protection of newborn babies from underfeeding and of mother’s rights to honest informed consent on the risks of insufficient feeding of breastfed babies.
  5. Make a donation to the Fed is Best Foundation. We are using funds from donations to cover the cost of our website, our social media ads, our printing and mailing costs to reach health providers and hospitals. We do not accept donations from breast- or formula-feeding companies and 100% of your donations go toward these operational costs. All the work of the Foundation is achieved via the pro bono and volunteer work of its supporters.
Hungry newborn baby needs feeding.

Why I’m Angry With My Baby Friendly Hospital in Texas

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As mothers, we always want the best for our babies and we worry what we do is never enough. 6 years ago, I had my first child when emergency C-section delivered her.  She was 8 pounds 12 ounces and healthy.  I was immediately told by my OB-Gyn to supplement her since she was such a large baby for 37 weeks.   The hospital had LCs and we requested to see her several times but she was a no show. We figured out fast we were on our own with breastfeeding, however we did take our OB-Gyn’s advice and started supplementing right at the start to maintain her glucose levels.  She never perfected her latch, so I exclusively pumped and she got everything she needed and we both liked our routine.

6 years later, I delivered my son early for pregnancy complications at 36 weeks but he was much smaller weighing 6 pounds 11 ounces. This time breastfeeding protocols were very different.  Formula was considered evil and no one could supplement their babies and exclusive breastfeeding was the only way to breastfeed my baby. However, after day one things gradually started going downhill.  My son latched very well and it was determined he was nursing perfectly. He nursed every one to two hours and we even had the second night “cluster” feedings we were informed about.

Little did I know, he was starving and not cluster-feeding and I had no idea!   But as you can see in this photo- he. was. starving!

 

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Brain damage from childhood starvation.

Just One Bottle Would Have Prevented My Baby’s Permanent Brain Damage From Hypoglycemia

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Written by Holly Lake

I wish I had known about the Fed Is Best Foundation before my 1st son was born. I felt enormous pressure to exclusively breastfeed at my hospital. My son was born at 37 weeks, weighing 5 pounds,13 ounces and he struggled to latch-on and breastfeed at each feeding. When I told the midwife, she came back with a leaflet which described how to hand express. She told me to express 1 mL of colostrum into a syringe and feed that to my baby whenever he struggled to latch.  I asked her if 1 mL was enough and she said it was because his tummy was very small and this amount would be fine until my milk came in. Note: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml.

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I was discharged hours later not feeling confident my baby was getting enough colostrum.  A midwife came out to see me at home on day 3 because I said I was worried about his feeding. He became extremely yellow (jaundiced), not very responsive (lethargic) and would let out random high pitch screams and would sleep all of the time and never wanted to feed by this time.  He also would have random body spasms which doctors shrugged off as normal baby reflexes (later we found out different).  The midwife said I could wait and see how he did overnight or go to hospital.  I chose to take him to the hospital. When arriving, we found that he had lost 12% of his body weight and his blood sugars levels dropped dangerously low to 0.2 mmol/L (4 mg/dL) and he was jaundiced. Continue reading →

Twin babies sleeping peacefully together.

Why Were My 35 Week Premature Twins Fed More on Their First Day of Life Than my Full Term Breastfed Baby

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I have three beautiful children: one nearly three year old boy, and one set of boy/girl twins, who are just three weeks old. If I could go back and change my eldest son’s first feeding  experiences on this earth, I would. I would have been happier and my baby healthier if he had just been fed while attempting to exclusively breastfeed.

When I was pregnant with my eldest boy, I fully intended to breastfeed him. We were delivering in a Baby-Friendly Hospital. I had never heard the term “Baby-Friendly” before becoming pregnant, but when my husband and I attended the hospital tour, we were told that the Baby-Friendly label meant that the hospital had achieved what was considered the gold standard in breastfeeding support. We attended the available lactation, birth, and parenting courses at the hospital. Whenever I was asked if I was planning to breastfeed my son, I proudly said, yes, I would. I was 34 years old, and I had never really considered infant feeding practices before becoming pregnant. From the information presented, it was obvious that breastfeeding was optimal.

I was told that babies did not need very much food in the first days of life. I was told that I would always make enough to feed the baby. I believed that the information I was receiving in these courses was truly the gold standard.

My son was born naturally after an unmedicated labor. He was placed on my bare chest, latched and I was told that we were doing great. I would nurse him and then he started screaming after each nursing session. Later, I learned that newborns aren’t meant to continuously scream after attempting to feed. They are meant to be satisfied and then sleep. The crying and screaming means something is wrong. I did not realize that my colostrum might not be enough to keep him fully fed before my milk came in. If I was informed that different babies have different caloric requirements at birth, and that my colostrum might not be enough right away, I never would have consented to not feeding my newborn for any period of time.  Continue reading →

Sleeping newborn in red Christmas outfit.

My Daughter Starved Because of My Determination to Exclusively Breastfeed and Lack of Knowledge on How to Supplement

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By Jamie Nguyen

As new parents, my husband and I relied on professionals: doctors, nurses, lactation consultants to guide us in providing the best care for our newborn. But what happens if most of these professional have bought into a dangerous lie? The lie that all moms, except in very rare cases, are able to produce enough milk for a newborn baby.

After a long unmedicated labor that lasted over 36 hours, my daughter Noemie was born on November 2nd 2016. She was perfectly healthy and weighed 7 lbs 3.5 ozs. My goal was to exclusively breastfeed and the staff at the Baby-Friendly hospital were very supportive. Noemie lost 4% of her weight in the first 24 hours and we were told that it wouldn’t be anything to worry about until it got to more than 7%. However, she had become very fussy and inconsolable, but as we were new parents we just assumed that this was normal baby behavior. Having taken a breastfeeding class, I simply trusted that my body would make enough milk for her. I had been told that not being able to make enough milk was very rare. I asked to see a lactation consultant as I had previously had breast surgery to remove a benign lump from my right breast. The lactation consultant told me that I should have no problem breastfeeding from just my left side. She reassured me that my milk would “come in” sometime over the weekend at day 4 – 5. We were told to get a weight check at the pediatrician’s office on day 4.

Born healthy at 7lbs 3.5 ozs.

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