The days after Kennedy was born were a blur of emotions and anxiety. In short, Kennedy's birth was traumatic for me and I got nailed with some instant postpartum. These are posts for another day though!
Soon after birth
One thing that stressed me out was the constant supervision of breastfeeding from the nurses and the lactation consultants. I value these people so much, but I felt a lot of pressure in the hospital to constantly try new things (with an audience) and never felt like I had time to actually work with Kennedy on nursing. It really messed with my head and caused a lot of stress. The nurses convinced Aaron and I that Kennedy was not getting enough milk and started filling her up with bottles of formula (oddly, they had her drinking several ounces her first day).
By the time we went home I was a mess about breastfeeding. Kennedy's latch attempts were short lived and we feeding non-stop (I know this is normal). Each feeding was filled with crying (her and I). All day crying; all night crying. It was anything, but a bonding experience. It was making me resent her wanting to eat. Even Aaron was struggling with the frustration he saw in us both.
(Note: I did not say I resented her; just her hunger!)
Occasionally, Aaron would encourage me to pump. There was no doubt that I had a milk supply! For me pumping was easy and quick. It didn't cause pain and Kennedy loved bottles. So we decided to pump and only pump. It worked beautifully. Kennedy and I enjoyed our time together so much more and Aaron was supportive of the pumping!
Of course there were times when pumping wasn't so awesome. I would wake up at night to pump, even went Kennedy was asleep. I would leave family functions to go pump in a lonely room, but I did it. When Kennedy and I were alone, it was sometimes difficult, but we were creative and always made it work! I would also feel really sad whenever I saw other mom's breast feeding. It made feel like I'd failed. A lot of people would make innocent and hurtful comments, but I just had to do what was best for my family.
Plus, my milk supply...was kinda fantastic.
I ended up have an oversupply of milk. This caused some problems, but let's just say that the picture above was from when Kennedy was 3 months old (we had to buy a new freezer). At one point we had about 25 gallons of milk stored. I have donated some of the milk, but we saved lots too. I started weaning around January and pumped for the last time around the end of February. It was bittersweet. I loved giving Kennedy my milk, but I do not miss that pump.
Kennedy turns 11 months next week and hasn't had a sip of formula since leaving the hospital. I am so proud of this. We have worked hard and she is a healthy, beautiful, bottle-fed, breast milk drinking girl!
This kid loves to eat!
