Hello! My name is Alma and I am a 29 year old mother of 4. All 4 of my kids have lip tie and I would like to share my story. First I would like to mention that English is my second language and I had to teach my self to write, my phone helps me a lot, but to can only do so much for me. So if you are a grammar nazi.... You will hate me I breastfed my oldest for 14 months, and I can honestly say that if it wasn't for the fact that I was living with my mother and she told me that I didn't breastfeed her I would have to find a new place to live (I had nowhere to go), I would have given up in a matter of days. I was in horrible pain for 3 months, I would sometimes loose complete control over my bladder because of this. It was hell! My mother told me that it was "normal", and that she had lots of pain with me too, I tok her word for it and accepted my faith. Luckily after the 3 months the pain went away and I was able to enjoy that precious time with my baby.
With my second and 3rd child it was very different. After meeting my husband and moving away, I no longer had my controlling mother to make me do anything, but I knew that breastfeeding S was what I wanted to do. We had trouble with her latch (it would take between 20-40 minutes JUST TO LATCH!!!) I had no idea lt of tt even existed! And after I started to supplement with formula it all went down hill. I was crushed! And went into depression as my milk kept drying up (I gained 60 lb). After I had my 3rd daughter I decided never to be that hard on myself again, I was already 250 lb, the last ring I needed was to get depressed again and getting even bigger! Well C would not suck! She would cry for food and the second my nipple was in her mouth she would fall asleep, I don't mind, but her pediatrician scared the hell out of me when she handed me a bottle with formula and said: feed your baby. I almost cried on my way to the car, but I told my husband that we needed to get a pump that same day! If my baby was going to take a bottle...it was going to have my milk in it (she wasn't stimulating me to produce milk and I saw her chug that bottle of formula). After exclusively pumping for her a total of 4 months, I decided I was sick and tired of the darn pump, and I was going to try to get her on the boob. So on hubby's long weekend I told him that I was going into the guest room and I was not coming out until she was on the breast. It took 16 hrs of basically starving my baby (lots of skin to skin, love and kisses) and SHE TOOK IT!!!! She was on the breast for one month (I was in pain during that time) and on a trip to Disney she went on a nursing strike and refused to take it, I am ashamed to admit that I decided I was done with all that stress and basically gave her the month of breast milk I had in my freezer making it 6 months of mommy milk and then started formula. So when I became pregnant withe #4 "L" the boy, I had a plan....there was no way I was just going to give up, this was my last kid and my last opportunity to get it right. I was very lucky to be in a hospital that is all about breastfeeding and the mommy-baby bond, I watched a video that opened my eyes to what a correct latch looks like *(with my second child I got to see several lactation consultants and not ONE was able to teach me this?!?!)*. 3 days of my son being in the world and I was crying in our room, the pain was horrible and he didn't want to latch correctly! How was I going to make it through the night?!! Let alone the 2 years that I want to nurse him! I called the hospitals lactation line and it was of great help to me. I was back on my horse and figured it would probably hurt for 3 months like it did with my oldest and then it would be perfect, well....it wasn't like that, at almost 4 months old I was complaining with some Facebook friends from a mommy group about my pain, and how I wasn't sure if I could even make it to six months, I had clogged ducts every week (sometimes twice a week) and the pain was so bad that it wouldn't let me sleep! I eve had to start doing "side hugs" with my other kids and husband because full frontal was horrible. And I was having little meltdowns every other week while in the shower (I didn't want my husband to see how defeated I felt and how much I wanted to give up some days. The ladies (I have no idea how I would have stayed this strong for so long without them) told me that me being in that much pain was far from normal and told me to call La Leche. The consultant had no idea how to help me, she said that they normally just helped moms that needed to learn how to latch a baby, but what I was describing was something she hadn't seen before, but she told me to call the Arizona Breastfeeding Center. They informed me that it was lip and tongue tie and that IT COULD BE FIXED!!! I was so happy! Finally there was hope for us. At almost 5 months we got the tongue procedure done and it helped A LOT, he was no longer rubbing me raw and I was even able to stop pumping (I would pump once or twice a day to give my nipples are break). Unfortunately I had mastitis twice in a month and this affected my production tremendously, I could hardly get any milk it of my left breast. I used up all of my stash in the freezer and had to buy formula to supplement, but I was working hard to get my supply back so we could stop supplementing with it. This Friday I took L to get his lip tie fixed because I am still in pain (I feel it's mainly because there is some reattachment under the tongue), but his lip tie was pretty bad too and it needed to get fixed. The doctor is Amazing! He is so sweet with the babies and had such a gentle heart, I told him that we had been back to exclusively breastfeeding for over 2 weeks!!! But that unfortunately I was still in pain. He congratulated me for being so determined, and asked me to please come back if there is still pain, he said that it was very uncommon to see someone keep it going for this many months when they are in so much pain. He made me feel like a rock star! I was a super mom, simply amazing hahaha but he did ask why did I wait for so long to get the lip fixed (the tongue was done back in December) and then he asked me not to be a martyr. We ended up talking for a bit, I told him that I couldn't believe that it took me 4 kids to find out this was even a thing, and that I was sharing this experience with a group of moms in Mexico. He told me to please share my story as much as I can because he believes it is a beautiful one. So this is my story, it is not over yet, but I can feel a difference in my pain level already, L is 7 months old now, even if the pain doesn't get better than this...I can totally make it to at least a year (there is no way I am giving up now), but if all goes well....we are going for the 2 year mark. Thanks for readying my longs story ☺️
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
STORY BLOG
By Moms. To submit your tie story, click the button below:
Archives
July 2015
Categories
All
|