Amanda shared her experience with lack of breastfeeding support from her medical providers & asks if others have dealt with similar situation. My little guy is only 7 months old. After three kiddos (my older two are 9 and 5) I finally was able the successfully nurse. With my girls I just didnt have the knowledge, support, resources or confidence to nurse. I was determined to be successful with my son. We were met with challenges. He had a week long nicu stay after aspirating amniotic fluid. Even though he was a whopping 9 pounds 8 ounces the nicu staff felt he was losing too much weight and essentially told me in an underhanded way that breastfeeding wasnt allowing him to maintain weight and if I wanted to take him home I may want to consider formula. We did the whole supplement with formula to bulk him up and were allowed to leave the next day. It didnt feel right, it wasnt like my son was a preemie, he was nearly 10 pounds for goodness sake. Well we got through that, and then he flat refused to nurse on my right side. He would only take the left, I tried everything, read everything and finally excepted the fact that I was going to have one giant boob. Well weve finally gotten a great, confident nursing routine despite the odds and it is everything I had hoped for... and then today I went to my wic appointment. Im borrowing one of their hospital grade pumps and Im low income so they provide me with their service of vouchers. So I sit down with the wic person and she asks how everything is, how nursing is going, I tell her great. She looks at my little guys growth says hes perfect, etc. Then she asks how old he is, I tell her again he is 7 months. She then tells me around 10 or 11 months I will want to start introducing cows milk so I can make the transition from breast to cows milk by a year. Then she tells me to offer him more table food, baby food, egg yoke, which will also cut down on his need to nurse. Then she pauses and asks, have you given him egg yoke yet? I shake my head no and think what the hell. .. how did this conversation go from my son is doing great, breastfeeding is going great, to gear up to transition him to cow milk and give him egg yoke. The whole thing made me realize that this is why the younger 20 year old first time mom me was not able to breastfeed. There needs to be a serious change in the way doctors, nurses, public health workers, wic workers, and anyone else in the field educates mothers on breastfeeding and the change needs to start with them being re-educated themselves. I didnt think far enough ahead to think about what would happen when my baby got older...I didnt think about people pushing me to ween him off breast milk, I just thought hed stop when he was ready, its crazy to think hes only 7 months and we just developed a confident bf relationship and Im already being told by people to gear up to wean.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 17:01:04 +0000
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