Breastfeeding Stories - Aoife
This is Aoife, she is Mum to Liam, Faye and Evie, these are her words
I am Aoife, Mum to Liam (7), Faye (4) and Evie (2)
I will never forget those first few days of becoming a Mum, the over-whelming love & joy, the terror that something would happen my precious bundle, and the toe curling pain when trying to breastfeed.
Liam was a big baby, labour was induced, long and ended in minor surgical intervention. I had a hungry baby and a tired body that wasn’t fully ready to feed. Liam lost weight, despite what seemed like constant breast feeding, the midwives advised me to keep feeding, top-up with a formula bottle feed, pump to try bring in my milk, wash up and sterilize the pumping equipment.... and repeat. Soon we settled into our groove, and at 6 months Liam self weaned and continued to thrive.
Roll on 3 years and Faye came along, this time I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Thankfully I managed to control this with diet and exercise. In particular morning yoga had a massive effect on lowering my blood sugars and had the added bonus of keeping stress levels down. Due to the diabetes I was advised to consider prenatal hand expression of colostrum at 36 weeks. The benefits of this were incredible- I had a supply of colostrum on ice for Faye so if she needed a top-up feed at any stage she wouldn’t need formula, feeding her solely with breast milk would reduce hers and my risk of developing diabetes in future and it helped prepare my body so my milk came in much quicker. I was well prepared for the hospital this time, bringing my own travel kettle and packs of lactation porridge, lactation tea and lactation cookies. Thank goodness it all worked as tiny Faye developed jaundice and had to be taken to neo-natal ICU and put on a drip when she was 20 hours old. She stayed in the incubator for a couple of days. I fed her every 3 hours and was so thrilled to be able to hold and feed her myself. Thank goodness her test results came back clear and she was diagnosed with newborn jaundice, exacerbated by breastfeeding. All was well and we managed to rely solely on breastfeeding until she was almost a year old.
Evie came along 2 years later. Again my sugar levels were high so we were back to the yoga, diet and finger blood prick tests 5 times a day to monitor blood glucose. I repeated the formula of prenatal expression, & diet of lactation enhancing foods and teas. This time Evie was diagnosed with jaundice on day 2 but was allowed stay with me in a Biliblanket (a light pad that baby lies on, which effectively turned her into a tiny glow worm). Her blood tests also came back clear and we were allowed home thankfully. Like Faye, she was solely breastfed with no need for formula.
My breast feeding journey has definitely been filled with highs and lows. Despite bouts of toe curling pain in the early days (can’t recommend breast angles silver healing cups highly enough) & feeding through mastitis, I wouldn’t give it up for a second. The closeness of that magical bonding experience is heaven and something I will always treasure, not to mention the incredible health benefits to Mother and Baby. I feel truly blessed to have been able to provide my children with such a precious gift and to have received so much back in return.
