Breastfeeding Challenges with Baby #2

BabyLife
Written By Ashleigh Hinrichs

Baby #2 is a testament that not all babies are the same. As an experienced breastfeeder, I did not expect round two to be so challenging.

In the hospital, we were notified that Wyatt was born with an anterior tongue tie. Initially, our pediatrician wasn’t concerned and I wasn’t experiencing any significant pain from breastfeeding, although he was a little more bitey. However, at two weeks old, he seemed to still be in a state of cluster feeding – eating every hour and falling asleep during feeds.

Typically, at two weeks old, he should have been back to his birth weight. However, he barely gained any weight from his initial pediatrician appointment the week before. We figured the tongue tie was affecting his ability to efficiently breastfeed, so we decided to do a frenotomy.

It’s an outpatient procedure, so I sat in the room while it happened. It was a quick snip of the tissue below the tongue, followed by sugar water to help soothe him and stop the bleeding, immediately followed by a feed. For the next 2 weeks, we had to do an “exercise” every 3-4 hours (basically sweeping under the tongue where the incision was made) to ensure that the tissue didn’t grow back.

At his post-op appointment, I requested a referral to see a lactation consultant to ensure we fixed his latch since all of our breastfeeding had been with a tongue tie until this point.

The lactation appointment went well – and he finally hit his birth weight! We addressed his latch, positioning, and how to keep him awake during feedings. At the appointment he was stripped down to a clean diaper, weighed, fed, and then weighed again. After 30 minutes (15 minutes on each side), his weight had increased 3oz, meaning he had transferred this amount of milk, exactly what he needed to. I felt very optimistic after this appointment.

However, the next few days were challenging. No matter how much I bugged him to keep him awake while eating, he would fall asleep. After a hard night, I was ready to give up. It felt like I had been awake for hours, yet he wouldn’t stay awake long enough to eat. I didn’t know what to do. For the next few night feeds, I started to catch my letdown with my ladybug Haakaa’s, bottle it, and give it to him right after breastfeeding. But I was just winging it. I started to supplement a little more during the day with bottles, and then started to seriously consider exclusively pumping. In fact, the day before I went to my first breastfeeding support group, I basically tried it out. It was so much work, feeling responsible for both pumping and bottle-feeding, especially at night (mind you, I had no idea what I was doing), and I felt like I would never sleep.

So my intention for attending my first support group was to ask how to exclusively pump, since I was leaning that way. Scripps has amazing lactation resources and are so pro-breastfeeding. When I mentioned that, they were like “we’re 100% here to help you reach your goals!” aka “your goal” = breastfeeding. But after that first meeting, I was back to feeling optimistic again. The meeting consisted of a weigh, feed, weigh. However, during this meeting, Wyatt only transferred 1.5oz. So he was 1.5oz short. Based on this, I was instructed to start triple feeding. This is where you breastfeed for 15 minutes on each side, and then your partner bottle feeds the balance (in my case 1.5oz) while you simultaneously pump for 10-15 minutes. It seems like A LOT of work, but as with everything at this stage, it’s not forever.

Triple feeding was the trick, as evident by the stretches of sleep we started to get that night. Previously, we were getting one ~4 hour block, and for the next four nights, he went 6-8 hours (!!) without waking. I was planning to continue triple feeding until the next week’s breastfeeding support group, however, it seemed like the additional bottle at night was becoming too much (based on spit-ups), and he was starting to actively eat (based on swallows) for his entire feeds. Going on intuition, I started to wean myself off triple feeding, reducing pumping from every feed, to 3x/day down to 1-2x/day. We still had a stash of milk so we continued to supplement every feed with a 1.5oz bottle for a few more days.

The next support group fell on my birthday and it was such a motivating gift. During the 30-minute feed, Wyatt transferred 3.8oz of milk! It was such a relief that we didn’t need to continue triple feeding. Two days later I went to one more support group to confirm that he was continuing to transfer this amount of milk and it wasn’t just a fluke. And it wasn’t. He ate over 4oz!!

I am so proud of him. This obstacle that felt so straining and frustrating now makes me feel more bonded to him–that we were able to overcome it together.

And through this whole endeavor, I invested in more equipment than I ever needed with Margot.

Ashleigh Hinrichs
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