BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Breastfeeding What were your biggest breastfeeding challenges?

I'm curious what sort of hurdles others have faced in establishing or maintaining breastfeeding. With my first, I had to use a nipple shield for flat nipples and poor latch, which then resulted in a reaction to all the friction caused by the silicone which was mistaken for thrush. We also had a lousy start in the hospital and I had to pump and feed back while increasing my supply.

With the second it went much better, with only a little hiccup on the second day while waiting for my milk to come in. She didn't feel like doing the work without the milk, so I pumped after feedings for a day and finger fed the colostrum, but once my milk came in, she went to town! Then I had a comical little episode of being lopsided -- one side just stopped producing and the other went nutso to compensate, but was able to "fix it" using a pump.

Wondering what others have had to deal with?

I read about nipple confusion, I was ADAMANT that I wanted to breast feed, I told the doctor and she noted my chart to NOT give the baby a bottle.

A nurse did anyway.

My milk flowed like you can't believe but I only ever got my daughter to latch on like 2 or 3 times.

If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't allow them to take my daughter out of the room unless I was with her and I would threaten to hunt the nurse down and beat her with a stick if she went ahead and gave the baby a bottle.

They took my daughter from me in the middle of the night and gave her a bath if I remember correctly and thats when the nurse gave her a bottle.

In spite of this SO FAR my daughter has a good immune system. She has only taken antibiotics on 3 occasions and she is 10. Twice for strep and once for bronchitis, when I was her age, I would have been sick that many times in one year. Those are the ONLY script meds she has had to take. No sign of Asthma or any kind of general sickness. When something is going around, I am the one who normally gets it, not her.

My kids all latched on nicely. The biggest challenges were: My first being a once an hour (day and night) nurser. Which means that for three months I had 40 minutes to myself in between getting him settled and picking him up again.

No one wanted to help me because they felt helpless, by not being armed with a bottle.

With my third child I got mastitis. My wonderful doctor diagnosed me over the phone, and told me to keep constant heat on the breast. I did this and was fine within 48 hours. I am grateful to him, I know lots of horror stories about this bacteria from other women.

I haven�t nursed for 7 years but the favored breast is still a little larger that the other one.

I nursed for 7 straight years and can't imagine having done it any other way.

I had mastitis once. It was like getting run over by a truck. I believe it was exacerbated by the sports bras I was wearing at the time. It surprised me how quickly I went from having a slight amount of discomfort to having a raging fever, aches, and chills, and an incredibly sore area on the affected breast.

Then there were the cracked and bloody nipples when I started out. OUCH!

Most of my experiences with nursing have been very positive, though, and I'm so glad that we went this route.

Thrush - oh it was horrible! He'd cry every time he latched on becuase his mout was hurting so bad, and my nipple was bleeding.

It finally came down to expressing milk and letting him have t in botles, putting gentian violet on my nipples (that was pretty!) and he had to take an oral steroid.

With my second girl I had to pump while I was in the hospital, she had a cleft pallet so she couldn't get enough breast feeding. After being home for a week I was in such pain, my nipple was so sore, cracked and bloody. Long story short, I ended up just pumping for her because she wasn't getting enough calories. I ended up getting a staph infection from the hospital. I was in so much pain! I kept going back and forth to the doctor but, she wasn't a doctor she was a mid wife. She kept telling me it was just a yeast infection. My nipple was so blood raw, the crack went all the way around my nipple. It looked like it was about to fall off. Anyway, I put up with this for eight months. Different medications and many visits back to the doctors office. So, I went to the lactation to see what she thought. She made me go to a dermatologist and they took one look at me and asked if anyone has done a culture on it? No! She knew without doing one that it was staph. It's a wonder my daughter didn't get sick from it. Now, I've had my fourth daughter about seven months ago and I'm still having trouble with that one breast. I get these horrible lumps near my nipple that is full of puss. I have to go and have it cultured the next time it happens. It hasn't been a pleasant ride for me.

So, that's my wonderful story.

Ugh.. this drives me absolutely nuts. This should be completely illegal in my mind. I don't understand why formula feeding is not considered along the same lines as other care requiring consent. I don't see them taking babies and circumsizing them while you aren't looking (for example.. I know it's not the same, but you get my point). It should not be a new, tired mother's responsibility to police a nursing staff who should be advocating exclusive breastfeeding only. Is there anyone out there who is a postpartum nurse who can shed some light on why this is such a problem? What the heck is the nursing staff's incentive to shove formula down babies' throats, when every piece of medical info out there says breast is best? Why is this such a problem?!?! (ok, vent over.. this just drives me completely crazy. I feel so lucky this didn't happen to me, although I am mystified that it didn't because the hospital where I delivered has a poor reputation for this).