Breastfeeding is hard; Part 2

(Want to read part 1 first? Click here.)

Our first full day at home is kind of a blur. As I write this, over a year later, I recall this was the day my grandparents came to visit.

Breastfeeding barely registers on my memory. Pillows stacked high. Trying all different positions in vain. I remember more how much I loved staring at my baby's face, and how much my whole body ached.

The nights though - the heat on high because of that terrible woman telling us "baby boys born in the winter were most likely to die of SIDS". My hands and feet were hot and puffy so I don't know how much I would have slept anyway.

The tiny one would fall asleep nursing. I could easily put him down, but would wake 15 minutes later without fail. I don't remember sleeping. I remember Tim telling me "he's hungry" and snapping at him because I didn't understand how the baby could be hungry.

Breastfeeding is hard; Part 1

I was around 37 weeks pregnant when I went back in for a second complete anatomy scan. The midwife was concerned that my belly was too small, which turned out to be unnecessary because baby was absofuckinglutely perfect, but before we knew that, at the end of the scan, the tech hovered the wand over his face for a few extra moments to show us our baby was already practicing suckling. We watched him there on the screen, sucking on his tongue. That image is burned into my mind. My baby was practicing eating. He was real and ready to be out on his own.

When we left the hospital on Sunday, December 14, 2014 with a 36 hour old baby in tow, he had still not properly latched. Turns out, that whole sucking on his tongue thing was actually a problem.

In the delivery room the Friday before, midnight approaching, the room was dark when I came out of my first assisted trip to the bathroom and my kick-ass no-BS labor & delivery nurse, Krystle, helped me try to breastfeed my baby for the first time. I was already in my wheelchair, ready to transfer to postnatal, and she wasn't concerned when we couldn't quite figure it out. It wasn't her specialty and she knew that the lactation consultant would come by my room in the morning to help. It was already practically morning anyway.