Post 3- From bad to worse to the utter worst
On the seventh day after my delivery, my milk finally came in. I was taking a hot shower and my breasts just swelled up and started leaking. I was elated. The low milk and jaundice that I was confronted with were behind me. Or so I thought.
There was one aunt who came to help out the nani dadi was always hovering around me telling me to feed more, how the baby is hungry and how I didn’t get enough milk. The baseless taunts and judgement were really beginning to get to me. By the 8th day I had developed nipple cracks and had not realized it. As soon as my baby would latch on I would wince in pain and once he started sucking my pain also reduced. At one point the pain was so bad I cried at his feeding time fearing the pain. And get this, inspite of being a doctor, I was in such a haze that I did not take any pain medicine or even reached out to a lactation specialist.
With the pain on and off I persevered. 3 weeks passed since my delivery. My baby was still yellow from the jaundice. We did not pursue it because the pediatrician had falsely assured me that it would take a long time for the yellow discolouration to go. The Bangalore weather was super cloudy in June so he wasn’t getting much sunlight either. My brother came to see me on the third week and he was shocked to see how yellow my baby was and how he didn’t seem to have gained weight after the initial weight loss (newborns lose some weight and start gaining back around the 10th day). He being a doctor was very vigilant and took us to another hospital the same day. The new pediatrician assured us that the baby is okay and can be taken back but we insisted that we didn’t want to wait. So we again had to get admitted and put him in a phototherapy incubator. This time the doctor said the baby needs top feeds as he has breastmilk jaundice. I was told to pump milk and discard it for the next 48 hours.
Another problem I faced was how my son was always screaming in the incubator. We at first thought the nurses didn’t feed him enough. But one nurse dipped a piece of; gauze in formula milk and offered it to my son. He sucked on it very enthusiastically. She said he wants to just suck for comfort. So we had to relent and buy him a pacifier.
The story has a partially happy ending. My baby’s jaundice levels dropped significantly and the yellow colour cleared out within those 2 days we were admitted. But since nobody supervised my pumping, my milk supply dropped from a good 150 ml on the first day to around 30 ml on the third day. I was pumping initially, but my nipple cracks hurt terribly on using the manual pump so I resorted to expressing with my hands. And because I didn’t see the measured milk output I wasn’t able to do a thorough job in pumping the exact amount each time. #momstein #bbcreatorsclub #mommytakesover
Pics-
At a friend's wedding
My son starting to roll over
Tried on a lipstick at a mall and kissed him!