15/01/2024
Happy New Year! 🎉 As many of you know last year we welcomed our new family member Baby Layla 👶🏻 to our life. Here is something I would like to share from my first-hand experiences. ❤️
Today's topic is breastfeeding! 🤱🏻
This all sounds natural when you hear of breastfeeding but to many mums, it is a painful and tearful first few months. Now new mums please don't let me put you off from here please keep reading because the good part is yet to be mentioned! ;) It is always better to hope for the best and prepare for the worst... at least it lowers the expectation and makes it more achievable!
Long story short! Layla's delivery was quite a rough one involving Sepsis, an emergency caesarean and forceps. Our first week of breastfeeding was a nightmare. I drag to think about the next feed every time. It was painful and my ni***es were so sore. I think the majority of the first-time mums are familiar with this. In the first week, I was literally relying on painkillers not only for the caesarean pain but also partly is for the feeding. It hurt so much that I made my husband syringe feed Layla with colostrum for a night just to let my ni**le have a rest for a night in the hospital.
💁🏻♀️Here is a very important tip:
Express as much as colostrum as you can from 37 weeks unless your midwives advise against it due to special conditions! This helped us through Layla's newborn jaundice and also those nights I needed an important break!
And yes the more you feed and the more milk you will have but if your ni***es are in bits and you are in tears. This will not help with your milk production or your relationship with your gorgeous little one!
The first week, Layla was feeding up to an hour at one feed and each feed will take at least 20 to 30 minutes. This tells me that her traumatic birth definitely had an effect on her feeding.
⚠️Signs and symptoms to look out for:
✅unable to latch on to the breast at all
✅unable to latch deeply and causing ni**le pain or damage
✅difficulty staying on the breast
✅frequent or long feeds
✅poor weight gain or excessive early weight loss
✅colic/ excessive amount of hiccups/ reflux
✅ milk leaking from the corner of the mouth
✅being fussy at the breast
✅only happy to feed on one breast but not the other
✅blister keeps occurring around the baby's lips
These are all the signs and symptoms and it is time to seek help from your chiropractor or midwife for a further feeding assessment.
👩🏻⚕️A chiropractor can provide infant gentle assessment and adjustments to help babies especially those who went through a traumatic birth to balance muscular imbalance. During the examination, some Chiropractors like myself will be able to assess possible tongue ties and refer you to a tongue tie specialist.
👶🏻In Layla's case, once I recovered from sepsis I gave her a thorough chiropractic assessment and adjustment which has greatly helped Layla to settle and become a lot more calm. After we went home from the hospital, I assessed her tongue and we found she had a tongue tie. I contacted a private tongue tie specialist and she treated Layla at our home with a simple little cut. From there we went from feeding mostly nearly an hour to 15 minutes feed and she has become a lot less fussy and much more contented.
Since then we have been enjoying our special bond from breastfeeding and I gradually enjoying our feeding time.
