Part 2: 'Has your milk come in yet?'

At home, my son remained sleepy and I continued to wake him for feeds, 3-4 hourly (despite protestations from helpful family members telling me it was cruel to wake a sleeping baby).  My mother had breastfed all three of her children back in the 1970s in the heyday of 4-hourly schedules, and of hospitals feeding sugared water in the night to give the mothers a break.  She must have been a Jersey cow – she used to struggle to keep my older brother feeding for the requisite 5 minutes on each side, and by the time she brought him home from hospital at ten days old he was a bouncing baby who was sleeping through, having realised it wasn’t worth his while waking up at night just for sugared water.  (I think I must have inherited my breasts from my dad!)  So she was rather dismissive of my own insistence on waking my son to feed every 3 hours.  When a visiting midwife pointed out that Tommy had jaundice, though, I became all the stricter about waking him for his feeds 3 hourly during the day (4 hourly at night), despite all the tut tuts from the grandparents.  Once he was awake he seemed to latch on well, although it was painful at first, and though I did get the inevitable sore and cracked nipples, I continued to feed happily knowing that they would improve with time.   

I had enthusiastically agreed to a visit from the local NHS breastfeeding counsellor, who came the day after I’d arrived home (Wednesday).  Tommy was asleep so we just had a nice chat about breastfeeding – its benefits, of course; some techniques and tips; and its history, during which time she told me that, while I’d hear people of my parents’ generation saying ‘I could not breastfeed, I didn’t have enough milk’, that’s just because breastfeeding wasn’t so well understood back then, and people didn’t realise that it was all about supply and demand, so they didn’t feed enough to get their milk supplies up.  In fact, she said, we now know that anyone can breastfeed – it’s just about allowing the baby to feed enough to stimulate the milk supply.  I ask her about my son’s tongue-tie – this hadn’t been noticed in the hospital, but I’d noticed it since, and I wondered whether anything should be done about it.  ‘Well, I think there are places you can get it cut if it causes a problem with feeding – but there’s no reason to think that it will, if he’s latching on OK.’ He seemed to be latched well, so anyone who’d checked said, so that was that.  As my milk hadn’t yet come in, she told me all about the engorgement I may feel in the next couple of days and how to ease engorged breasts with cabbage leaves, and promised to return later in the week to see how I was getting on.

By Thursday morning I was a little surprised that there were still no signs of my milk coming in (Tommy was born on the Monday of that week), but I continued to feed confidently.  He was still getting dirty nappies, but his stools had become more solid and hadn’t really changed colour from the black meconium he’d passed in the hospital. However, the visiting midwife didn’t seem to see any problem with this, so I thought nothing of it.  Thursday night was a bit of a shock, though, as instead of his usual routine of feeding for 45 minutes then dropping off to sleep, my son fed continuously from 11pm until 3am (he’d drop off from the breast he was on having dosed off after about 40 minutes feeding, then would wake up crying and rooting, so I’d just shift sides and start again on the other side).  Although I was taken aback to be feeding for so long, I actually really enjoyed the time I spent that night just gazing at my perfect new baby as he made adorable little faces for only me to see.  At 3am, though, he was still wakeful and crying, so my husband took him and was able to get him off to sleep on his chest without any further feeds.  He couldn’t possibly still be hungry, I naïvely thought – perhaps he was just tired and needed some help to drop off. 

Friday saw the return of the breastfeeding counsellor, who asked if my milk had come in yet.  When I said that it hadn’t, she helpfully told me that it must have come in by now, and that it could come in without any feelings of engorgement.  I told her about my marathon feeding session the night before, and how I’d gone with the flow as I thought if nothing else it would help my milk come in, and she said ‘Well I can tell that you’ll have no problem with breastfeeding, if you’re willing to take your baby’s lead that way’.  But in the very next breath – ‘Still, he shouldn’t really be hungry if he’s had a full feed from both breasts – and if you keep feeding him continuously like that, you’ll just get sore’.  She helpfully explained to me how to break the suction to bring an end to a feed if I thought my son had stopped feeding and was just sucking for comfort.  Then, ‘How about nappies?’, she asked, ‘are you getting plenty of wet and dirty nappies, and are his stools changing colour?’  ‘Well we’re not having so many dirty ones now, and his stools haven’t really changed colour, though they’re getting much more solid, but we are getting wet nappies.’  Naïvely, as a first time mum I add, ‘It’s so hard to tell with disposables whether they’re wet though, isn’t it, because they absorb the moisture so well?  But I can tell they’ve been wet as I can see that they’re stained.’   Looking back at this exchange I can’t believe that alarm bells weren’t ringing – no feelings of milk coming in; previous mention of tongue-tie; solid dark poos; and stained but otherwise dry, nappies – surely a trained breastfeeding counsellor should have picked up on a problem at that point? 

As it was, later that day when my mum asked (for the umpteenth time) ‘Has your milk come in yet?’, I answered ‘Well I don’t feel any different, but apparently you don’t have to feel anything for it to have come in, and the breastfeeding lady says it must be there by now’, and as far as I was concerned, that was that.  We chatted, as I fed Tommy, about the interesting things the breastfeeding counsellor had told me about the history of breastfeeding, about supply and demand and how anyone can breastfeed.  ‘That is interesting’, my mum responds, ‘You know M?  She always says she didn’t have enough milk, but can you imagine her sitting down patiently enough like you are now spending all of that time feeding?  She just wouldn’t have the temperament.’  I tell her of my friend, S, who gave up on breastfeeding early on because her nipples were so sore that her daughter was getting mouthfuls of blood with her breastmilk.  ‘Of course, they say to keep feeding, and that there’s nothing wrong with them taking in a bit of blood,’ I say, ‘but it must be hard to see that happening and to keep going.’ On to my mother-in-law who, my mother has noticed, keeps repeating that ‘The problem with breastfeeding is that you don’t know how much they’re getting.’ ‘She can’t have breastfed, can she?’, my mother asks.  ‘No one who’s breastfed a child would think that way – of course you can tell that they’re getting plenty from you.  You only have to look at Tommy there and see he’s feeding contentedly.’  In fact my mother in law did breastfeed my husband, though the details of how long for are lost to history – she’s very vague about it and I don’t wish to probe.  At any rate, sharing a few more stories of people who didn’t make it with breastfeeding, my mother and I sympathise and agree that it must be a very emotional thing not being able to provide nourishment for your own child.  But looking at Tommy suckling away happily I sit back smugly and congratulate myself on having made it into the sisterhood of successful breastfeeders.