I’m not sure if I’m writing this to help others, to maybe help myself, to bring awareness to the fact this exists and effects more people than we think or just simply to tell people of what I personally have been through.
I find it embarrassing to say out loud (and quite emotional to be honest) but, I’m a failure- I’m a failure at breastfeeding! I simply just can’t do it! I hate being a failure, it’s not in my nature. I was brought up by determined, hard working non-failure type parents – if something didn’t work, you just tried to do it a different way until you succeeded.
It was when I was pregnant with my third child that I really started to look into why I may not be able to breastfeed. I was sick of hearing ‘there’s no such thing as low milk supply’ ‘everyone can breastfeed’ ‘maybe you’re just not doing it right’ ‘maybe your babies didn’t latch properly’ ‘did you see a lactation consultant’ ‘did you see an osteopath’ Let me tell you….I tried EVERYTHING!!!
With my first born I persevered for 6 long weeks. I drank breastfeeding tea, I ate lactation cookies, I had brewers yeast smoothies twice a day, I had porridge three times a day, I expressed after every feed, I got up in the night to express, I took donperidone (a prescribed medicine with the side effect of increased lactation) I drank so much water I thought my insides were going to start swimming! I saw lactation consultants and doctors and osteos. My baby just wasn’t gaining weight as quickly as he should. He took just over 6 weeks to get back to his birth weight and that was only after we started him on formula top ups. I look back now and wonder why on earth I didn’t just feed him more, who cares if it was formula – just feed him!!! I’ll never forget when I took him to the doctors and the doctor took one look at him and called him ‘scrawny’ I was so taken back, it really upset and offended me, my baby wasn’t scrawny he was perfect. But now looking back at photos I see exactly what she meant – he was scrawny, that baby needed a decent feed!
My second babe was put on formula sooner than my first as once again she also just wasn’t gaining the weight, but once again I agonised over trying to increase my supply, so once again I drank the tea and smoothies, ate the cookies and porridge, took the donperidone, expressed every moment I could. By the time I resigned to the fact I couldn’t do this anymore my daughter decided she didn’t like drinking from bottles, so for 6 long weeks I cried every time I fed her knowing she wasn’t getting anything while trying to secretly slip a bottle in the side of her mouth. She was three months old and A feed could take me over an hour and a half. It was exhausting, frustrating and so emotionally draining. I was so extremely lucky I had amazing family living close by to hang out with my son and an amazing supportive husband who would pick up the pieces when on the inside I was falling apart. Those weeks are up there with the toughest weeks of parenting I have faced so far. The emotional battle was horrendous, I was failing for a second time.
So like I said third time round I wanted to find out why I just couldn’t master this natural ‘everyone can do it’ age old part of motherhood, so like many mothers before me I jumped on google in the middle of the night and started scrolling.
Stumbling upon a website called kellymom.com i read about hypoplasia and insufficient glandular tissue, I found myself nodding with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face, thinking – I think this is it! There’s actually a reason! I don’t just suck at latching or feeding! I’m not just a failure! There’s actually a reason!
At my next midwife appointment she confirmed that she also believed this was what I had going on. After my GP also confirmed that this is what I have I was so relieved – gutted, but relieved to know I was on the right track to finding out why I was so incapable of something ‘every woman’ can do. Glandular tissue is the milk making tissue in the breast. When a girl goes through puberty she will usually develop fatty tissue in her breast as well as glandular tissue. Some girls develop more of one than the other and sometimes the development of glandular tissue can purely be non existent.
Even though I still feel like a failure to this day, this was what I needed, I needed reassurance that I had tried my best, I had done everything I could. I could keep doing what I was doing but none of it was going to work because my body just physically couldn’t produce any more milk. It was so comforting to finally have a medical reason behind my failure to feed. I read that the best thing you can do if you have IGT is to start mourning the fact you can’t breast feed. My GP said this was the best advice she could give me also. So I started to mourn, or so I thought I did. I spent months telling myself it was OK that I couldn’t do it, it wasn’t any fault of my own. But I guess deep down I actually hoped everything I read was wrong and that actually this time round my body might just come to the party and do what it was suppose to do – make more milk! It’s funny how as parents we put so much pressure on ourselves yet we would never put that much pressure on our peers.
Once again (this is probably getting a tad old now) my baby lost a significant amount of weight after birth. We started her on formula when she was 5 days old, and boy did she thrive! She was putting on upwards of 280gms a week, this was unheard of for my babies, even though I topped my other two up they never gained that much in one week. I felt like my milk was coming in a bit more and as she reached the 6 week mark and she’d had another fantastic weight gain I felt like my body was starting to cooperate. I didn’t push the bottle on her as she was losing interest and I thought she may not be needing the top ups as much. I bought breastfeeding dresses and imagined how long I could breastfeed for, my initial goal was 3 months but I felt like I could maybe make it to 6. It’s strange how even after months of ‘mourning’ breastfeeding I still held out hope. I’d read about women whose milk ‘came in’ at 6 weeks and thought maybe I was going to be one of those women, sadly I was incredibly mistaken, between 6-8 weeks old her weight gain was so minimal the nurse recommended I reduce the breastfeeding and just focus on getting the bottles into her so she could get back to gaining sufficient weight. With my baby at 2 months old my breasts had once again failed me, failed us. This time I truly had to face the cold hard reality that this was it. My breastfeeding journey was over. My body would not cooperate with what my mind wanted. Despite what some may say I feel I am proof that not everyone can exclusively breastfeed their baby, not everyone can produce sufficient amounts of milk.
In New Zealand there is so much pressure to breastfeed, there is so much support around the ‘Breast is Best’ campaign and I commend that, but breastfeeding can be so hard for so many people for so many different reasons. Where is the support for those women who try so hard but don’t get the results they truly dream of being able to achieve?
Having insufficient glandular tissue is my reason for failure, after three nightmare breastfeeding journeys but three beautiful, healthy little humans I’m finally ok with the fact I’m a failure at that.