What breastfeeding taught me
Hi! Natalie here. I’m currently with a 3 month old and wow have I learned so much about myself in the last 3 months.
To start, I didn’t have the easiest labor. It lasted 3 days… yes 3 days. My blood pressure also shot up during labor and I had to immediately be put on magnesium post delivery. If you are not familiar with this, essentially magnesium makes you feel like you have the flu and you are bed ridden for 24 hours. Going through labor was already hard enough and then this on top of it just made it even harder.
Breastfeeding was something I was interested in before my baby was born. I knew it would be hard as I had heard from other moms but I didn’t realize actually how effing HARD it really was until going through it. Those first 24 hours were miserable and I remember thinking to myself I’m not sure how I’m going to do this.
My baby didn’t latch well at first and I also had a million cords on me due to the magnesium so holding her was difficult. I remember being so stressed about her getting enough milk and all of the nurses trying to help me. I almost felt embarrassed by how much support I needed.
A tid bit to know is that it’s normal for babies to lose 10% of their body weight once they are born and it normally takes 2 weeks to gain back to their original birth weight. With this in mind, I was stressed on how to feed my baby. I wanted to make sure she was getting enough nourishment. As a couple weeks went by, I did a combo of pumping and breastfeeding and also met with a lactation consultant. During all of this I noticed my old black/white thinking patterns coming back. My questioning of “is she eating enough ? Maybe I should supplement more… I don’t “trust” that she’s had enough” “she didn’t eat as long as the last feed so she must have not eaten enough” (there are apps now to time the feeds).
This baby is pretty sassy (and I love it) and so anytime I would try to “force” feed she would instantly cry or push away, yet I would keep trying to do it. I slowly started to realize that I was being rigid and not trusting that my baby could tell me when she’s hungry. This is exactly the opposite of what I teach my clients and yet I was trying to force this on my baby. It was such a clear example of intuitive eating and I was letting fear rob the joy of watching my babys natural cues come out. Experiencing this first hand was eye opening to me and truly was a testimony to babys are born with the innate ability to know their cues. How amazing is that!? I’m passionate about destroying diet culture and continuing to support my clients to go against the grain and to go back to their ability to listen to their bodies, because you were BORN with this.