Tell Me This Isn’t The End

To preface, we’ve had sickness in our house this past week, so what I’m about to say could just be related to that. My toddler son caught it first, then gave it to me, then gave it to his three-month old sister. So it’s already been a hard week dealing with stuffy noses and crabby kids.

My daughter seems to hate breastfeeding. I had an oversupply when I was feeding my son and I had planned on working to get an oversupply so I could build a freezer stash. Come to find out, after filling my freezer, my milk has high lipase, so my daughter wouldn’t drink it from the bottle. I had planned to use it when she started solids (blending it up with food so the soapy taste would be disguised) but then we lost power for eleven days in Ice Storm Fern and we had to toss everything we had in the fridge and freezer, including my stored milk.

On top of that, my daughter goes through phases where she doesn’t want to nurse at all. And, because I gave up on trying to build a freezer stash after discovering I couldn’t use the milk I already had, I stopped pumping regularly. Now, I barely get an ounce between both sides after nursing my daughter, and I’m terrified that my supply just isn’t enough for her anymore. My letdown is slow, she fights so hard when I try to put her on, but once she’s latched, she’s good. She drinks deep and long off both sides every feed, and takes super long swallows for several minutes.

But I’m scared because she’s going through another phase of not wanting to latch during the day. It’s been that way for two days now. At night, she’s fine, but during the day, it’s a struggle to get her to even try to latch. And I can’t seem to get enough with pumping throughout the day to even replace one feed.

I just don’t want to give up. The fact that formula can go through scarcities scares me, and there’s been so much coming out about formulas causing injury to babies that I just want to keep breastfeeding. But I don’t know if she’s getting enough to eat, and if she’s not, I know I’m doing more harm than good for her. It’s such a weight on my mind and my husband’s constant doubts about whether our daughter has enough to eat or not don’t help.

I know that he’s comparing our son’s breastfeeding journey to our daughter’s, but that’s not a fair comparison. My son had no trouble with eating once my supply came in. I also had plenty of extra milk to freeze so others could feed him while I pumped to maintain supply.

I don’t have that now. I have no freezer stash to fall back on. I can’t even get enough in a single pumping session to try to bottle feed my daughter.

It’s been so stressful but I don’t want to give up, but I also don’t want to starve my daughter if I need to close the door on breastfeeding. If anyone can give me reassurance that I’m making enough, that would be great. Then I could push through until it gets easier. But if she needs to be bottle fed, then I don’t want to delay switching her to formula.