"Breastfeeding Centre"

After a lovely pregnancy and home birth with my son, I, unfortunately, hit a bump in the road with breastfeeding. However, with the help of the lactation consultants at the breastfeeding centre, I am now well on my way to being successful with it.

As soon as my son was born a tongue tie was identified, although his latch was strong and I didn't feel there were any issues with his breastfeeding. In the first week he was unsettled and ate almost constantly, but being a first-time mum I didn't see an issue with this. 5 days after his birth he had lost over 10% of his weight, at which point I borrowed a pump from the breastfeeding centre to help build my milk supply. On day 7 he had regained some of that weight. On day 10, he had dropped again and after a clarity call with Jo from the breastfeeding centre, we were admitted to PCH for monitoring.

Through the hospital stint, it was determined that our issues were due to poor milk transfer and low supply, and the immediate fix for my son's weight gain was triple feeding - offering the breast, pumping afterwards and topping up with expressed milk or formula as required.

We were fortunate to get an appointment at the breastfeeding centre the following week due to a cancellation and at our first meeting with Debra, we realised just how little milk my son was able to take by direct feeding. Debra very quickly identified that his tongue tie could be the cause of some of our issues and on her recommendation, we saw a paediatrician for a correction a few days later. 

I continued to have meetings with Debra and Sarah at the centre. Although we weren't seeing much progress in the weighed feeds we were doing, we continued to work on getting my positioning right, and they counselled me and provided reassurance that the pure exhaustion brought on by triple feeding wouldn't last forever. I wasn't made to feel guilty for the way I was having to feed my baby at that time, even though to me personally, it didn't feel aligned to my goal of exclusively breastfeeding. They just treated it like a means to an end.

Sure enough, at nearly 8 weeks old something clicked into place, and my son started feeding much more efficiently without needing any kind of top-up. I had one final meeting with Debra and we had a great conversation about trusting your intuition and letting other people's judgements wash over you, which will stick with me.

Breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult in various ways, and many women are not adequately supported to persevere with it and feel they have no choice but to give up for the sake of their physical and mental health. Having been in that headspace, I feel incredibly thankful to have had access to the breastfeeding centre. It's such a wonderful resource and I cannot recommend it enough. The advice dispensed to me throughout this time was invaluable and I feel confident moving forward with my breastfeeding journey.