Blog Post 1: “The Beginning of My Breastfeeding Journey”

My name is Adrian, and I currently live in the suburbs of Connecticut with my husband and two young sons.  We started our parenting journey in pre-pandemic New York City, in the fall of 2018. At the time we were living in a small one bedroom apartment, in the heart of the financial district just a few blocks south of Wall Street.  Even though our space was tiny, we were completely ready to welcome a baby into our lives. 

After a difficult delivery that ended in a C-Section, my baby seemed to instinctively know what to do. When they brought him to me, I held him to my chest, and he immediately started rummaging around for a nipple with his little mouth.  My milk had yet to come but he was able to get colostrum. I had barely any milk at the beginning and it was terrifying.  There was a lot of pressure to give him formula in the hospital- he had jaundice and was even spending time in the incubator.  I tried everything to get the milk to come down. I massaged my breasts, I pumped (at the time with a Medela) and I remember feeling alarmed at the tiny amount of milk that would come out after a good amount of time. My little bottles would have no more than 20 or 25 ML of milk and the nurses would shake their heads and say, Oh that baby’s going to be hungry.  On the fifth day, when his jaundice was better enough that I was allowed to take him home, I felt so much relief. Surely, I thought, once we were home and comfortable, the milk would flow.

Since he’d spent an extra few weeks in my belly, he was a good birth weight of over eight pounds, but it was so hard to keep his weight going in the right direction.  I just couldn’t get that much milk- I always felt like I was barely making enough. I searched online, desperately trying to understand how and why some women overproduced. Seeing pictures and reading stories of women with freezers full of milk, I could only imagine how wonderful it would be. My baby knew exactly what to do, one of his little hands would always automatically find a nipple and fiddle with it- it was so cute.  He constantly wanted the breast and we spent so much time in those wonderful first few months.  I had a three month maternity leave, which at the time seemed like an eternity. After years of working long hours in tech, it felt like a dream to be home with a sweet baby.  And at first he seemed almost easy, we’d nap together, I’d watch reruns of old favorite shows and he’d gaze up at the toys dangling over his activity mat. I held him for hours, we’d simply read together, and me reading my own books or reading baby books aloud to him.  He needed so little then.  I fed him dutifully throughout the night each night. At three months I returned to work with a backpack full of pumping supplies. The only woman in my small tech office, I took the smallest conference room and turned it into my private mother’s room. I’d pump for hours during the day, the noisy machine purring away during conference calls. I’d make enough to get through each day while I was away and no more, I never had even one extra day’s worth of milk in my refrigerator. My mom watched our baby that first month I went back, and even getting him to accept a bottle was a huge feat. I would steer every future mother to Comotomos, they simply come as close to the breast as a bottle can. Once the four month mark arrived, our new nanny started and I kept up my round the clock feeding and pumping schedule.

I tried everything under the sun to increase my supply. I drank loads of Fenugreek tea. I’d make it every day, multiple times a day. A huge tub of brewer’s yeast made a home in my pantry, and I’d scoop it into chocolate chip lactation cookies, and I’d mix it with oatmeal and eat it in the mornings. I had a neighborhood friend who’d had twins a year prior, and she had a huge stock of Legendairy Milk supplements.  She was kind enough to gift it to me, and I was trying them all. I had huge amounts of warm oatmeal, gallons of water, every trick in the book to make milk. But still I only made enough to just barely get by.

I’d see pictures of other girls online with freezers stocked with SO much milk. I couldn’t figure out why I just made so little. But I persevered. And before I knew it, we had gotten through the first six months and were still going strong.