…but you’d be wrong. Just as I thought I was cracking this breastfeeding lark, another ginormous spanner in the works.
The bad latch on incident (and now, I realise, many bad latch on incidents) has turned into a severely wounded nipple complete with blood blister and a dead patch on the end. A piece of skin is falling off it; I can no longer make it work. Actually it’s more that I can no longer stand the agony of subjecting it to my well meaning but vicious litter of terriers.
Here’s what I do – express on that side (yawn…) and nurse, as they like to say in America, on the other. Think about it… that means more bottles; I rotate the go on the breast, they take turns to chomp. So what happens next? Almost overnight, they:
FORGET HOW TO FEED! (If there were a font that said horror movie voice over echoing down eerie monastery corridor, I would use it now)
Unbelievable. I offer them my delicious plump left mammary on Friday night, and they dutifully each open a cute little mouth, and… wait. And wait, and wait. For the milk to come. To be delivered onto each lazy princessly tongue I presume, for the little madams to delicately swallow at their leisure. Absolutely no sucking takes place whatsoever. In the space of 24 hours, they’ve totally forgotten it all! Girls, this is not how it’s done! You have to work for this dinner dammit!
A long story short: More tears from me (floods), then the WHOLE of Saturday spent re-learning basic nutritional survival skills, as per week one, only in the next size babygros. By Sunday we were starting to get back on track.
Now I’m juggling the delicate balance of nipple preservation, baby feeding skills practice, and adequate suckling to enhance milk production. Oh and adequate infant nutritional provision. But evidently that’s not been much of a problem – these monkeys are growing faster than Clifford the big red dog.
So the vicious cycle goes thus: I need to feed loads to keep them in training, avoid feeding to allow nipple repairs and then be sure to feed plenty to improve my supply. See? Tricky’s not the word. But rubbish is.
Anyway – that was that, but then there was this – yesterday morning my beautiful Rosa fed, and lying perfectly content on my chest, turned her head to me. With a cute sideways look gave me not one, but four of the biggest smiles her 6 week old mouth could manage. Amazing. Nipple pain? What nipple pain?!