When Kody was born everything was easy. It was a vaginal birth (5 pushes and he was out!) He was a healthy baby boy all swollen and crying, - we even managed to gather his cord blood. They took him only a couple feet away for a moment just to weigh him, and then they handed him back for an hour or two of straight cuddling. When they placed him skin-to-skin on me, he immediately quieted and I think I have never been happier than I was at that moment of my life.
Of course, I didn't give birth to Kody.
And while I did breastfeed him, I was never the main course, - just appetizer and dessert as my lactation coach and friend, Donna, would say.
My recent birthing experience with Niky, our second, was very different.
We were shooting for a natural birth again - I wanted a "natural" everything, so when he didn't want to come out two weeks overdue, I didn't want to induce. I was 2-3 centimeters dilated for a couple of weeks. Everyone told me it would be soon if I took the stairs, ate spicy foods, drank Cod Liver Oil, walked and performed other various physical activities. I did most of those things, but to no avail. Staring at a bottle of Cod Liver Oil had become a new nighttime mediation.
Finally, I just sat down to read Kody a bedtime story one night, and my water broke. We called her mother to babysit, and my step-mother to drive, and we went to the hospital and waited.
The next morning, I was still only 2-3 centimeters dilated. (1 centimeter by one doctor's estimation)! But my contractions had started and they were becoming unbearable. I finally agreed to the epidural. I was fine after that for a couple of rounds when suddenly the door busts open, and my doctor came in telling some nurse that she saw "it". The next thing I knew my room was filled with a dozen people carrying me out and across the hall to an operating room. I was off the monitors for one minute. It took them less than ten minutes to rip Niky out. I spent more time waiting for the X-rays they needed to make sure they didn't leave any tools inside me. (They hadn't gotten the chance to count them!)
I thank god for my blessings however - namely my wife, Amy. They would not take me down to Niky in the NICU as long as I couldn't walk, and right away the nurses began discussing the possibility of formula. Amy, or Ema as we now call her, would hear nothing of it. She was down there in a flash pumping her own milk so that his first taste was nature's perfect cure-all. He may not have gotten hours of cuddling like his brother had, but in this family he would get breast milk!
He had only gotten a mere glimpse
of me in the operating room, a flash of his Ema in NICU but he now faced 48 hours
of heat lamps, IVs, monitors, and nurses he'd never meet again. I wasn't
even able to hold him after the couple hours it took for me to wiggle feeling
back into my legs and get down there. Then it took another hour or so for
the nurses to succumb to my partner's demands that I be able to hold him
despite all the tubes and wires.
The next two days passed like a long dream. I was down in that NICU every two hours for the next two days trying to get him to latch on and drink. I was all alone at night. They made Amy go home. I wasn't making any milk yet but the nurses insisted that if I didn't try once every two hours, they were going to give him the formula. They also insisted he stay there until the antibiotic ran its course. Apparently, he'd been born with some extra fluid but this is a likely side effect of a C-section. I still hadn't gotten a straight answer as to what "it" was that my doctor had seen which caused them to rip him out of me in the first place.
In addition to all his problems, my body had just been assaulted. My milk was just not coming in yet. It was a very nerve-wracking time.
When the antibiotic had finished, and they finally gave him over to me, they said he was beginning to show signs of jaundice. That's when they were really pushing for formula. My pediatrician took charge and held them off, but she was concerned that he learn to nurse off me (as opposed to Ema's bottled breast milk) or else I might never initiate production. I now had one night to try to make him drink enough to get his color back.
I remembered how a friend of mine had been unable to bring her little one home before she was released due to a bout of jaundice. She'd looked defeated the night we took her home. She'd said it was a terrible feeling to leave the hospital without your baby.
I wasn't going to let that happen. He'd already been through enough.
So despite practically zero sleep for four straight days, I finally had him back in my hospital room and set up to feed him all night. I had an ounce of Ema's milk and an eye dropper that I used to entice him to my nipple. It was a euphoric reprieve for both of us. We were finally alone in a nice quiet room together. He nursed; I talked. I remember that night as rare perfection, holding him to me for warmth, feeling him calm for the first time in his life. He knew my voice. He'd look up at me at times while I spoke to him in ways that made me feel our future together. We got a kind of late start but that night we found each other again. Niky learned to nurse, and I learned the endurance it takes to be dinner! We were released the next day and I began the long process of my own recovery and, thankfully, milk production. Of course, the poor little guy kept sucking with part of his mouth to the side for the next week and a half looking for Ema's more-plentifully supplied eye dropper! But we eventually found the rhythm.
As it turns out, the difference between mother and "other-mother" breastfeeding isn't much. The little guys sometimes do have preferences but their preferences vary, and at least I always have somebody else to take over if I need to go to the bathroom.
As for all you breastfeeding other mothers without "Other Mothers?" I don't know how you do it. I have to say, I highly recommend always having a spare pair. But I'm certainly proud to be a part of your club, (even if I do sort of cheat!)
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