The day finally comes (that is.. if your little bundle does not decide to come before the due date) and you are in the hospital bed when the nurses bring the baby for the first feed. You have expectations of course… you’ve read all the books, articles, studies, videos, etc., and you so desperately want to experience this magical moment with your baby. And then… It’s not.

Yeah, been there. There are a lot of things than can go “wrong” or outside our expectations. Maybe you are not producing the amount of milk you expected, maybe your kid is not good at the latching and sucking business, maybe it hurts a little bit too much; On top of it, you are tired, sleep deprived, overwhelmed, overstimulated and if you are like me and had a C-section, you are healing from a MAJOR injury and everything must hurt like hell. It’s a lot to take on in just a few days.

If you are living a in first-world country you can look for a lactation consultant to help you get through all of this things, but if you are like me and live in a country where there’s no such thing then you have to improvise and help yourself the best way you can. This means reading and researching a lot and being mindful of the advice you follow. It’s HARD. So i’m not an expert and my journey may differ from others but I wanted to share what I went through and how I overcame some of the challenges and how I’m doing now. You can pick and choose what you feel could work for you but I would like to advise you to take all this with a grain of salt as usual. Every woman and baby is different.

And so, how it was for me? HARD. I wouldn’t say traumatic persé but the first two weeks were kind of a hell. He did not know how to latch properly and it HURT. after the first couple of weeks I thought about calling it quits and use formula. I gave it a try for one day while my nipples were healing from all the cuts and bruises. I never did it again. He latched well to the bottle but the formula got him SO sick… he was colicky and gassy and overall feeling horrible, did not sleep all night, crying non-stop. I felt like the worst mom ever. So I decided to stick with the breastfeeding.

The next day he magically learned to latch out of nowhere. Since then we have been exclusively breastfeeding.

That’s a bit of the story, in the next post I will tell you some of the things that worked for me.

See you!

XO