Annalee's Breastfeeding Story
Well... after all of the pregnancy and birth classes, literature, and a college education you would think Annalee's mother would have gotten it, NOPE!
The night before the induced/scheduled labor there was a light supper and a total one hour of fitful sleep. After being born that Friday, December 12, 1997 at 4:58PM, Annalee's mother began to furiously
turn that colostrum into milk. All evening she nursed and rested and nursed and nursed some more. That night, the lactation specialist was sent into the room to make sure Annalee was nursing.
"You are both doing fine," she said. The next day the nurses returned to see that the baby was still nursing. Nurse and nurse, no matter how tired the mother or baby is JUST NURSE! Earn that milk, turn that colostrum into the "white stuff". This was the goal and we weren't stopping till we reached it. Well, it was Saturday, Where was the milk?
Work harder, press on. So, Saturday became Sunday, still no milk and we were leaving the hospital to go home. But what about the milk? Had Annalee's mother not worked hard enough? After the birth of the baby there came the milk, that was the order. SO WHERE WAS IT THEN? Was it the thirty minutes her mother had nodded off on Saturday night while clutching Annalee to her breast, that the "powers that be" had decided "NO MILK FOR YOU, YOU DON'T DESERVE IT, YOU SLACKER!"?
Monday...ok, Monday there were some things going on with the post-delivery-epidural- episiodomy female body that aren't "nice" and we "ladies" just aren't supposed to talk about them. We also assume we are the only ones on the planet who experience the humility of holding out the list the 1-800-NURSE gave us, of every laxative product on the market, to our husbands who, by the way...HAVE DONE THIS TO US!!! And beg them, "please get everything on the list and just this once DON"T WORRY WHAT IT COSTS!!!" That was the day the blessed MILK came in but we were so busy with things coming out that we did not realize it.
So, to all you new mothers out there... send the kid to the nursery for awhile, get some rest and know that you do not have to work for your milk. It is a natural body function that will not take place immediately. But if relaxed and calm, a mother's body should make milk when it gets ready and not a minute before.
