Sometimes, I Hate Lactation Consultants

I had to be induced at 34 weeks and 3 days due to severe preeclampsia, and my daighter spent 13 days in the hospital due to this (10 days in NICU, 3 days in NSCU). She was taken straight to the NICU due to having RDS, so I couldn't get my golden hour with her. I had to start pumping right out the gate since I couldn't even hold her until a day or two after I got off magnesium, and I wasn't expecting it to be this hard.

For starts, the lactation consultant came in to my room not even an hour after I gave birth to give me the whole song and dance about how the pump worked and how to hand express colostrum. Mind you, I had been in labor for a grand total of 23 hours (counting the pushing) and had slept in 30 minute incraments the night before due to my contractions and some instances where the nurses had to intervene because things weren't going too good. Couple that with the magnesium drip, the lady was sounding like the adults from Charlie Brown and I was looking at her like an idiot the whole time because it was all going in one ear and out the other. Thankfully my husband was there to actually listen to her and relay me the information once I was more aware of my surroundings.

Things got better once my milk came in about 4 days later (I was pumping about 80 ml in one sitting!!), but then I wound up getting sick, and my supply has tanked since then. On a good session, I pump 1.5 oz, and when I bring up my issues to the lactation consultants, they have no answers other than, "it's a marathon, not a sprint", or "maybe it's the pump!"

Coupled with that, my daughter won't latch. She gets the overall concept of it, and on a really good day, she'll spend about 5-10 minutes latched onto me. But most of the time, she gets so overwhelmed and frustrated that I have to just give her the bottle because I also get overwhelmed and frustrated. And again, all I get from the consultants is "it's a marathon, not a sprint!" instead of actual advice.

My psychiatrist actually brought up a really great point when I was telling her all of this: a lot of lactation consultants forget that pushing breastfeeding can have a negative impact on the mother's physical and mental wellbeing. She event went as far as to tell me to forego my MOTN pump because it was making my PPD/PPR worse because I was hardly getting any sleep.