31 days of Mia, Day 3.
Back in February, Mia and I experienced the hardest five days of breastfeeding yet. The whole family was sick with colds and ear infections, and poor little Mia was so snotty she couldn’t even breathe through her nose. Because she couldn't breathe, she couldn't latch well, and she went on a nursing strike.
For five days.
I was a mess. An emotional, exhausted, freaked out mama. When it comes to breastfeeding, I'm a CRAZY person in general, so this just made me even crazier.
Mia wouldn't even pretend to latch. The first couple of times, I offered to nurse her, she refused, and I would pump. No big deal. After the first few times, that's when I started getting nervous.
I talked to my lactation consultant three times in the span of five days. I also talked to our pediatrician once. My LC said first of all, for me to calm down and relax, that nursing strikes are normal, and babies almost always go back to the breast because they love the breast. So for three days or so, I would offer, she would refuse, she would scream, I would cry, I would pump, and she would have a bottle.
On the third day when I went back to work, I pumped and got a total of 1 oz. 1 oz.! The second time I pumped, I got 1 oz. I went home from work with a total of 2 oz., compared to the 12-14 oz. that I typically take home from two pumpings. At that point, I really freaked out. My milk wasn't letting down because I was so upset and stressed out. I called my LC again, and what did she say? RELAX. She told me to picture the baby, picture the baby nursing, drink something hot, try some massage, do something to distract myself while pumping, etc. I had to really concentrate on relaxing. I found that texting friends while pumping usually did the trick. My milk not letting down was the hardest part of the nursing strike by far. Because if I couldn't even pump for her? Well, it was bad.
On the third evening, my LC said that I should give Mia a break and not offer the breast for 24-48 hours. She said she was associating not being able to breathe with nursing, and she needed time to forget that. I have friends who completely disagreed with this and thought that I should always offer each feed. I was so stressed out and felt so rejected, that I decided to go with the LC's advice, and I didn't offer for about 40ish hours. It gave me time to calm down, Mia time to forget that she was being smothered, and mentally for me, that I wasn't being rejected by my newborn constantly.
Throughout the strike, we had A LOT of skin to skin time. As much as possible, I was shirtless/braless, and Mia was just in a diaper. I give her bottles (where I would normally just let Doug or my mom give her a bottle). I also took a few baths with her, which was lots of skin to skin and snuggling and just some quiet time together.
My LC said that the easiest time to get them back on is when they are half sleeping. So, when I felt comfortable, and like maybe she would latch, and it had been about 40 hours since I last offered, I pulled her out of her bassinet in the middle of the night, before she really woke up, and she latched! And she nursed! She just popped right back on like she had never stopped.
I posted this on Facebook on Feb. 23:
I do declare this nursing strike over! Thank you, sweet little baby Jesus!

I was overcome with emotion when she finally nursed. I don’t think I really knew how stressed out I was until it was finally over. Probably for a week or more, I tensed up every time it was time to feed her because I was so afraid she wasn’t going to latch.
I was a few feedings away from having to give her formula, which really scared me and sent my stress level through the roof. To keep myself in check in instances like this, I always ask myself what's the worst thing that could happen? In this case, the worst thing that could happen was she would become formula fed. And really? Formula isn't the devil. It would be okay. I can't tell you how many times I repeated that in my head over the 5 days, "Formula is okay. I'm not a failure. It's okay." Once I started believing it, things got so much better.
Nursing strikes are hard. I am so thankful we successfully made it through it. And afterward? I sent my LC a Starbucks gift card and cute pictures of the girls to thank her for talking me through my craziness. I would have sent her $1 million if I had it.
[Thank goodness for emailing with friends, because without talking to Meghan about this crazy strike, I wouldn't have had nearly as many details looking back on it.]
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