"I feel like superwoman"

Nursing with babies - Another happy client story

Nursing with babies or breastfeeding can be challenging for many.  Here is another true story of one of my clients.
Harvey is 7 weeks old.  Mum is desperately wanting to breastfeed. Mum has doubts about her ability to breastfeed and I am her last resort. After talking with mum, I thought we could improve things for her, but I wasn’t sure how much. We decided to give it a try.  Often I need to see what is going on to get a better idea.

These have been her hurdles to date:
Labour induced,  Caesarean, big hungry baby, delayed milk supply,  no confidence in milk supply, previous breast surgery, perceived low milk supply.
Mum has tried everything she can find - nipple shields, expressing, herbs & medication to increase her milk supply. Expressing would only get 20 – 50 mls often, but at times could get 100 mls.
At that time, Harvey was feeding every 2 and a half to 3 hours having a few sucks at the breast and getting formula or breast milk topups of about 50-100mls minimum. Feeding was taking one and a half hours at times after offering a breastfeed, then a bottle then expressing and cleaning bottles etc. Mum was exhausted and had sought help with breastfeeding and nursing with babies from a number of sources with little success.
All we did was change around the feeding.  Mum learned  Harvey’s different cues for feeding and sleep. Mum’s confidence in her ability to breastfeed increased as she saw that Harvey was satisfied at the breast.

The first day Harvey had  topups of 60 mls in total. The second day he had topups of 40 mls in total. After only 2 days he was not needing any topups at all.

Harvey is sleeping so much better and even self settling which was not any part of her goal, it’s just a bonus.
Mum is over the moon, Dad is happy, Harvey is content, settled and very happy. Mum’s confidence is building and there is no reason why she and Harvey cannot breastfeed for as long as they choose.
Now her challenge is to believe she can do it.


A week later  she said to me- “I feel Like superwoman”. In the first few days of her breastfeeding success she would still take bottles with her when she was out with Harvey- just in case. Now she feels awesome to say she doesn’t take any at all.
It can pay off to persevere when nursing with babies.