Just got home from my ward's Christmas party where I got to visit and catch
up with one of my colleagues who is still on leave after having her first
baby just over 8 months ago.  She struggled in the beginning with slow
weight gain as well as long term nipple soreness accompanied by very painful
Raynaud's phenomenon, and we were in close touch to begin with as I helped
her treat the soreness and the Raynaud's and reassured her that her baby
wasn't undernourished, he is just one of those outliers on the charts, way
too long for his weight from the first few weeks on out.  He grows long
quickly and gains weight less quickly.  Could have something to do with his
having very tall, thinnish parents, doh.  She stopped calling or writing by
the summer and she lives far enough away that I don't run into her outside
of work either so I didn't know what had happened later.   

She looks terrific now, and happy, and said she had meant to write dozens of
times but just never got around to it, because she wanted me to know that
she is deeply enjoying breastfeeding and is very satisfied that she
persisted until her soreness and pain resolved.  She did add that she was
unprepared for how much work it had been, but she feels unequivocally that
it was worth every bit of it for the rewards they are experiencing now, of
which the most important one to her is that she gets to cuddle him and
nurture him multiple times every day.  He doesn't get any other milk but
hers, and is eating solids like a typical Norwegian 8 month old. 

As far as not being prepared for how much work it was, I don't think any
pregnant woman should be told to prepare for an experience like this
mother's - the pain finally stopped at about six months, and for the most of
that time she was feeding her baby for up to an hour at a time, frequently
with one hour between end of one feed and start of the next.  He was not an
ineffective nurser, he just needed frequent feeds to be satisfied.  She is
confident that she will have an easier time with her next child, and if she
runs into problems she feels sure that she will be able to solve them
quicker.

Aside from the pain, her major stressor was all the people around her
offering free, unsolicited advice on how to get him to gain faster while
warning her that the frequent feeds would spoil him and make it impossible
for him ever to cope without her.  I gave her my take on that, which is that
a newborn only wants what it needs and it is perfectly responsible and
appropriate to give the newborn just that, and that they will move on to
more independence when the time is right.  Luckily for my reputation he is
doing that, and luckily for this family, the father honors and respects the
baby's need to be breastfed and the mother's need to breastfeed, so she had
a very important ally in her efforts to resist the influence of the chorus
telling her to supplement with commercial milk products.

All of this really underscores for me the importance of a system of support
for breastfeeding that makes it possible for mothers with significant
obstacles in their way, to continue just a bit longer while things work
themselves out.  My colleague's husband had said to her when the baby was a
couple of months old and she was desperate for things to improve 'but you'll
breastfeed at least until Christmas, surely?' and she thought to herself she
would never survive that.  I was still hearing from her every couple of
weeks at that time.  Now Christmas is upon us and she can't imagine
stopping.  I think if she wasn't a midwife and a very determined person
besides, she would have needed a lot more support from me than she got, but
I don't know if I could have eased her way in any practical sense.  That's
not always the point.  Sometimes the point is just that you are there, and
you are the only one acknowledging how much it means to HER to be able to
breastfeed, and the only one offering her support for keeping going.  She
knows someone who experienced some of the same problems, didn't get adequate
help, and weaned her baby to formula after a couple of months because she
saw no way out of the pain and distress on her own otherwise, and it is the
contrast between how her days look now, compared to her acquaintance's days
with her bottle fed child, which really makes her most grateful that she is
breastfeeding.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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