My Trip to the Breastfeeding Clinic

Remember a while back I posted about how I couldn’t breastfeed? Well, I still wanted to try- it’s been 15 years since my reduction and maybe things have changed. I discussed it with my doctor, she referred me to the breastfeeding clinic, and I was able to get an appointment for yesterday morning.

Unfortunately yesterday morning was pretty crummy. I slept poorly, I had to deal with a stressful bank situation at like, 8am, I couldn’t find a cab and had to take the train and speedwalk five blocks to make it to my appointment in time. Plus, I’m super pregnant and emotional and everything is hard right now. What I’m saying is I wasn’t in a good place when I got there, but I was determined to have a good appointment and hopefully come away with useful information. I saw the doctor and got examined and talked about options and basically what it came down to was this:

Yeah. My boobs are a mess and my nipples are a mess and although she agreed with my personal assessment that it wouldn’t be an issue of supply (idk why people always think that’s the case) she said it wasn’t very likely that enough milk would actually make it out of my body to nourish a baby, even if the baby could latch properly, which is even more doubtful. OH WELL. To be honest it was kind of refreshing to hear, because everyone else always tells me that they know BILLIONS of women who’ve been able to successfully breastfeed after a reduction with no difficulty or problems at all. LIARS, I say.

I wasn’t surprised or disappointed to hear any of this, but that was the part of the day when my body decided it really hated me, and I burst into tears in the examination room! It was really frustrating- the doctor thought I was crying because she’d just told me I probably wouldn’t be able to breastfeed and therefore I felt like I was a failure as a parent or a woman, and spent the rest of the appointment trying to reassure me that that wasn’t the case but like… I KNOW THAT ALREADY. I wasn’t crying about breastfeeding, I was crying because I’d had a bad morning and was at my limit or something? idk, I started crying again in Toys R Us half an hour later and I don’t have that many strong feelings about Lalaloopsy dolls either.

Anyway. Even if it was an awkward weepy disaster, I’m glad I went. She gave me a plan for pumping & bottlefeeding that I can put up on the “Breastfeeding Plan” whiteboard in my hospital room (that’s a real thing) so the nurses don’t get on my case about breastfeeding this time, and idk, after all these years it’s nice to have a real actual professional say “no no, you were right about this all along.” Plus now I don’t need to stress about trying to find nursing bras in size giganto, because APPARENTLY there are less options for that than with regular bras. WTH.