When breastfeeding isn’t plain sailing

We went back the next day, and he had put on 50g. I cried with relief, but he was two weeks old and still 360g below his birth-weight. My nipples showed no signs of healing, but I would let him suck for as long as I could stand it and then give him up to 100ml of formula. The cracks and soreness were so bad that Victoria suggested burn dressing, which just made it feel worse. The advice used to be to expose nipples to the air to heal them, now it is to keep them well-oiled.

His weight began to rise steadily, so we gave him less formula. He regained his birth-weight at three and a half weeks. From weighing well over the average at birth, he was now well below it for his age – and he’s stayed that way ever since. I later learned that babies can quite safely lose up to 10% of their body weight after birth: 400g was only 30g over 10%, so no harm had been done.

It took a month for my nipples to heal completely. On the advice of my sister, a homeopath, I massaged my breasts daily with calendula baby oil, and that did help, particularly when hard hot lumps appeared that indicated blocked ducts. If you don’t free them up, it can turn into mastitis.

When the pain went, Tolly began to latch on better and his weight rose slowly but surely. The relief was incredible. I began to remember that breastfeeding is the easy option. It is well worth fighting through the misery, worry, pain and anguish to climb out into the sunlit uplands of shoving the baby up your jumper whenever he needs a feed.