Experimenting with Life

People rarely talk about raw nipples as the side effect of breastfeeding. When Aurelia arrived, my body was rigid, and her latch was off. Each feeding session brought lots of tears for both of us. What made things worse was that newborn needed to eat every two hours. There was no time to heal before new wounds occurred.

As a result, each day oscillated between joy (when she smiles), agony (nipple blisters hurt as hell), guilt (why can’t I do this when millions of mothers have done it), and self-pity (why this is happening to me).

I experimented with many things. I went to online support group and heard about other mother’s ways of coping. Researched on Youtube and altered positions from football hold (yes that is a thing) to side-lying to leaning on my back. Cried at 5am and called up a girl friend who was two years into motherhood and asked how she did it. Called in a lactation consultant. Visited lactation consultant again. And again. Bought breast shield. Mixed Polysporin and Cortisol 50:50 and applied it as the magic “healing cream”. Gave in and pumped and fed baby with a syringe and baby spit out half of my golden liquid and I wept more. Switched six bottle designs to find the one she’d drink from…Sometimes things got better and often they didn’t. It was frustrating and exhausting but I kept trying.

The next few months saw two or three rounds of blisters formed and healed, and finally, incremental progress reached a tipping point and breastfeeding worked: Aurelia and I got better at working as a team.

Reflecting upon this experience, I would tell myself then that the breastfeed pain, like many pain in life, will heal with time. There is no good to be too hard on myself. Rather, channel the energy to things I have control over, and run life like a big experiment. It will either yield desirable outcome or yield learning that help crafting better ones.