Odds were stacked against us when my son arrived 7 weeks early and I wasn’t able to breastfeed him right away. The very first thing I asked when I came to my senses after the shock of giving birth so quickly so early was if I could try to feed him (I was allowed to hold him before they took him to the nicu) but I wasn’t able to because they had to rush him off to the nicu. They didn’t expect him to latch until 34-35 weeks but he surprised everyone by latching at just 2 days old. My milk was really delayed in coming in. He was 2 weeks old before I really developed a decent supply but that led to an oversupply with the amount of pumping and nursing the hospital had me doing.

Once we were home, I still had to give him 4 bottles of fortified breastmilk a day. I was finally able to stop that after his one month appointment. I struggled to get him to latch, there were times it took nearly an hour to get him latched, and so there were many tears on both my end and his. Several times, I gave up and pumped a bottle for him. I was determined to get him latching though! I had trouble keeping him awake for feedings, had to undress him, tickle him, burp him, everything I could think of to wake him enough for a full feeding. I kept at it.

18 weeks later, a lip tie, countless clogged ducts, over 2000 ounces of pumped milk (800 donated!) growth spurts and cluster nursing, it’s finally gotten easy.

I am so proud of how far we’ve come and I know it was only pure determination that got us here!

First feeding

First “milk drunk”

18 weeks old today!

Still a horrendous latch but no one will fix his lip tie because he was low birth weight.