After almost ten years of marriage and more than six years of trying to have a baby, we conceived with the help of fertility drugs and artificial insemination. My nine very easy months of pregnancy did nothing to prepare me for the reality of having our son, Josh.
My bag of waters apparently tore and started to leak one week before our son was born. It was not apparent to anyone that there was a leak until after I was in labor. But that probably contributed to Josh being born with fluid in his lungs, the flu, and a mild case of pneumonia.
My OB knew I was planning to nurse, and after the bad news from the neonatologist ("You have a very sick little boy, and things are going to be hard..."), I was shown how to operate a pump. The nurses got it all wrong ("you don't need to pump at night, because you are tired. And five minutes every four hours or so should get you started just fine..."), and it was nearly twenty-four hours before the lactation consultant came to get me fixed. But she kept up with me even after I was discharged from the hospital with Josh still there.
Josh was covered with wires under a "cakebox" oxygen tent the first time I ever got to see him. He stayed that way for a week, then was upgraded to a c-pap tube that covered his entire face... You can't imagine what it is like to know that you can't even hold your baby because he could not breathe without being attached to something.
But through it all, my rented pump and I were able to keep way ahead of his feeding demands. He did not receive any food for three days, but by the time they were ready to start him on food, I had about 50 ccs of breast milk, and was getting more each time I pumped. I was able to get so far ahead of him, that NICU asked me to stop bringing in milk until they finished what they already had!
I was able to start feeding him directly at about a week and a half, and thereafter breastfed him for half of his daily feedings at the hospital. It was tiring but worth it. And the nurses would tell me how much he fought with the bottle when they fed him. He wanted to eat from Mom!
It was sad to sit in my baby's room at home at three in the morning with a pump instead of a baby, but five months later he is doing great and has only had one little cold since coming home!!
I am still breastfeeding even though I am back at work. I feel so strongly about this that I have even managed to get my company to provide two hospital grade pumps in our Lactation Room for our working and pumping moms. All it takes is a little stick-to-it-iveness and a lot of conviction.
Don't let anyone tell you that you can't breastfeed a hospitalized infant. You can. All it takes is a little bit of work and a lot of guts.
