When a Leader Needs a Leader
Linda Irvin
Ypsilanti MI USA
From: LEAVEN, Vol. 40 No. 2, April-May 2004, pp. 27-29.
I went on a home visit today,
the first since my son Elliot was born three months ago. My co-Leader
and I went to help a new mother whose three-day-old baby was having
trouble latching on to her engorged breasts. I watched my co-Leader
talk calmly to this first-time mother. She was empathetic and comforting.
She explained how in the
beginning nursing could be difficult, that it was a learning process.
She reviewed comfort measures for the mother’s engorgement and
sore nipples and assessed the baby’s latch-on and position at the
breast. She was reassuring and supportive, telling the mother what a
wonderful job she was doing, telling this mother many of the exact same
things she told me more than once during the first few weeks after Elliot’s
birth.
Our home visit reiterated
for me just how vulnerable mothers are during the postpartum period.
Between the fluctuating hormones, the physical discomfort, and the disturbed
sleep, even the most committed breastfeeding mother can falter. It was
also clear to me that even though I knew many things about breastfeeding
and had already successfully established one nursing relationship. I
wasn’t any less vulnerable after Elliot’s birth than the mother
of the three-day-old baby in front of us.
Elliot seemed to start out
okay. My labor was long but uncomplicated and without medication. Initially
he latched on and appeared to nurse well. His suck did not seem as strong
as my daughter’s had been and he fell off my breast very easily.
The midwives who delivered him and the pediatrician who came later that
day checked him for tongue-tie and palate abnormalities and he was fine
on both counts. However, he was sleepy and never nursed for more than
five minutes at a time, another big change from my older daughter. Fairly
quickly, he started making a clicking noise whenever he nursed and his
cheeks were dimpled. My milk was slow to come in, which seemed to frustrate
him. A visitor, who had come to help, described his nursing as “desperate,”
a decidedly unhelpful comment. I spoke with one of my co-Leaders on
the phone, but I felt a little anxious and silly. She came for a visit
and talking with her calmed me down and got me back on track. She reminded
me of the cross-cradle position and doing breast compression in an effort
to keep him nursing longer.
When my milk supply finally
did “come in” on day five, Elliot checked out of the process
completely and spent most of the day sleeping and occasionally latching
on for a very lazy nurse. A friend from my Group visited and commented
on his sleepiness. My co-Leader called and, during the course of the
conversation, asked me whether Elliot’s bowel movements had transitioned
from meconium. I realized his output was completely inadequate and my
breasts were lumpy and slightly engorged. I was surprised at how easily
I had forgotten the important process of keeping track. I put up a small
white board next to the changing table to record day-by-day Elliot’s
wet and dirty diapers.
Engorgement was another new
experience for me. I used warm compresses and hand expression. I spent
a lot of time reviewing the 2003 Breastfeeding Answer Book because Elliot’s
latch-on was not improving. He had a difficult time maintaining suction
and I could often see gaps at the corners of his mouth. I knew that
he needed to open his mouth wider and take more of my breast into his
mouth, but I couldn’t seem to make him do it. I started waking
him up every two hours to nurse, and I began some of the exercises mentioned
to help improve a weak suck. I also took Elliot to the chiropractor
I had seen during my pregnancy.
On day seven, my nipples
got sore and started to crack. I panicked again. It was a mystery to
me why my baby wasn’t latching-on properly. Secretly I worried
that I couldn’t nurse him and I wondered exactly how I could lead
a meeting without nursing my infant because I certainly couldn’t
be fumbling around so much at a meeting. I now totally understood the
mother I knew who had stopped coming to meetings after her baby was
born until their nursing problems were resolved because she couldn’t
bear the thought of awkwardly latching on in front of so many mothers
and babies who nursed so effortlessly. After this panic attack, another
local Leader came to my house. She rearranged how I was sitting, added
pillows for more support, and suggested that we may have thrush. I told
her that was impossible; I knew what thrush felt like. My daughter and
I had it for months. The soreness couldn’t possibly be yeast-related
because neither Elliot nor I had been on antibiotics and I had been
taking acidophilus prophylactically. She had to be wrong I thought to
myself. The following Tuesday, the pediatrician diagnosed thrush.
By week three, Elliot had
completely humbled me. He added projectile vomiting to his repertoire,
and between the hours of colicky crying, and the occasional bloody stool
followed by the lack of stooling, I suspected he was reacting to foods
in my diet. This time, materials from a previous Area Conference session
on allergies gave me some clues. One elimination diet later, I was off
dairy, soy, eggs, and peanuts. Throw in a couple of chiropractors and
a craniosacral therapist, and a whole lot more crying over the next
few weeks and the transformation was complete. I stopped being a Leader
and became the mother who most intimidated me when I encountered her
on the local area phone line, a hormonal wreck with a fussy unhappy
newborn who couldn’t stay on the breast.
After each visit from a Leader
or trip to the pediatrician or chiropractor, I would always be frustrated
by my inability to get at the root of our nursing problem. It’s
not as if I didn’t have this information. I was a La Leche League
Leader. Elliot should not only be a breastfed baby, he should be a perfectly
breastfed baby. Sometimes I worried that I was creating problems where
none existed. Knowing how much can go wrong with breastfeeding can become
a self-fulfilling prophecy and suggest difficulties that aren’t
actually there. Maybe I was turning normal newborn fussiness into colic
and food sensitivities. Maybe the clicking and dimpling weren’t
signs of a weak ineffective suck but just part of the learning process.
Maybe I was just being whiney. After all, he was gaining weight really
well. Then again, maybe my daughter interpreting his almost perpetual
grimace as a smile wasn’t so normal and maybe the path we wore
out walking around the neighborhood was an indicator of a newborn a
little more fussy than normal. I had a hard time deciding.
I was too close to the situation
to see it objectively and for that I needed a Leader. Even though the
midwives, the pediatrician, and myself all assumed I would breastfeed,
I suspect only I assumed I would need no assistance. Like many other
mothers I found that I did need help and like many other mothers, La
Leche League provided that support. I couldn’t distance myself
from my role as the mother of a newborn to play the role of Leader and
see the solutions that were plainly obvious to other Leaders.
In the foreword to Kathleen
Kendall-Tackett’s The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood, the
period immediately preceding and following birth is described as a biologically
sensitive period. For the few weeks leading up to and following birth,
the mother is in a “state of primary maternal preoccupation”
during which she needs “nurturing support and a protected environment
to develop and maintain this state....The more the mother is cared for
in a humane manner, the more sensitive and caring she will be with her
own infant.”
Contact with other Leaders
during the postpartum period protected my environment and allowed the
bumbling about that was necessary for Elliot and I to become a reasonably
successful nursing dyad. I needed their objective opinions to help point
out the obvious. I needed their ears to listen to my grumbling. I needed
them to remind me about the tincture of time and how most latch-on problems
work themselves out with a little care, patience, and persistence.
And somewhere in the last
month, we did hit that magic point. I’m not exactly sure what day
it was. I suspect it got better little by little, quietly improving,
just the way my co-Leader said it would and just as she described it
to the mother of the three-day-old baby. I’m almost ready to be
a Leader again.
The home visit was a good start. Seeing this newly born mother recovering
from her birth and working hard on getting her infant to latch on made
me realize that nursing Elliot has finally become easy. Elliot’s
latch-on isn’t perfect but it works. I may even lead next month’s
meeting.
Linda Irvin is a Leader
and Assistant Area Professional Liaison in Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA,
where she lives with her husband, James, and her children Sophia and
Elliot. At 10 months, Elliot is taking his first steps and is very dedicated
to breastfeeding and the sport of peek-a-boo. Thanks to all the loving
support we both received after he was born from family, friends, and,
of course, area Leaders. Special thanks to Nan Vollette, Contributing
Editor, who originally received this article for the regular Leaven
column, “Helping Mothers.”
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:32:13 UTC 2007.
