Today was either a horrible day or a wonderful day, depending on how you look at it. I would really love to just run away right now, but that's not a realistic option, so I'll try to work out my frustration by writing about it instead. Hopefully I'll be able to look back at this time and smile when I look at how everything fell into place. Someday.
So, one of my colleagues in the local birth world is a lactation consultant, childbirth educator, and a physical therapist. She's an older lady and until today, most of my interactions with her revolved around her frustration with figuring out how to use yahoo groups. A few days ago, she sent me a nice email congratulating me on the birth of Olivia and inviting me to bring Olivia in for a free craniosacral session. The lactation consultant wanted me to be able to see how she works, so I would feel more comfortable referring clients to her. Since I was/am so curious about craniosacral work and babies, I happily responded and we set up a time for me and Olivia to stop by her office today.
Even though we're very familiar with each other, the lactation consultant began our appointment by saying she would treat me like she would any other client. She asked me how the birth went, how breastfeeding was going, and how I was feeling. As I casually ran down the list of breastfeeding complications we've been dealing with, she took lots of notes. She said she was sad that I hadn't thought about asking her for help earlier. I felt bad, realizing that I was trying to deal with all the problems by myself, because I have such a hard time asking for help. The list of complications and her notes started filling up her note paper and I felt so embarrassed. Ugh, maybe if I had seen her weeks ago, Olivia and I would be enjoying life a lot more than we are right now.
As we talked, I started putting together the pieces to a very fuzzy puzzle. As she asked about the birth and my healing, I remembered my postpartum hemorrhage and the link to low milk supply. As she asked about the iron-rich foods I ate postpartum to replace what I had lost in blood loss, I realized I hadn't done a very good job of eating nutritious foods. I'm still really bad at this. I ate lunch today at 7 pm, for goodness sake. *sigh* How much water am I drinking each day? Uh...
I felt my professional facade slipping away and I became an awkward new mom again.
She held Olivia in her lap and started the craniosacral work on her. It was fascinating to watch because the lactation consultant pointed out everything she was noticing and what she was doing to correct it. Craniosacral is a body therapy that is somewhere between a massage and chiropractic work but super gentle. If I didn't know any better, it would have looked like she was just holding and admiring Olivia instead of noticing and working out the tension in her body. Olivia seemed to really enjoy it.
As she examined Olivia's mouth, the lactation consultant asked if I had noticed any tongue tie. Confidently, I answered that she definitely didn't have a tongue tie since there was no visible membrane, she could stick her tongue out, she had a strong suck, etc. As a midwife, I have seen quite a few tongue ties in newborns and know how much of a problem they can be until they are snipped. Unfortunately, my experience was only with anterior tongue ties. According to the lactation consultant, my baby girl has a very clear posterior tongue tie. Holy crap. I couldn't possibly feel more incompetent as a mom, and now I'm inept as a midwife, too. All the signs are there - sore nipples, better with a shield, long feeds, slow weight gain... How could I have missed it? Could I be any more useless right now?
The solution for a tongue tie is rather simple. The membrane holding the tongue in the wrong spot just needs to be cut. Usually, the membrane is paper thin and there isn't even any blood involved. In more severe cases, it can require anesthesia but still the whole thing is over within a few minutes. As soon as the tight membrane is gone, the baby can successfully latch without pain to the mother. Where I trained on the border, the midwives just snipped the membranes with sterile scissors. Here, it requires an appointment with a surgeon in the ENT department *eye roll* and is kind of a hassle because doctors tend to disagree on whether it's necessary or not.
Once the lactation consultant got me to pull my midwife head out of my midwife butt today, I realized exactly what's going on. I really want Olivia to have her tongue tie resolved, even if it means a trip to Kaiser. Fortunately, I was able to call and schedule an appointment with the head of the ENT department for next week. It will cost a small fortune, but finally, we'll get some relief!
I'm so grateful for my colleague taking the time to help me out today. She very generously spent two and half hours with us without charging anything. When I mentioned how much I was learning about breastfeeding support and that I wanted to learn more, she even sent me home with a stack of books and journals to read and keep. She kept commenting that everything I'm going through will make me such a better midwife. I know that's true and she means to be encouraging, but it's so hard to feel any sort of consolation when my baby is crying from hunger and I don't have enough milk to feed her.
I thought I knew about breastfeeding. I realize now that I only knew bits and pieces about the whole deal. Now, I could write a short book about just my experiences. Hopefully this really will translate into more empathy for future clients and the ability to offer real help to the next new mom who is an emotional wreck. There has to be some good that comes out of all this misery and pain.
1 comment:
We will get through this!
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