A couple of months ago, I shared my breastfeeding experiences with my first son, Oscar. If you missed it, you can read it here. I naively believed that having had an easy breastfeeding journey with Oscar meant that it would be exactly the same for my second child, and whilst overall it’s been a very positive experience, I’ve encountered a few hurdles along the way that took me by surprise.

Whilst Wilf’s birth was a million miles away from Oscar’s, the start of our breast feeding was pretty similar, and felt comfortingly familiar. I had been looking forward to breastfeeding again, and Wilf latched on for a feed about an hour after he was born, and just like Oscar, he spent the majority of the day and night attached to me until my milk came in on day three. I’m aware that one concern of mothers that require a Caesarian birth is that milk takes longer to come in, but evidently that isn’t always the case, as mine took exactly the same time after both births.

Images by Dominique Bader Photography

| The honeymoon period

For the first three or four weeks of his life he existed in that blissful state whereby he would eat peacefully, snuggled against me, and then fall into a ‘milk coma’, soundly sleeping and treating us to a few windy smiles of appreciation. This all changed quite suddenly in the second month of his life, when, unlike Oscar (who found a breastfeed deeply soporific and would nurse to sleep whenever allowed), Wilf started to pull off after a feed, smiling and wide awake, and look around him. This pattern has continued and now at 9 months old Wilf will never nurse to sleep, and even at bedtime I have to finish a feed and put him down in his bed afterwards. Whilst in many ways this is a great thing, I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy being Oscar’s human bed for naps at times! Firstly, the effort to settle them down to sleep is minimal, secondly you get to gaze and cuddle the sleeping angel in your arms and thirdly, I had the perfect excuse to catch up on Instagram or watch something on Netflix, rather than getting on with the enormous pile of laundry, as I was ‘trapped!’

Another, very welcome difference between the boys was Wilf’s frequency of feeding. From quite early on he settled into a pattern of 3-4 hourly feeds, with a longer stretch of 5-6 hours at the beginning of the night, and would simply refuse the breast if he was offered it before he was hungry.

And just as I had relaxed, and began to feel every so slightly smug that I was into the fourth month of exclusively breastfeeding my second child with what felt like very little effort, when, BAM! The problems that would have me convinced that our feeding days were over, started.

| Four month distractibility and breast refusal

Wilf was 15 weeks old and over the course of a few days he became more distractible and fussy when feeding – a totally normal and unavoidable behaviour change for the 4 month mark, and I lamented the end of our quiet, peaceful, feed-anywhere days. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, from around 4 months onwards, any distraction will prove too exciting for your curious little one: you talking, someone else talking, any movement in their field of view – and they will pop off the breast to check it out, leaving your boob hanging out, and if it’s at the start of the feed, with milk spraying out all over you and your baby. Sometimes this popping on and off will happen repeatedly throughout the feed and if you’re out in public, and anything like me, you’ll end up red faced, flustered and soaked in milk. Oscar behaved like this, but being the little milk monster that he was, he would still feed in pretty much any environment, so I assumed that it would be the same with Wilf.

One morning I was out meeting some friends for cake and coffee and Wilf woke up in his pram, so I picked him up to feed him. He latched on, then after a second pulled away and cried. I tried a few times to put him back on, but the same thing happened. A took a deep breath, then picked him up for a cuddle, thinking I’d try again in half an hour. But the same thing happened – he was completely refusing to feed. Now it was about an hour after his usual feeding time, so I thought, I’ll try somewhere quiet. We were in Harrogate, about half an hour away from our home in York, so I walked back to the car and tried again there — the same again, just an angry Wilf shouting at my boob. As I am writing this I realise that it’s not such a big thing, but at the time the feeling of my baby ‘rejecting’ me, and not being able to nourish him – the one thing I’m supposed to be able to do – made me burst into tears.

When we arrived home I tool him up to our bedroom, closed the curtains, and in the cool, dark, quiet room he latched on and guzzled away, hungrily, as I took a deep sigh of relief.

This pattern of complete breast refusal when there were too many distractions and external stimuli continued, so I took to feeding him immediately after waking in a dark, quiet room, and avoided going out for the whole day, and this seemed to solve the issue.

Then, about a week later, I was putting Wilf to bed: his usual routine of bath, massage, get into a fresh sleepsuit, breastfeed and then put down in his Snuzpod. He seemed sleepy and settled, but when I tried to feed him he pulled his head away crying, and the more I tried the angrier he became, his face turning red and his little fists tightly curled. Eventually, in tears I gave up and handed him to Ben. I defrosted some milk and he chugged it hungrily, finishing the entire bottle and falling asleep with those little sharp intakes of breath that kids make after they’ve been sobbing. I sat down, pumping to relieve the pressure of the dinner that Wilf had politely declined, and felt a pit of dread that this was his way of saying, “thanks, but I’m done”.

Thankfully, through that night and the following day he fed well at the breast, but every evening for a week, at bedtime, the same story replayed and we would give him a bottle of expressed milk, and I would pump. After a week or so of this pattern I had recovered from my initial, overly-emotional reaction of feeling rejected, and decided that it was probably a good thing if Ben took over one feed a day. And perhaps Wilf sensed my calmness on that evening, as he decided that one week of nursing strikes were enough for him, and he has resumed his bedtime breastfeed ever since.

| Milk blisters and nipple vasoconstriction 

Shortly after Wilf’s distractible feeding started, I developed pain in my left nipple that was worst during a feed, but also there on and off when not feeding. Initially I couldn’t work out what was causing the pain, but one day I saw what looked like a tiny white blister on the end of my nipple. I googled this and quickly found the answer – a milk blister. How had I managed to be 4 months into my second child, and only just hearing now that this existed?! It’s where a thin layer of skin forms over one of the tiny holes that milk come out from your nipple, causing a blister of milk and pain on feeding. It can also lead to blocked ducts and mastitis if it’s not resolved quickly.

I read that a gentle way of treating it is with hot compresses and salt water, but ultimately the blister needs to be gently removed so that milk can flow again, which is what I did. Unfortunately, what this left was effectively a wound which was incredibly sore in itself, and felt similar to the cracked nipples you experience in the first few days of feeding. I applied plenty of Lansinoh cream, but I was still getting pain, both during and in between feeds. At best I could distract myself from the discomfort, and at worst the pain during feeding brought tears to my eyes. I had another look to see why the pain was so bad, and I found that on occasions my nipple looked completely white in colour, as if the blood had drained from it. A quick bit of reading answered my worries again – nipple vasoconstriction – this time something I had heard about before. It’s when the tiny blood vessels in your nipple constrict, preventing blood from getting in temporarily, so that it turns pale and is very painful. It’s similar to a condition called Raynaud’s, where your fingers turn white and painful in cold weather, but it can also be caused by damage to the nipple, which is what was causing it in my case.

The milk blister/cracked nipple/nipple vasoconstriction created a vicious cycle and all in all it didn’t totally resolve for about 6 weeks. Thankfully, after being close to thinking that the pain wouldn’t stop, and I’d have to stop breastfeeding, thing eventually settled down.

Image by Dominique Bader Photography

| Illness and low milk supply

Back in September, predictably coinciding with the new school term, when there are heaps of bugs being shared around, all four of us were struck down with a nasty sickness virus. First Ben had high fevers and nausea, then Wilf, and then finally Oscar and I got the full gastroenteritis whammy. Not nice. Whilst Ben juggled Wilf and followed Oscar around the house with a sick bowl, I took to my bed, trying hard to keep hydrated with sips of water but struggling to keep anything down. Ben delivered Wilf to me for his breastfeed, but I was shocked (and quite upset) to find that, for the first time ever, I had nothing. No let-down, no swallowing sounds from Wilf. He lost interest and I had to give him back to Ben, to offer him a bottle.

I won’t lie, I was really worried that this would be the end of things before I was ready to stop, but I persevered in offering Wilf the breast regularly, and trying to eat and drink something myself. Forty-eight hours of illness, not eating and being dehydrated resulted in my supply plummeting, and it took a good 7-10 days to recover, after I was feeling better.

Since then, I’m relieved to report that breastfeeding has returned to being uneventful and enjoyable. As I write Wilf is 9 months old and we are still happily exclusively breastfeeding, in addition to a solid food diet that we started at 6 months.

| When will you stop breastfeeding?

I would love to continue to feed Wilf until his first birthday, as I did for Oscar, but now that I have got this far I am happy to go with the flow for as long as it is working for both of us. I have always wanted to feed my boys into their second year (this didn’t pan out with Oscar as nursing came to a natural end when he was 13 months old), but I have a feeling that Wilf will have different ideas! One positive I can report, is that after over five months of being unable to feed Wilf anywhere other than at home, in a dark, quiet room, his distractibility has slightly settled down and I can now feed him in the light (!), although if there is someone else in the room he will still pop off to see what they are up to. Such a nosy little bear!

I get a lot of messages related to breastfeeding over on my Instagram account – questions and requests for advice and support, which I love to be able to offer. It’s inspired me to write a comprehensive breastfeeding support/problem troubleshooting post, so do keep your eyes out for it if you are interested.

Hannah x

Last two images by Melia Melia Photography