My Breastfeeding Journey with Miles and Emmett – World Breastfeeding Week 2014

Nursing my twins is one of the best and hardest things I have ever done.

Emmett and Miles arrived on December 22, 2011, and 36 weeks and 3 days gestation after I was induced due to pre-eclampsia.

Emmett (Baby A) was born vaginally after only 4 hours of labor and 20 minutes of pushing with no pain medication. He was perfect at 6 lbs, 6 oz. His APGAR scores were 9/10 and even though he was early, he didn’t need help with breathing or maintaining his temperature. I couldn’t wait to nurse him, but I had to deliver his brother first.

Miles (Baby B) took advantage of his newfound freedom in the womb by turning all around and stretching out horizontally across my belly. Despite the doctor’s best efforts to turn him externally and internally and to simply hook a foot with his fingers and pull him out, Miles was stubborn and arrived via C-section with me under general anesthesia about 30 minutes after Emmett’s arrival. I met Miles for the first time about 2 hours later, when I woke up and returned to the recovery area.

We started nursing right away, but we also started supplementing right away. :(

I had no idea what I was doing, but my doula was there to help me latch the boys individually and both were eager to nurse. It hurt like hell, but everyone told me that was normal. It quickly became apparent that although the boys were generally cheerful nursers and I had plenty of colostrum to sustain them, they weren’t removing it effectively from my breasts — and nursing them freaking hurt. So, I immediately started pumping and asked for a supplemental nursing system or feeding cup to help them while we figured out what we were doing.

My “breastfeeding-friendly” hospital told me they didn’t have any SNSs, there was nowhere to get one, they wouldn’t give me tubing to rig up my own, and cup-feeding newborns was “against hospital policy.” Instead, they offered me bottles and formula. To which I responded “Breastfeeding friendly my ass” and promptly burst into tears. Ultimately both boys had high levels of jaundice — Emmett spent hours under the bili lights each of the 4 days we were in the hospital and came to me on a biliboard, looking like a glowworm, for each feeding — and were not peeing enough, so the hospital was going to release me but keep them if I didn’t flush their by overfeeding them and destroying their virgin gut with formula. (This is a paraphrase, of course, but that’s what happened.)

We left the hospital on formula supplementation. Despite my clear awareness and vocal insistence that their latch was off, that something was wrong, and that it wasn’t supposed to feel like this, everyone insisted it was normal, breastfeeding is supposed to hurt, most moms of multiples can’t nurse their babies, etc., etc., etc. I knew this wasn’t true, but I couldn’t figure out what to do. I went to counselor after counselor, IBCLC after IBCLC, pediatrician after pediatrician, asking all of them to help me figure out why my healthy, eager babies couldn’t seem to remove the copious amounts of milk from my breasts.

At times, it seemed like the breast pump was literally sucking the life right out of me.

I cried every day. I literally nursed or pumped every single hour of every single day for the first three months, until I went back to work and simply couldn’t maintain that schedule anymore. I continued nursing and pumping multiple times a day while supplementing with formula to make up the difference for what the boys needed, but by the time they were 3 months old Miles had started to refuse the breast entirely. March 15, 2012, was his last nursing session. He never latched again, despite weeks of trying to entice him back.

It was at this time that I figured out the boys had tongue and lip ties. I had heard other moms talk about it, but had ignored it because literally two dozen professionals including breastfeeding counselors, IBCLCs, and pediatricians had all told me there was nothing wrong with their mouths and no reason they couldn’t nurse effectively so obviously there was something wrong with me. After weeks of searching I finally found a pediatric dentist who would see me for the boys’ ties and was elated as we sat in the waiting room; I knew that he could clip the ties in the office and we could be nursing pain free THAT DAY. My excitement evaporated when he looked at their mouths and told me there were no tongue ties and that the lip ties were too minor  to warrant clipping and he wouldn’t do it.

In the waiting room of the dentist who broke my heart.

I was dumbfounded as I stared at him there in the office. I had seen tongue tied babies. I’d read the article and reviewed the pictures. I could see my kids’ ties with my own eyes and feel them with my fingers. And this doctor stood there looking at the same thing I was looking at, touching the same thing I touched, and said it wasn’t real, that it didn’t exist. I was numb as I packed the kids up and drove home. I sobbed called my local La Leche League leader, a fellow tongue tie momma who had confirmed what I had found on my own. She helped me calm down down and gave me the number of the dentist in Albany, NY, who had fixed her children’s ties.

I was still crying when I called Dr. Kotlow’s office and spoke to the receptionist. She put me on hold after listening to my story. When she came back on the line, she asked me, “How soon can you get to New York? He’ll see you as soon as you can get here.” Three days and a 500-mile drive later, Dr. Kotlow took one look at my boys mouths and shook his head. “How many professionals have seen these children and told you they weren’t tied?” When I recounted the number he let out a hard breath. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “They both have posterior tongue ties and lip ties,” he said, showing me exactly what I had known was there the whole time. “[Miles] can barely even lift his tongue off the floor of his mouth. No wonder you have nursing problems.” He was livid for what we had been through. And he looked me in the eye and promised to help us.

The boys would turn 5 months old the next day, and now, finally, someone listened to me. I cried in Dr. Kotlow’s office as he explained the procedure and exactly what would happen during the 5-minute procedure that would change everything. The relief of knowing that I wasn’t crazy, that there was something wrong, and that someone could finally do something about it was overwhelming.

Driving home from Albany after the boys’ tongue and lip tie surgery.

When Dr. Kotlow brought Emmett back to me after the most surreal 5 minutes ever, he had me latch him immediately. The change was so shocking that I actually looked down to make sure I was nursing the right baby. For the first time in almost 5 months, nursing didn’t hurt. Emmett sucked and gulped greedily and I could almost see my breast deflating as he ate. I was utterly in shock. I immediately burst into tears again. Dr. Kotlow warned me that he would probably throw up from eating so fast and not to be alarmed because Emmett would have to get used to actually getting milk out when he nursed. Emmett fell into a satisfied sleep a few minutes later.

When Miles came back from his procedure, he still refused to nurse — a few minutes with the laser wouldn’t undo 2 months of refusing the breast — but I could already see his tongue moving in a way it never had before. His ties had been much more severe than his brother’s which is why he’d stopped nursing entirely: It hurt too much. Dr. Kotlow urged me to offer him the breast frequently and assured me that many babies and even toddlers have gone back to the breast or even started nursing for the first time after having their ties revised.

Nursing Emmett while bottle-feeding Miles.

Immediately after Dr. Kotlow fixed their ties, the “acid reflux” that had plagued both boys vanished. We never again needed to give them the Zantac that they’d needed twice a day for almost their entire lives. Apparently none of the “professionals” who had evaluated my children knew that ties cause symptoms that mimic acid reflux and that it’s not actually reflux. They also immediately became happier in their car seats, something I’ve heard from other tongue tie moms. Their babbling changed and they became much happier. Miles found the joy of blowing raspberries, which he still loves.

Miles never went back to the breast after months of trying, but Emmett continued to nurse until he self-weaned at around 13 months when my supply, never firmly established because of their poor nursing, finally became so low as to be completely uninteresting to him. Thanks to the generosity of donor mothers in Virginia and Florida, my boys had breastmilk every single day of their lives until about 16 months of age, despite my dropping supply.

Around 18 months, Miles spontaneously started asking for “boobie” and began randomly attempting to nurse despite the complete absence of milk.

Nursing twin toddlers months after my milk supply dried up. Nursing is about more than nutrition.

The boys will be 3 in December and they both sometimes ask to “eat boobies,” often together. It’s bittersweet. I had always planned for full-term nursing — nursing into toddlerhood — so I’m happy to oblige, but I wish there were actually milk in there. They don’t do it frequently enough to induce re-lactation, but it doesn’t seem to bother them.

I struggle constantly with guilt — about not being knowledgeable enough, not being vocal enough, not pushing hard enough to find answers sooner. I also struggle with anger at the uneducated wolves in sheep’s clothing in the medical and lactation fields who pose as breastfeeding advocates and supporters but systematically undermine mothers ability to succeed at breastfeeding with misinformation. My body spent 36 weeks and 3 days preparing to feed my children and my supply would have been plenty to do it without supplementation if they’d been able to nurse effectively.

Children need to be routinely screened for tongue and lip ties at birth by qualified medical professionals who legitimately know what they’re looking for. Posterior tongue ties are often missed and disregarded because they don’t look like the “classic” tie that is immediately visible. And more than anything, mothers need real, qualified breastfeeding support that assumes that every mother can succeed at breastfeeding. This is a public health issue, but it’s also a human rights issue. Women are enough. Our bodies are enough. And we are enough for our babies. Stop telling us otherwise and start providing the resources to make that a reality, and watch stories like mine disappear.