Lori’s Story of Breastfeeding through PPD and PTSD after a Traumatic Birth
Our story this week comes from Lori. Lori faced some traumatic events that led to PPD and PTSD and made her breastfeeding journey more challenging. She worked hard to overcome all the obstacles she faced and provide her baby with breastmilk.
Content Warning: The story of my breastfeeding journey contains a description of traumatic birth, NICU time, and oversupply. If any of these topics do not serve you, I encourage you to prioritize your own peace and not engage with this content.
For me, my breastfeeding journey and birth story are inextricably linked. One cannot be understood without the other. So here is my experience through my first pregnancy and into motherhood - so much farther from what I naively thought my reality would be.
My pregnancy was very low-risk and uncomplicated. Sure, it was uncomfortable and unbearable at times; but, medically speaking, there were no red flags or concerns. Then at 40+1 we discovered my amniotic fluid was dangerously low and I went in for a medically necessary induction. Everything was going smoothly until 15 hours into the induction - my baby suddenly crashed and his heart rate wasn’t recovering. My midwife made the call in just minutes to rush me to an emergency c-section. As they sprinted my bed down the hallway to the OR, I realized what was going to happen. I hadn’t had an epidural yet, and I knew they were going to put me under general anesthesia. I was screaming and scared and angry and confused and just wanted my baby to be ok. My midwife stayed next to me, reassuring me until I went under.
I woke up in recovery looking for my baby. Given the circumstances, my husband couldn’t be in the OR for the c-section. But what they tell you throughout pregnancy is that if the mother is incapacitated or otherwise unable to hold baby, her partner or support person will get to do skin-to-skin with baby. But my husband wasn’t holding our baby. Our baby was nowhere to be seen. I started looking around frantically trying to figure out where my baby was. My husband looked at me and said, “He’s in the NICU. They think he’ll need to be there for at least one or two weeks.” I just stared at him, confused. And then I broke down. Not only did my husband and I miss the birth of our baby, but now I couldn’t see him or hold him or be with him. After an eternity laying there with an empty uterus and empty arms, they wheeled me from recovery down to the mother-baby unit without a baby.
My son was born completely blue and unresponsive. He needed full resuscitation and intubation to save his life. He lost oxygen for around 16 minutes between when he crashed during contractions and when he was intubated. This sustained oxygen loss led to what is called Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE) - a serious birth injury of the brain that can lead to lifelong complications such as cerebral palsy, seizures, and developmental delays. The treatment for HIE is induced therapeutic hypothermia, also known as cooling therapy, which brings down the body’s core temperature to slow down metabolic processes and allow energy to be focused on healing the brain. The NICU team immediately brought him down to their unit and began cooling therapy while I was still under anesthesia. The standard cooling time is the first 72 hours of life - where he could not be held, as that would raise his body temperature and disrupt the process. After 72 hours he would gradually be warmed to a normal body temperature, and then they could do an MRI to assess any visible brain damage and determine the next steps from there. This meant that I could not hold my baby for the first time until he was four days old.
I stayed in the mother-baby unit for four nights recovering after the emergency c-section. I could hear all the families in rooms around us falling in love with their new babies while I sat there holding flanges to my breasts every 3 hours instead of holding my baby against my skin. I held the flanges up to my breasts for every pump because I didn’t think to even purchase a pumping bra, let alone pack one for the hospital. There was absolutely nothing I could do to help my baby except pump milk for him. So I set alarms for every 3 hours. Sleep, eat, pump, bag, and label milk, clean pump parts, deliver milk to the NICU, repeat. I had nothing to offer him aside from my milk, and I felt like my value as a mother was measured in how much milk I produced and gave to his NICU team. My husband washed and dried the parts every time without question. We put on HGTV for the midnight, 3 am, and 6 am pumps to keep ourselves awake. Sleep, eat, pump, bag, and label milk, clean pump parts, deliver milk to the NICU, repeat.
On the fourth day, my son was taken off of his cooling therapy and rewarmed to a normal body temperature - which meant we could finally hold him. He wasn’t allowed to eat orally while he was hypothermic, so I asked his team if I could nurse him for his first oral feed as well, which they gave me the green light for. The first time I held my son - when he was four days old - was also the first time I nursed him. He latched beautifully and that gave me a lot of hope. I was discharged from the hospital later that day. I cried as they pushed me in a wheelchair down to the lobby to drive home, while my son stayed on the 8th floor in the NICU. I cried the whole drive home staring at his empty car seat wondering when he would get to ride in it. I cried at home every time I held the flanges up while I pumped, every time I looked at his empty bassinet, at unused diapers, and a clean changing table. We went to the NICU for hours every day. I was allowed to nurse him while I was there, but otherwise, he was bottle-fed my pumped milk for the remainder of his NICU stay. In the meantime, I was setting alarms and pumping every 3 hours around the clock. Sleep, eat, pump, bag and label milk, clean pump parts, visit the NICU, repeat.
My son’s MRI miraculously was clear of any visible brain damage and there was no evidence of seizure activity that they could detect. While this doesn’t mean there would be no lasting effects, it was incredibly relieving and reassuring to know that our medical team made the right calls at the right times and got him the care he needed as quickly and safely as possible. After 9 days, my baby was discharged from the NICU and we finally got to bring him home.
Once he was home, we worked on latching and nursing and gradually transitioned to him nursing exclusively. I still pumped in between feeds because I wanted to ensure my supply was adequate in case he began losing weight. Over the next couple of weeks, he gained weight beautifully and we did our best to soak in every moment, as we felt we had missed out on so much of his life already. Although he was nursing exclusively at the breast at this point, pumping brought me a strange sense of comfort and I continued pumping four times per day on top of nursing. Looking back at it now, I realize that I kept pumping for two main reasons. The first reason is it gave me a sense of control - where I had zero control over the emergency situation that birth turned into and the beginning of my son’s life in the NICU, I had complete control over pumping and milk production could be tracked and scrutinized and I could pour my energy into it. The second reason is that I was - and even today, 7 months postpartum still am - attaching my value to it. Producing milk while my son was in the NICU felt like the only thing that gave me worth because I could not help him, could not heal him, could not hold him to comfort him. My brain was telling me that if I produced less milk then I would inherently mean less as a mother. Our freezer piled up with bricks that my son didn’t need, but I could not stop pumping.
Then when he was around three months old, there was blood in his stool and his pediatrician diagnosed him with a dairy intolerance. I cut dairy from my diet and his symptoms improved very quickly, but our freezer was filled with thousands of ounces of milk that he both didn’t need and now couldn’t have. After doing a lot of reflecting, I decided to see if I qualified as a donor for our local milk bank. After all the screening was completed, I was approved and could donate the milk that sat in our freezer. While it was incredibly difficult for me to mentally let go of that milk, it felt full circle knowing that the milk would go to NICU babies who needed it. The first time I went and dropped off milk bricks, I cried on the drive home. It felt like I gave away a part of my motherhood. Hundreds of ounces of time, tears, heartache, and trauma - frozen in time and now defrosting in the milk bank’s pasteurizing process.
During all of this, I started therapy as well to begin to process my traumatic birth experience and find ways to cope with living every day. The first time I met my son in the NICU, I felt…nothing. I didn’t recognize him and it didn’t feel like he was mine. My whole pregnancy, I expected to be handed my baby after he was born and feel that overwhelming sense of love and connection that everyone talks about. But I didn’t feel that at all. Now, I know that a large part of it is that I was closing myself off from a connection with him as a defense mechanism. My brain’s logic was if I wasn’t emotionally attached to him, then it wouldn’t hurt as bad when the other shoe dropped. I lived in a perpetual state of fight or flight for months, not letting myself relax, not letting anyone else in (save for my husband) to help with baby, and not letting myself get too close to my baby for fear of my heart-shattering. After months of individual and group therapy for PPA and PTSD, I finally started to feel like I could exist without attaching value to breast milk. I could enjoy my son rather than just keep him alive day to day. I looked at him and started to fall in love with my baby. I watched him nurse and watched my husband feed him bottles of pumped milk and felt happy for the first time rather than scared or worried about what the future looked like. I could trust the baby monitor instead of checking him every ten minutes to make sure he was breathing. I could tell pieces of my birth story without falling apart. I felt my feelings of worry transform from being rooted in fear and anxiety and trauma to being rooted in a profound love for my child.
Oval Charm Neckalce in Yellow Gold
While I now look back and wish that I had been able to enjoy the soft, simple moments of newborn snuggles and long nursing sessions and contact naps without panic, I don’t blame my past self for how I felt. It’s taken a lot of therapy and hard work but I’m starting to feel the love and light in my life again. The feelings of shame and guilt that my body failed to protect my baby have transformed into a deep appreciation for what my body has been able to do for him since he was born. My body and I are working in tandem to give him what he needs, and I’m so grateful to my body for being a source of nutrition and comfort for him in a way I didn’t understand before. But even beyond that, I’m grateful to have come to these feelings through my grief. To be rooted in an experience I never thought I’d have to live through. To look at who I was and who I am and to now feel peace instead of inconsolable heartbreak.
That’s what this piece of jewelry means to me - transition, and transformation. From pumping to nursing, from the me before to me as a mother, from PTSD to peace, from grief to love, from loss to joy. My birth experience and breastfeeding have very much become a core part of who I am. And I want to give other people with traumatic birth experiences hope that they can find love and light through the tunnel of grief and trauma. You deserve peace and you are the best thing for your baby. You are not alone in your complicated feelings. You can get through the next day. You are worthy.