Breastfeeding Through Surgery (& Recovery Too!)

Well my lack of posting should tell you my life has been consumed that has kept me away. Those of who know me personally, know I had to have a hernia repair. A few weeks ago (Valentine’s Day to be exact,) I had surgery and recovery has been slow moving. I was nervous to go through surgery and recovery while breastfeeding an infant and I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to go. I have been so determine to continue to breastfeed this time around. I made it through dairy and soy allergies and weight loss, and there was no way surgery was going to change that determination.

I know many moms who have struggled with breastfeeding and I know there are many more out there, which is why I really want to continue to share my breastfeeding journey with you. I want to share with you my experience in how I have continued to breastfeeding through surgery, an overnight stay in the hospital, and a rough recovery.

First, I had to be sure my milk supply was established. You might remember my post a while back, How I Increased My Milk Supply. After doing all of those things (which all worked) Lavery was still losing weight, so I tried Domperidone, which so many mom’s have sworn by in working to increase milk supply. It has worked wonders for me, so I was sure to take the full dosage of that for weeks leading up to surgery and pumped a whole lot to get a freezer stash for when I couldn’t nurse her myself.

While in the hospital, I pumped when Lavery would be nursing. Well, sort of. I’ll be honest, I didn’t do so well keeping up with the whole pumping and dumping thing while in the hospital. I was so out of it, it was hard and luckily for me, my husband was great and even helped me with the pump (because, I was literally falling asleep pumping.) I remember waking up a few times in the middle of the night in so much pain, because I clearly wasn’t pumping enough during the day. Once I got home, this got much easier.

Three days of dumping “liquid gold” down the drain! I call breastmilk “liquid gold.” Liquid gold, because it’s so valuable and it’s hard work to produce! It was so hard for me to dump so much breastmilk down the drain, but with all of the anesthesia and pain meds in my system, I wanted to be safe. Surgery was on a Tuesday and by Saturday, I was back to nursing part time.

For a few days I nursed part time and pumped the others and for a little over a week now I’ve been back into breastfeeding full time. My husband is still doing the night time feeding (last night was my first night back into that,) but I have been sure to pump before bed. My freezer stash is gone, so I have to get that built back up, but I feel so accomplished that I made it this far and even through all of the obstacles I have faced!

What has been your biggest breastfeeding struggle?