Breastfeeding support woman is rather patronizing and focusing on the negatives :/

[ThunderPearls]

My lovely breastfeeding support worker has been on holiday the past few weeks. She was brilliant and has helped me so much with relactating. Whilst she was gone she passed me on to her colleague, who I have seen before, and really dont like. She was on of the ones who tried to force my baby onto my nipple using his open screaming mouth as a good latching opportunity :/ I partly blame her for why we completely stopped breastfeeding as she was the last person I saw gor help an it was such a vad experience I never went back to the support group.

Anyway she has called me twice, once a week. And each time she hasnt really seemed very interested in the progress I have made and only focuses on everything I have done wrong. I told her that I have missed a couple of my 1am/5am expressing sessions as my LO has been difficult at night due to his injections and I am too tired to stay up an extra 20 minutes after being up with him, this hasn't affected my milk from what I can tell but she was berating me down the phone telling me I NEED to put the effort in and should just put my baby down when hes up in the middle of the night (despite being upset and with fever!) so that I can express. She was lecturing me on mastitis and plugged ducts as if I know nothing and she was just making me feel stupid really. I know I want to get my supply up but considering my baby doesnt have night feeds any more I think its rather stupid to be getting my body to produce loads between 1-5am as when I do eventually get him breastfeeding I can just see myself being all engorged in the nornings as my baby wont have fed from me during the night! I am expressing as often as he feeds (and a bit more for stimulation) so that my body gets used to his feeding pattern and his demand.

She was telling me not to rely on the domperidone tablets at all and I shouldnt use them long term. When I ran out and was without them for two days my supply more than halved :/ so obviously I rely on them! She should know that I will need to wean off them not just go cold turkey as that would ruin my supply!

I was telling her about the sucess I have had with latching and she again just didnt really seem impressed or bothered about all of the good latches we have had. She just said we need to get it done as soon as possible and I really need to be trying. Does she not think I am giving this task all of my effort? It is like she is just assuming I am not trying my best! This is the most inportant thing in my life right now and I just feel like all of the work I have put in just hasnt been good enough.
I KNOW we have made good progress and we have came so far in the past month yet it apparently isnt enough! I hate how some of these so called 'support' workers can make me feel. I have been so happy with our progress but now I feel like crap.

Im seeing the nice support worker on tuesday and I am now nervous about that incase she too thinks I havent done enough :/

 

[MommyJogger]

Sounds to me like you're doing really well and have put a lot of effort into this. I'm sorry your supporter has such a bad 'bedside' manner. You should be proud of how hard you've tried and how far you've come no matter what others say.
Tbh, it's easy to get burnt out and categorize mothers with her job. I lead a bf support group where I am and we do a lot of home visit help and phone check-ins. We rotate peer support responsibilities because it's easy to start assuming everyone is going to sabotage themselves if you happen to get a few moms in a row who won't wake to pump (when they actually need to) and sincerely don't give even half effort or just absolutely refuse to make a single personal sacrifice to achieve their bf goal (I knew a woman who quit bf completely because she wanted to be able to go to some teeny bopper band's concert the next month and couldn't pump enough for that evening while also bf). Part of what we do is in-home support. I'd say about 10% of the time I go to someone's home to watch their older child (for free) so they can make it to and focus on the LC appointment we made for them, they go do something else instead and skip the appt. In no way excuses your support worker's behavior, but I thought it might help mend your feelings to give you some insight into the fact that it's not you. It's not that she thinks you haven't done enough. It's that she's conditioned to expect to be confronted with moms who don't.
I will say when you wean off the domperidone, night pumpings may become important depending on how your supply responds. It's not to increase supply at night, but pumping between 2-6am will increase daytime supply as well. But you sound like a trooper and I, for one, am really happy for you that latching is improving. Life will be so much easier for you and you'll really feel your hard work pay off once you're feeding from the source.

 

[ThunderPearls]

Thank you for your reply it makes her attitude a bit more understandable (still dont like it though!) if she often deals with people who dont put in the effort and dont make it a top priority. It just sort of knocked the wind out of my sails when I had just rattle of the list of all of the successes we have had with latching and how I am already over halfway to how much milk I will need for him and then all she did was pick up on the few mistakes I made

I do understand how important night expressing is in building up good supply but I dont make missing a session a regular thing and she just didnt seem to listen to me. Its exhausting enough having to both express during the day aswell as feed my baby on a good day but add in the hours of inconsolable screaming after injections and it was just not an option to stay awake for 20 minutes extra when it was likely my baby would be up again crying in an hour

I usually get up at 4am as thats kind of midway between his last feed before bed and his first feed of the day. She just focused on the couple of nights I didnt do this even though I had alreadt made it clear I know how important it is :/

anyway I will try not to worry about the home visit this week. Lastnight Ethan just latched on when we were in the cradle position without a nippleshield! I dont know what made me try him then as he wasnt really hungry or anything he was just having a nice cuddle so I just thought I would get a boob out to get him comfortable with it in that position... But he just turned round and latched on! It was amazing

 

[MommyJogger]

Just a couple nights? Bitch must have had gauze stuck in her ears! No matter what the reason for her attitude, ignore her.
It sounds like your little man is a smart cookie and will figure out how to get more of the good stuff soon.

 

[rose.]

Big well done, sounds like you're putting in tonnes of effort, and it seems as though it is really starting to pay off keep it up! Don't let her get you down