I haven’t known the best way to start this blog post. I nearly titled this blog post as “My Breastfeeding Story and How It Nearly Killed Me” but of course that sounded way too dark and negative. However, it is the truth. If you have been following my stories on Instagram for the last 2 months, you already know the hell I’ve endured and all because I was determined and eager to breastfeed baby bean. I’ve tried processing everything that has happened, but I’ve been having extreme difficulties in doing so. It has resulted in me sinking deeper into depression. Since writing is a cathartic and therapeutic outlet for me, I felt maybe writing my story and my feelings down would help me move forward. Just a warning: I won’t be holding back on details in this post. Consider this a trigger warning if you struggled with breastfeeding or depression.

As I mentioned in the post about baby bean’s birth, I began nursing her as soon as I was brought back to my room after my emergency C-section. I always knew I wanted to breastfeed. That was something I was always adamant about before I even became pregnant. I had one breastfeeding class before baby bean’s birth, but after enduring a traumatic delivery, a lot of that information became fuzzy in my brain as I first placed baby bean on my breast. I didn’t notice any pain for our first time nursing, but I attribute that to the multiple heavy painkillers I was on at the time. I just remember the sensation of my baby nursing from me and the pure joy I felt in that moment. My baby was getting nourishment straight from my body – it was an incredible feeling.

I’ve always hated my breasts. I have always found them to be a nuisance. My body type is naturally slender, but my breasts were always on the larger side. I always felt uncomfortable with them. During my pageant days, many were convinced I had gotten a breast augmentation because they said there was no way my breasts could be real. But they were real, and I hated them. I was even considering a breast reduction, but then chose not to because I worried it would affect my ability to breastfeed if I ever had a baby. When I became pregnant, I joked to the beau that now my large breasts would finally have a true purpose.

The day before I was to be discharged from the hospital and take baby bean home, I noticed my nipples were becoming uncomfortable. I called a midwife to ask her what she would suggest I do to soothe them. She mentioned I should order some silver cups since silver has been proven to heal sore nipples during breastfeeding, so I quickly ordered some that would be waiting for me when we got home. I was also told that my nipples would be sensitive in these first weeks as my breasts get used to and adjust to breastfeeding, so I tried to think nothing of it.

The next day, my nipples were really uncomfortable. Imagine a sore, scratchy throat but on your nipples. That’s the best way I could describe it. As I got dressed while getting ready to go home, I noticed it was extremely irritating to wear my nursing bra. The fabric against my nipples was quite bothersome. However, no one seemed concerned about it at all, simply saying it was common for nipple discomfort in the beginning. I began to wonder if everyone I saw on social media posting those “going home” photos was also suffering this nipple discomfort underneath because it certainly didn’t seem that way. But since no one was alarmed, I tried to ignore it.

Over the next few days, I would breastfeed baby bean on demand which averaged around every 2-3 hours. I refused to pump because I was told the first two weeks are crucial for my breasts to get to know baby bean and just how much she actually needs so they could regulate. Looking back, that was a mistake. However, I was eager for my breasts to regulate to know just how much to make for baby bean so I just had one more week to go before I could whip out a pump.

But pretty soon my nipple pain increased to the point where I went from being obsessed with breastfeeding to absolutely dreading each feed. It’s crazy to me how quickly it went from pure bliss to pure nightmare. As soon as I’d put baby bean on my breast to latch, I’d feel horrific pain. My screams in pain were louder than baby bean’s hunger cries. The pain became so bad that I found myself squeezing her poor little head. I know she could sense my stress because she kept unlatching and didn’t seem eager to eat from my breast. I felt so guilty and tried so hard to relax, breathe through the pain, and even ignore the pain just so she could eat peacefully. But then one night I screamed so loud and cried so hard as she fed that the beau said, “That’s it, we need a lactation consultant.”

My doula recommended a lactation consultant right away, and I desperately texted her on a Sunday. Sensing the urgency and desperation, she told me she would be at my house the next morning. She also told me to pump in the meantime until she could take a look at my breasts. My “wait 2 weeks” rule immediately went out the window and I whipped out my handheld manual pump for the first time since giving birth and proceeded to pump. It was still painful, but certainly not as painful as direct breastfeeding. I poured my freshly pumped milk into a bottle, and then watched the beau feed her.

My heart broke.

I didn’t understand why I felt so heartbroken watching him feed her. It was actually a beautiful moment between the two of them, despite baby bean’s initial confusion about getting her meal from a bottle and not directly from my breast. I guess I had assumed I would be the only one feeding her for the first few weeks… I wasn’t ready to let go of that just yet, and I found myself feeling guilty and evil for feeling that way. It was the first of many moments where I would experience this feeling.

The lactation consultant arrived the next morning, and I immediately felt relief as soon as she set foot in my home. She was my knight coming to save this damsel in distress. After some initial discussions about everything, she asked to see my breasts, especially my nipples. I will never forget her face as I unclipped my nursing bra and removed the silver cups. She was horrified. She didn’t even know what to say at first. My nipples looked like someone had taken a hacksaw to them. They were bloody. They were blistered all over. They were cracked. They looked chewed and gnawed on. These weren’t just your average irritated nipples from breastfeeding – these were severely damaged. One crack was so severe that it went down and around my nipple, and it was deep. Finally she said, “You cannot direct breastfeed for a while. You have to stop and just exclusively pump until these heal.” She suggested I see my general practitioner (GP) to get some APNO (All-Purpose-Nipple-Ointment) to soothe them and help them recover, which I ended up getting the following day and immediately began applying.

When I woke up on Sunday, my left breast was extremely uncomfortable. The pain had increased a bit, and it only grew stronger throughout the day. My left breast also became extremely sensitive, and suddenly it got to the point where no article of clothing could touch my breast without major discomfort. I sat on my couch with my breast just hanging out, staring at this ominous lump that was now red. I looked at the beau and said, “I think I need the hospital.” A close friend who lives a few doors down immediately came over to watch baby bean, since it was 9 pm at night. We assumed we would be at the hospital all night so I tried to pump to store some milk for overnight. Big mistake. The pain was horrific, so my friend suggested that baby bean have some formula.

That dreaded F word. Formula. There’s nothing wrong with formula. I was formula-fed. Most of my friends formula feed their babies. But that’s not what I wanted yet for my baby. We were only into 6 weeks of her life, and I was hoping to make it to at least 6 months with breastfeeding. After all, my milk was helping my baby bean grow into a very tall, adorable little chunk. Looking back, my GP, our baby nurse, and my lactation consultants were all hinting at the possibility of me needing to switch to formula for baby bean. And like the stubborn Aries I am, I ignored them all. I was so laser focused on breastfeeding that I wouldn’t even entertain the notion of weaning and switching to formula. Everyone else on social media had made breastfeeding look so easy, blissful, and the most natural, plus I had always heard “Breast is best” so I was sticking to it. I wanted to give my baby nourishment as well as give her antibodies against viruses (especially Covid), and I was looking forward to watching my milk change and practically become her medicine whenever she got sick. Baby bean had a small issue with conjunctivitis in her eye and after splashing a little breast milk on it, it healed. To me, my breast milk was liquid magic for my baby and I wasn’t ready to let go of that. It’s why I was putting myself through complete torture and hell. In hindsight, I want to slap myself.

The beau quickly ran to the store to grab the kind of formula our friend recommended (her own baby had grown up on it). We still had a couple bags of breast milk in the fridge, but to be safe we wanted to make sure she had something else since we’d be gone through the night. While he was at the store, my breast pain went from 7 out of 10 to 10 out of 10. I was hysterically crying as our friend arrived to watch baby bean, and she immediately called an ambulance. The beau arrived shortly after her, and the medics arrived shortly after that.

I howled in pain in the ambulance. I couldn’t stop my cries. I know I was incredibly loud but I didn’t care. I was whisked immediately into the emergency room, where I was given an IV of pain medication right away. Because I had a fever, they needed to administer a Covid test before doing anything else (don’t get me started on that topic). Eventually, they said I needed to be transferred to another hospital to their surgical ward. I was put on a stretcher and placed back in another ambulance as we were driven to another hospital a half an hour away. After waiting nearly 3 hours to be admitted, and after being given no other place to pump except the Covid ward (again, don’t get me started on that topic), I was finally brought to the surgical ward. At first they wouldn’t let the beau come with me, but I ended up having a massive panic attack so the nurses called him in to be with me (after labeling me as “crazy” and having a “mental breakdown”). I was placed on a hospital bed in an unlit hallway as we waited for a doctor to come take a look at my breast, but it was 3 am and the hospital was very busy.

A few hours later, the doctor came and brought me into a treatment room for evaluation. She performed an ultrasound on my breast and said sometimes these things go away on their own (what????). My sister-in-law is an emergency room doctor at a major hospital in Canada and after having spent the night texting with her, she suggested I get a needle aspiration. I had to ask this doctor to perform one, and she finally did. At first she didn’t seem to think it would help much, but after sticking the needle in my lump and draining it, her opinion changed. She pulled 10 mL of pus from my lump, so the aspiration was necessary. The lump disappeared, and the pain began to subside. I was discharged a few hours later and immediately ran to my baby at home. “The worst is over,” I thought.

Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come.

When the drain was finally removed from my breast, a large hole was left. It scared me to even look at it. There was a deep, open hole just an inch or two away from my nipple! I asked the surgeon when he would stitch it up and he said they can’t do that – this kind of wound needs to heal on its own. He explained the tissue would grow back underneath and rise up, and eventually my skin would come together to close the hole and leave behind a small scar. This would take about 2 weeks, he said. In the meantime, I was to continue squeezing out any remaining pus from the hole, which meant having to look at it several times a day as I watched pus and milk ooze out.

Not long afterwards, an infectious disease doctor came to look at my wound. They had just gotten the cultures results back from the surgery and the result was Staphylococcus aureus, which was a common staph infection for those with mastitis. They needed to take blood to monitor my inflammation levels so they would know when they could discharge me. The average number for inflammation in a healthy adult is 5. 5 days after surgery, my number was a whopping 63. The infection was still raging in my body, so I needed to remain in the hospital on IV antibiotics since oral ones weren’t going to cut it.

In the meantime, I still continued to pump from my right breast and hand express from my left breast. Since my left breast was in pain from the hole (and everything it had been through), some midwives from the maternity floor came down to help me. One midwife in particular believed a good breast massage would help ease some of the stress I could feel in the recovering breast, and she wasn’t wrong. But as she massaged me, she encouraged me to keep breastfeeding. She told me not to give up, that she had issues breastfeeding too but still soldiered on, and that breast is always best for baby.

But the next day, the surgeon came to speak to me again to see how I was doing. A lot of milk was coming out of the hole, and my inflammation levels were still too high. He decided to speak frankly with me about my future with breastfeeding. He said while my breasts produced an excellent amount of milk, it overproduces and so the chance of another abscess forming was quite high. I was already traumatized by what had happened to me and I was terrified of it happening again. He then said when I arrived at the hospital days earlier, I was moments away from going into septic shock and I could have died. That was it. In hearing that, it FINALLY clicked that I needed to stop breastfeeding. Baby bean needs me. What good am I if I’m dead? How can I be the mother I want to be if I’m dead? I still went back and forth for a few hours and even texted my lactation consultant about it, but ultimately I came to the decision that my breastfeeding journey was over.

I don’t think I have ever cried so hard in my life. Some dismissed it as hormones. But it wasn’t hormones. I’m still crying now as I write this. I had felt like I failed. My body was literally made for delivering a baby vaginally and feeding a baby. My body couldn’t do either one. I still had not finished processing my emergency C-section, and now I was abruptly stopping breastfeeding after just 6 weeks. I felt like the universe was telling me I wasn’t cut out to be a mother, that I had made a bad decision in wanting to have a baby. I had brought my handheld manual pump to the hospital with me, and packing it away felt like I was burying someone I loved. The nurses began to keep a closer eye on me because I could not stop crying, plus I stopped eating. They would come into my room to order food for me because I was too depressed to eat. The beau would come visit me each day and order food as well, and he made sure I ate. The nurses also had to push me to shower, since I was too depressed to get out of bed. Stopping breastfeeding has felt like a death, and I was in mourning. I still am.

After 9 days in the hospital, I was finally discharged when my inflammation levels went down to 17. I was still to take antibiotics for another 2 weeks just to be sure the infection was completely cleared out. When I got home, I noticed all my breastfeeding gear – my pumps, my milk storage bags, my breast massager, etc – were no longer on the kitchen counter. The beau had stored them away somewhere because he didn’t want me to feel triggered seeing them when I came home since I wouldn’t be using them anymore. I still don’t know where he stored them (he didn’t throw them out – don’t worry!).