- It was like a water balloon that you stuck a pin in.
It was just flying all over the place.
- Unfortunately for me, my baby used me as a pacifier.
That's what I was told.
(upbeat music)
- Hi, my name is Alison.
And I started lactating before I had a baby.
- Hi, I'm Krista.
And I had pretty traumatic experience
because more than just milk was coming out of my boobs.
- Hi everyone, I'm Tameko.
And I had to dye my baby's mouth purple.
- Hi, my name is Coach Toni.
And my milk caused a scene in traffic.
- So when I was pregnant with my first daughter
wild things were happening to my body.
When I was like seven or eight months pregnant
my brother and his wife came to Los Angeles to stay with us.
And so I was just wearing a tshirt,
and we were just having dinner,
and they were like, oh Alison, your shirt is wet.
And we realized that I was lactating.
I had to start wearing these things called breast pads,
which is basically like a maxi pad,
but you put it in your bra to catch the excess milk
that's just flying out of your body.
I started dealing with the concept of breastfeeding
well before there was another person there to take it.
I didn't know that this was bizarre behavior
until I started telling people later.
And then they were like, oh you and your body
are like a freak of nature.
That's bizarre.
But at that point it was too late,
I already had a baby and she was drinking the milk.
So I was like, I guess, I don't know,
it was just a preview.
Who's to say.
Some women struggle with breastfeeding.
By the way, formula's amazing
and everyone should feel free to use it.
In my case, I chose to breastfeed
because there were literal full milk bags just happening.
And it was super awkward.
Sometimes there was like a fire hose situation
where the baby would unlatch
and just milk would be spraying.
Sometimes on my husband, on our furniture.
It was like a water balloon that you stuck a pin in.
It was just flying all over the place.
I remember one time, it was the middle of the night,
something was going on with the baby.
At night I would just sleep with a maternity kinda dress.
And so we were going to change the baby,
and we have hardwood floors, and because I didn't have
a breast pad in, milk was flying out of my body.
And we were now tripping on breast milk.
So we had created an accidental slip 'n slide situation.
It was unreasonable.
So I was just constantly feeding my baby
because there was so much milk.
And then pumping and feeding, and pumping and feeding.
And it was like a dairy farm.
In the end I was sort of lazy, right.
I was already lactating, I certainly didn't
wanna spend anymore money because children, while small,
tend to be wildly expensive for some reason.
They just need a lot of stuff.
I ended up breastfeeding.
It's such a personal choice.
I think whatever everybody does
is the right thing for them.
And that's cool.
- I actually had a decent experience to begin with
when it came to breastfeeding.
Everything was going fine for the first three months.
I was pretty young when I had my son,
so I was going to college and working.
So I wasn't able to have him latch
directly onto my boob all the time.
Obviously when I was home he would latch on,
but a lot of times I was carrying my pump around,
pumping in the bathroom at college,
pumping in the breakroom at work.
Pumping, pumping, pumping all the time.
I don't know if it was from me pumping so much,
but it started becoming really painful.
And my mom's a nurse so I asked her,
and she's like, you are stressing yourself out.
Just pump what you can.
Don't feel like you over have to pump,
and then supplement your son with formula
to help meet his nutritional needs.
So I kind of took a break.
But after that, I would say over the course of
the next two weeks, anytime my son would latch
or I would put the pump onto my boob,
it was just awfully painful.
But I thought that I had to breastfeed to be a good mom.
So I was like, I got this, I can do it.
Slowly over the course of the next few weeks
it got so bad to the point where
I would pump and blood would come out basically.
At first it was just a little bit,
and it was a tint to it like strawberry milk.
And I had asked when I had taken my son in
for a checkup I had kind of just
grazed over the subject and told the doctor.
And the doctor was like, eh, the baby can have
a little bit of blood, it's no big deal.
And I was like, okay, this is really gross and I hate this,
but let's keep moving on.
So let's fast-forward to the next week.
It gets to the point where it's so bad
I look down and there is scabs all over my nipples.
I remember I would get blood on the inside of my bra
because my nipples were so raw.
And it would hurt so bad,
I had these little nursing pads that I would put in there.
The nursing pads are like a cotton ball.
And I remember the cotton would stick to my nipple,
so I'd have little bits of cotton
in the scab of my nipple.
And it was so painful, I remember I had to take off work.
And my mom was like, you have to stop breastfeeding.
I think you might have mastitis.
It's like an infection or something in your nipple.
And it can happen when the baby doesn't have
the correct latch I think.
I don't know for sure.
But again, I didn't go to the doctor.
I let it heal on its own.
A lot of people also don't know that
the milk comes out several holes in your nipple.
It's not just a one straight shot.
It comes out like a sprinkler.
So all these little ducts that it was coming out of
were getting all these scabs and then it was,
little tiny scabs, and then it was forming one giant scab.
And it was horrific!
After that, that's when I stopped breastfeeding, obviously.
- Okay, about December, 2013, I delivered
a beautiful, healthy baby girl.
I had my birth plan ready, baby plan ready.
My plan was to room in with my baby and to breastfeed.
From all my research and from what experts told me,
not to have them try a pacifier or anything like that.
So I didn't wanna interfere with her latch.
We started breastfeeding.
So eventually she would latch on.
This was my first time doing it, 40 years old.
They say usually they'll feed around 10 minutes
to 20 minutes at a time.
And my baby just kept on.
The minute I would take her off she would cry,
so they told me to put her back on.
I would have these four hour feeding sessions.
Eventually I'm home with my baby.
As in the hospital she continued to feed
four hours at a time.
I was completely sleep deprived.
My husband felt helpless
'cause there was nothing that he could do.
Unfortunately for me, my baby used me as a pacifier.
That's what I was told.
Fast-forward, this goes on for a month or so.
My breasts are still sore, I'm still having problems
with one particular breast because she's not
latching on as well as the other.
I go to my midwife, she sends me to
the lactation specialist, and they determine
although I didn't fit all the symptoms
that I had a yeast infection in my breast.
And prescribed this medication called Diflucan for me,
and Venetian violet for her.
First we have to call all over the place
to find the compounding pharmacy to make
this special medication that's not found in most pharmacies.
So we pick up the prescription, administer it to my baby,
and purple, purple lips, purple mouth.
I mean she was stained, she had purple all over her mouth.
I was horrified.
The doctor did warn me that the medication
was gonna turn the baby's mouth purple.
But nothing could've prepared me for that.
As time went on they determined that
I actually didn't have a yeast infection after all.
So I went through all of this, dying my baby's mouth purple,
and then the side effects that I experienced from Diflucan.
I literally started itching 'cause I had
an allergic reaction combined with
hormonal itching to the medication.
For every pill that I took
I got a week's worth of side effects.
So I was on this for about seven days.
So I itched literally from head to toe
for about seven weeks.
My husband thought I was gonna go crazy.
The only thing that would soothe me
for the moment were cool showers,
so I was constantly taking showers
just to get some type of relief.
Eventually all of my symptoms went away.
And luckily I never had to dye
my baby's mouth purple ever again.
But in hindsight, if I had to do it all over again,
I'd do it in a heartbeat because it's what's best for her.
- When I gave birth to my daughter
I knew that I wanted to breastfeed,
that was non-negotiable.
And everybody had painted it as this wonderful time
that nothing could go wrong.
And I quickly realized that wasn't the case.
So nipple confusion is when a baby's used to
a certain nipple at birth, and when they're
introduced to too many nipples then they get confused,
and they don't associate it with food,
and they may reject the feeding.
I didn't listen and I decided okay,
I'm going to express milk through the breast pump
that was given to me by my insurance
and then once I do that I'll bottle feed her
so that my nipples can heal.
And so it just meant that I had to pump.
But what was happening was only one of my nipples
was sore so I said, I'm gonna breastfeed on the other side.
And when I did that it just made my letdown come so quickly.
So when you breastfeed you actually at a certain point
feel the milk rushing down.
And so I guess because I was pumping,
and breastfeeding, and doing all this
back to back, my letdown was crazy.
So I was always getting full of milk.
One day I went to work to fill out
some paperwork about my maternity leave,
and to say hi to everybody
who I hadn't seen before the baby.
What happened was, before I left to go to work,
I looked at that breast pump sitting there
in all its glory with all its pieces drying on the counter,
and I said, I will not be that long, I will be back.
I do not need to take this with me.
So I left.
My job is about 15 minutes away by car,
so it's not too far.
I swore I was only gonna go
drop off paperwork and come back.
I got there and everyone's like, hey,
how's the baby, let me see pictures,
oh my goodness look at you, XYZ, XYZ.
And I ended up staying for longer than I wanted,
but I still felt fine.
And I swear as soon as I got into the car
and closed the door, the letdown just came.
So I was like, okay, perfect timing.
I'm gonna get home and I'm going to empty it.
Then it felt like somebody just slid rocks
inside of my chest.
It just felt like my boobs were gonna fall off.
After that I was like, okay, this is a really weird feeling,
I'm stepping on the gas, legally of course.
And then it got so painful to the point where
I couldn't move my hand with the steering wheel.
I was in so much pain, it felt like the milk
was just gonna come shooting out of me.
And where I was on that road, I pulled over,
and I opened my car door, and I pulled my shirt down,
and I started to express my own milk
on the side of the road.
(laughs)
It was interesting because my door was in traffic
so people were pulling up to a red light
and looking at me, and just seeing somebody
just expressing milk.
I did what I had to do, and I closed the door quickly
while people were staring at me, and drove home.
Since then I've learned that I have to
take my pump everywhere until the baby
started leveling off with the breastfeeding.
And now all is good in breastfeeding land.
But that's my crazy story.
(upbeat music)