When I got pregnant I knew that I wanted to breastfeed my baby... in addition to giving her what I consider the best food for her, she wanted to experience those wonderful feelings that friends who are mothers and have breastfed their children told me about.
However, in the third trimester of pregnancy I was diagnosed with total occlusive placenta previa, a problem that would almost certainly prevent me from having a normal delivery and forcing us to resort to a scheduled C-section. In addition to the sadness caused by the news (I would have liked it to be vaginal), he instilled fears regarding my plans to breastfeed: Many people began to tell me that after a C-section milk takes longer to rise or that I might not be able to have SCI. Today I can say that all these people were wrong (and quite a lot!).
In fact the placenta did not move and I had to give birth through caesarean section. After birth they separated me from my daughter almost immediately (Here I must say that this protocol should be reviewed, because precious hours are lost between mother and child and may have consequences in the establishment of breastfeeding), and I was more or less about 3 hours in resuscitation.
After that time they transferred me to the room and took me to my baby. They also informed me that they had given him a bottle and recommended that if I wanted to breastfeed him, start as soon as possible. I put it on and began to suck immediately ... I didn't know if anything would come out, but I was thrilled to see her finally joined to me that way.
My surprise came shortly after, since the colostrum appeared triumphant, although just a few hours ago I had left the operating room. Indeed, the type of delivery has nothing to do with milk production: as soon as the body identifies that the placenta is no longer, the generation mechanism starts to work 'at full speed'.
One of the many discouraging comments I received when I commented that my birth would not be natural and that I was going to breastfeed is that I was going to produce little milk. At this point I had already dismantled the myth that it would take time to appear, so I only had that one.
The change in colostrum occurred naturally. At the beginning it was an almost transparent and aqueous liquid and on the second day they seemed 'custard' ... in addition to that change, the amount multiplied significantly, although I must say that I was very persistent putting my daughter to my chest every so often.
The rise in milk occurred on the fourth day. The breasts got very hard and I must say that I had some annoying sensations, but with the help of the hospital staff where I gave birth, I managed to feed my baby exclusively from breast milk before leaving the hospital.
I must say that she was born very low in weight because the caesarean section was performed by emergency department in week 36. As usual, during the first days she lost some weight, but after a week she had already exceeded her initial weight. From that moment and until now I have not had any problem in that aspect, so I can say that Exclusive breastfeeding after a C-section is possible, as if it were a normal birth.
If you want you can
I recommend that you inform yourself, that you read a lot about the subject, that you talk with other mothers who have breastfed and above all, that you set a goal for how you want to feed your child. That way you are prepared (at least in terms of theory), to face any problem that may arise.
From here I encourage all those pregnant women to make deaf ears to those who intend to discourage you on the issue of breastfeeding (surely people do it unintentionally, an example can be because there are many grandmothers who have not lived in their own flesh). Neither caesarean section, nor a premature delivery or being separated from your baby is a condition for successful breastfeeding.
