From Exclusive Pumping to Exclusive Breastfeeding at 10 weeks postpartum -Getting baby back to breastfeeding is possible
- jaimiezaki
- 24 hours ago
- 16 min read
If you've been told it's too late for your baby to latch, this real-mom breastfeeding success story will inspire you to get the right breastfeeding help & keep trying! Getting your baby back to breastfeeding is possible!
Struggling to Get Your Baby Back to Breast? Feeling Like You’ve Tried Everything Without Relief?
You are not alone—and this episode is proof that healing your breastfeeding journey is possible, even when it feels like all hope is lost. It is possible to get baby back to breastfeeding.
Kaylynn lives on a remote island in Alaska, where she gave birth to her baby girl in February. Like so many new moms, she ran into a wall of feeding challenges: cracked nipples, toe-curling pain, cluster feeding, and constant pumping just to keep her supply up.
She tried to push through. But it wasn’t until she reached out for virtual breastfeeding support that everything started to shift.
In this episode, Kaylyn shares:
How she navigated brutal pain and exhaustion
Why pumping and formula felt like both a lifeline and a trap
What finally helped her get her baby back to breast
And how virtual consults, nipple shields, and chiropractic care changed everything
If you’re looking for real solutions to your breastfeeding struggles—and wondering if it's too late to fix things—Kaylyn’s story will give you hope, practical insight, and a reminder that you don’t need to do this alone.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Meet Kaylyn
00:32 – The pain, confusion, and pressure to make breastfeeding work
01:04 – Why the hospital experience left her even more overwhelmed
01:40 – Triple feeding begins: nursing, pumping, formula
03:06 – Searching for help and finding more questions than answers
04:53 – Pivoting to pumping and formula while grieving the breastfeeding bond
10:51 – Discovering online breastfeeding support and education
14:39 – Booking a virtual consult + exploring holistic care
17:38 – Nipple shields: Not a failure—a tool
19:53 – Finding relief and gaining confidence
20:18 – Baby nurses without the shield… unexpectedly and beautifully
25:59 – The mental toll of pumping around the clock
32:57 – Why virtual support was the game-changer
35:18 – Final encouragement: You can do this
Ready to change your story?
Transcript:
Hi, I’m so glad you were here today. I am gonna let you go ahead and introduce yourself and then we can start talking about your breastfeeding transformation.
I’m Kaylyn. I live on an island in Alaska, and my husband and I own a business together. We decided to have our first kid, and so that kind of led to where we are today. Our baby girl was born in February of this year and she’s amazing. She’s absolutely perfect in every way, and we are in love.
Our breastfeeding journey, it’s been a rollercoaster just. It always seemed breastfeeding always seems like something that should be so natural and so normal. I read a couple books while I was pregnant, actually two or three books on breastfeeding specifically, and I was like, yeah, I got this. This is gonna be super easy. No big deal.
She was born C-section, but within minutes of birth she was already suckling. They put her on my shoulder after they dried her off and there was like an electrode thing on my shoulder and she immediately latched onto that. I was just all about, I’m like, yeah, this is gonna be great. She’s got that instinct. We’re good.
And so we get out the operating room and they latched her right on. As soon as we were out of there, before they were done cleaning up anything, she was just, she was on the breast and I was like, this is good. We got this. We were only in the hospital for about 48 hours. Like we, we were outta there really quick.
And it was the day after we left that things kind of started to go not so great anymore. It still looked like she had a good latch, but I was in absolute misery. I had blisters starting, the bleeding started. I mean, there were big, big blisters that were just, it was terrible.
And I was like, well, my milk came in right away, so I wasn’t dealing with that when, like the day we left the hospital, my milk came in. So I was like, oh, she’s eat. She’s getting what she needs so I can deal with it for now.
And it looked like, you know, based off of everything that I’d read, that everything was fine. She had a nice wide latch and took the whole nipple and everything. The pain was unbelievable. And, you know, postpartum, those first couple of weeks, that first month, you’re up all night. You are up all day. It’s just on top of the pain. That was, that was brutal.
It’s a lot. It’s like your whole nervous system is just shock and you don’t know what, what pain am I supposed to take care of first? The sleep, the feeding, the pain. How do I handle that? Exactly, exactly.
And I remember nights in those first couple of weeks, I was just, just sitting there feeding her, just sobbing because it hurts and I was miserable and just all of it all at once was a lot.
I still wasn’t sure what to do. I tried different positions with her in the hospital. I’d figured out that the football hold was the only one that she could really latch on with. That was, I tried the cross arm. We tried lots of different ones. The football one, she was finally able to latch on and feed.
I was like, okay, well we can do this. And so I continue using that one for a couple of weeks and, by, second or third week, the pain was still, the blisters had gone away. I wasn’t dealing with the blisters anymore, but there was still intense pain every time she latched on.
And then I’d be in pain for hours afterwards. And so even like taking a shower, the hot water or the pressure from the shower, oh my God. And I wanted to wear a bra in the shower because it hurts so bad. This is terrible. It’s not supposed to be like this. It’s not supposed to be like this.
And that’s probably the most frustrating thing for me is I hear so many people just say like, oh, it’ll get better. Just tough it out. It’ll get better. And it’s like, it’s not supposed to be like that. Yeah, it was brutal.
So I tried to time my showers where they were the furthest away from a feeding so that everything had had time to calm down. It was the least amount of pain and then it was in and get out. Yeah. Don’t let the water touch anything. Oh my gosh. That’s awful. That is terrible.
So what did you do? What was your like, alright, something’s gotta change. I’m gonna take action. Kind of what was that moment for you and then what was that process?
Well, it was really a long process. I continued reading, watching videos. I didn’t want to go see somebody locally. It’s kind of a small town. I wasn’t comfortable seeing somebody on the island ’cause there are a couple lactation consultants here. And so I was trying to just deal with it myself.
And it was around three weeks that I’m, I’m assuming she started a growth spurt, but she was feeding probably every 15 minutes. And she was just falling asleep. She wasn’t actually like getting satiated. And so she’d nursed really hard for about, I don’t know, 10–15 minutes. Then she’d fall asleep for about 15 minutes and then she’d wake up and she’d wanna nurse again and went on like this for hours.
And I finally looked at my husband. I’m like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t think she’s getting enough. She’s clearly starving, but she’s so tired.
And so he went and got some formula and we gave her a bottle of formula and she passed out and she slept for like, I don’t know, four hours, four or five hours. And I was like, okay, let’s reset, let’s refigure.
And I got the pumps out and I pumped that night. I think I pumped and then fed, and then pumped, and then fed like alternated feedings. And so she was getting a bottle and then she nursed and then she was getting a bottle, and then she’d nursed. And we did that for a couple of days and it seemed to be working.
But I still had no supply of milk in the freezer because that wasn’t my focus. My focus was just giving it to her. And she was still eating about every two hours and I think the next day I had to give her another bottle of formula, I think, because she had two. She had one that night, one the next day.
And then I had enough supply to just, with pumping, feed her what she needed. And we went on like that for a couple of weeks and slowly over those weeks, her nursing became less and the bottles became more, and almost too exclusively pumping because it was, it was so much less pain for me.
Once I started pumping, I was like, oh my God, there’s no pain. It drains my boobs. Everything feels better.
Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s so, and she’s eating, she’s growing now. She still struggled with the bottles. We went through multiple brands of nipples and none of them, ’cause she latch on properly. She clicked with all of them. And she dribbled milk down the side of her cheek, like lots. She’d throw up.
She had horrible burps and gas. Like I knew she wasn’t latching on a bottle either, but I didn’t know what else to do. She was eating, she was getting what she needed and she was growing.
And so, you know, that whole mindset of feeding them as long as they’re fed, it’s okay.
Right, right.
And we continue to try. I try. I’d say probably at least once a day we tried a nurse and then it got to the point where I would just dread it.
I should try to make a nurse so that we don’t forget how to do it, but I really don’t want to.
I know that feeling. It’s like that is the worst feeling too. If you’re listening and feeling that like we see you, it is. The worst feeling to feel like I wanna nurse my baby, but I don’t want them here. Like, you just want us to throw them across the room and start as soon as they start nursing.
That is, yeah.
Like it comes with so much guilt. It’s so much more than just a physical pain. Like there’s so much guilt with that.
Yeah, yeah. It sucks.
And it wasn’t even just the pain. Like sometimes I could just grit it out and deal with the pain, but she wasn’t getting what she needed either.
When we’d nurse, she would flail and scream and she’d arch away from me and then throw herself back on and then arch away and it was like this, this dramatic fiasco.
And then she’d pass out.
Yeah. I’m like, this is not like, if this is what breastfeeding is, then I don’t wanna do it because this terrible.
So it is kind of a blur how long all this went on, but we tried so many different things and I continued trying different positions and we did the pumping and I had tons of milk by now, by, I don’t know, probably six weeks.
I had milk in the freezer. I had milk in the fridge. We had milk everywhere. It was locked.
It definitely was just full force. There was no lack of it, which was good.
One problem we didn’t have to deal with.
Right.
That is always like, you know, it’s always like, is all this extra milk a problem? It’s like it comes with risk, but it’s better than the alternative.
Exactly, exactly.
And I kind of just got onto, it fell into a rhythm where when she would eat a bottle, I would pump.
And so just, you know, I just always kept, kept up with her so that my supply never dwindled and when I did have enough in the freezer that we were content with it and knew we wouldn’t have to give her formula again.
Then I backed off on the pumping just a little bit, so that we still had, so essentially I was just feeding her with each pump, no extra.
And then I ran into the clogged ducts and so every day, every day I was just in agony with a clogged duct and I’d get it to clear on one side and that night I’d get another one on the other side and I’d get it to clear on that side and I’d get another one on the other side.
And it was just back and forth.
And they’d last for days. I mean, it would take days to get them to clear.
So then I’m worried about mastitis and getting an infection and I never did, but it was a concern the whole time.
And we tried everything to get him to clear up. I tried the dangle feeding. I tried alternating feeding her and pumping and then power pumping.
And then we tried massages, which half the things you read say do a gentle massage. The other half say, you gotta be really rough and vigorous and massage it out.
And I’m like, well that’s incredibly painful. I don’t wanna do that.
And then we tried the hot compress. We tried the cold compress.
It’s a nightmare.
We just kept trying.
We tried the Epsom salt soak. Trying to soak your boob in Epsom salts is incredibly difficult. You don’t have a deep bdo.
We tried that.
That didn’t work.
This kind of went on and at some point in all of that, I’m not sure what point it was, but somewhere in there.
I was sitting, scrolling Instagram and one of your videos popped up and you were, you were kind of grimacing and gritting your teeth while the baby was latching and you were like, and if this is you, this is not how it’s supposed to be.
Yes, yes.
And you were like, just comment. There was some word that we were supposed to comment and if we wanted to take a free class and learn about pain-free latching.
And I was like, I would do anything. I’ll do anything. I don’t know who this person is, but I’ll do anything.
So, so I commented and you sent me the link and I joined that and I went to your first one and ended up winning like 50% off your latching class.
And I was like, okay, I don’t care what it costs, I’ll do it, I’ll try it.
And so I did that and went through your whole class and I tried the different techniques.
We did some, I took baths with baby and we tried the latch while we were both relaxed in the bath.
And then I did lots of skin to skin. I’d sleep with her just naked on my chest, so we were both skin to skin to see if that would help.
Just trying to connect with her a little bit more instead of controlling and trying to force her into different positions.
Yeah.
And to see if that was what she was struggling with.
And we tried going to the chiropractor and the chiropractor wasn’t really sure what to look for.
She said that really all she does is help if the baby can’t turn her head.
And so she did check on her shoulders and made sure she could turn her head both ways.
And she’s like, yeah, that’s about all I can do.
And I was like.
So we left and that didn’t really help anything because she wasn’t having a problem turning her.
So we, yeah, we continued with that and I continued trying all the tips and tricks in your class, and I read through everything, everything that you had on there.
I did it fast because I can like see people’s progress through it.
And I remember being like, this girl is going for it. Like she’s going for it.
Yeah.
In the middle of the night, I’m just like, I have no other time. So we.
Yeah.
And so we did, we read through everything, including the tongue tie stuff, which I didn’t think she had an issue with, but I was like, maybe, maybe it is.
I’m gonna read it.
It’s important to go and check all those boxes though. Like really check all the bases.
And I know obviously like we ended up working together, so you were still struggling after the class.
But yes, I think it’s really important to highlight the things like you started like kind of being able to put some puzzle pieces together.
It’s like maybe it wasn’t the solution, but you started getting those puzzle pieces.
I’d love to know, like even though obviously like the co-bathing and the co-sleeping isn’t what fixed breastfeeding, did it help fix that bond that you felt like, oh yeah, you, you were just fighting with every feed and now you are able to connect?
Yes, absolutely.
I think that was incredibly helpful for both of us, and it helped her sleep better, even though the feeding was still stressful for her.
Like, oh, babies are just uncomfortable in wine. Like yeah, babies are creatures. But yeah, when we normalize this, um. The discomfort for them, and it, it, that's just sad to me. Yeah. Sad. Yeah.
Or in my case, there was, uh, uh, everybody that I was around, I'm just a very prideful person in addition to being stubborn.
And so I didn't want people to know that I was exclusively pumping because all the moms around me, they're all feeding no big deal. Like. I don't know what you're struggling with because this worked for me and this worked and, you know, maybe try this because it worked for me and like, well, nothing is working.
Yeah. All of those, that's really hard. And so I just tried to hide it and so when it, when everybody, anybody was around, I would either just grit through it and we tried to breastfeed so it still looked like we were breastfeeding. Or I'd go get a bottle of here, why don't you feed her, you know? Yeah, make it kind of something fun they could do with her.
So they didn't know that I was exclusively pumping.
Wow. So the, for you, it wasn't even the issue of like, I'm not around people breastfeeding, there's no support. It's almost like I'm around so many people breastfeeding, but their version of support is, this should be easy.
Yeah. Yeah, that's really, that's, I, I feel like that's very unique. I don't hear that a lot, but that is such an interesting perspective too. Like it's on the other side of things where we're not normalizing that discomfort.
And so I, I thank you so much for bringing your story out for other moms to hear, because I'm sure those other moms that were acting like it was so perfect and easy.
I'm sure they did really struggle at some point, but they didn't want people to know either. So. Hide that, and I think we do that.
A lot of your society is like, in an effort to make breastfeeding more normalized. We almost completely romanticize it and go too far.
Yeah. In, in a way.
Yeah. Because I should, I talked to a lot of different moms. All you, all the moms who came to my baby shower and everybody who came to see baby. There's, there's been a lot of people, a lot people coming by. They all just had these great stories about how, how everything went so well and they never had issues with this or that, or you know, the other.
And I'm like, okay, well I'm over here struggling, but I don't want you to know, so we're just gonna hide this.
Yeah, that's so frustrating. But I'm so glad that you stuck it out and persevered and. Didn't try keep yourself, you finally realized like, Hey, I need somebody to walk that.
And so in we wrap up. I just wanna talk about that you're in, I'm in Texas.
Yeah, that means that we worked together virtually. What was that like for you?
Like did you have reservations about that? Were you like, how can she do this? Or were you just like, I don't care, I need somebody to help. What was kind of your thought process on that?
Honestly, ever since the pandemic, we do so much stuff virtually anymore that it didn't even cross my mind.
I was like, this is just somebody who's gonna be able to take a look. And walk with me through this and I don't know if I tell my story, then she can, you know, pinpoint, okay, this, this, and this isn't working, let's fix those.
Yeah. And that's pretty much what we did, but there was like some examination stuff. So I walk you through that.
And did you feel like that helped gave you a deeper understanding of what was going on?
Yeah. Oh absolutely.
Yeah. You know, because you had me take videos of her bottle feeding videos of. Her mouth, which was challenging, but we tried and uh, and I think we tried breastfeeding on the call.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then we did some reflex stuff together too.
Mm-hmm. Virtually, like I walked you through how to look at her reflexes and kind of what that means, like what the responses mean.
Yeah.
We can do a lot virtually. I think a lot of people are kind of like, how the heck can you get this baby to latch?
But yeah, it's not, it's not my job to get the baby to latch. It's your job, right?
Yeah.
And I think it actually worked out really well. 'cause she was in her own home and we were pretty relaxed, comfortable, just sitting on our own couch.
I didn't have to go into a sterile office because that's where the lactation consultants are here in our town are. They're in the hospital.
Yeah. And so you gotta go into one of their offices. To see one of 'em.
And I also didn't wanna take my newborn back to the hospital and put her around any germs.
Ah, we've managed almost four months with no sickness at all.
And so that's great. I'd like to keep it that way.
Yeah, no, it, I totally like that is such an important thing. There's so much we can do from just comfort of our own home. There's so much.
And they like hear you and they're like, wow, that sounds a lot like me.
What is the one piece of advice you want them to take away from your story?
One to don't lose hope. Just keep trying. Keep with it. Find little work arounds to help you get through. If there's pain or discomfort, there's, there's tricks and things eventually that can be figured out to help you get through because your baby is worth it. Your baby is worth it.
I love that.
Yeah, that that was like a big thing that got me through was just remembering that she is worth it.
It's so important and I really didn't want her to be on formula. I wanted her to be on breast milk because it is the most nutritious, like perfect formula just for her that's gonna keep her healthy. It's gonna keep her from getting sick. There's so many benefits to it.
Yeah, just don't lose hope. Don't lose hope.
I love it. Don't lose hope and your baby is worth it.
Well, thank you so much Kaylyn, for coming on here and sharing your story and being so vulnerable with us and giving mom the reason to keep that hope.
Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time with me.
Absolutely. You have a great rest of your day, Kaylyn.
Thanks. You too. Bye. Bye.
Jaimie Zaki is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and mom of 5! Jaimie has volunteered as a La Leche League Leader, worked as a nurse, doula, and birth photographer, and is the host of the Breastfeeding With Confidence Podcast and founder of the Confident MamaBear Society. Jaimie provides holistic breastfeeding advice for pregnant & new moms, helping them overcome unexpected latching trouble and milk supply issues. She empowers mothers to make informed decisions from a place of confidence and intuition.
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