I had another baby. Our fourth child.
After years of contemplation whether we should have another child, and nearly 2 years of trying and also suffering two miscarriages during that time, we finally welcomed our baby boy on 12th February of 2026.
It was quite a journey, and I will detail what happened and what I did after to finally welcoming our child in a separate post.
Not going to lie but I had thought to myself, since I had 3 little ones prior, that this 4th round will be easier since we were ‘experienced’ parents and I was a mature mother by now. Sure it was 6 years ago since my last child, but things should still follow the similar path, right?
Be it regarding the two big B’s, the birth and breastfeeding.
Well, I was wrong.
Not all babies are the same, and certainly there are variables to each birth, and boy did this one tested me.
To make it easier to understand, I will list and categorize out the challenges I faced from the birth to postpartum and how we managed each one. At the point of this writing it is past 5 weeks post partum and thankfully most of the issues faced are resolved.
This birth and postpartum was in fact more difficult and had more complications than my second and third birth, and possibly even my first.
Here’s what happened, arranged in order of both severity and timeline.
- Epidural resulting in debilitating post dura puncture headaches
For my first three births I had avoided using the epidural due to my fear for potential side effects, and in my first two births I had requested for an epi mid birth after I was in active labour and over 6-8cm cervix dilation and I would be rejected due to how far along I was already.
Other than my first birth which was traumatic, thankfully my second and third births went really fast and though painful, it ended quickly.
So for my fourth and last birth, I decided to give it a try, and hoped to have relief from labour pains for once in my birthing experience.
And so it went that my one and only experience with an epidural went badly and developed complications from a punctured dura by the anesthesiologist causing cranial fluid leakage.
It was bad, and I developed nausea, dizziness, and a terrible headache after I gave birth due to it. They called it the post dura puncture headache and the anesthesiologist was straight forward about what had happened during the epidural procedure.
The small chances of this complication unfortunately occured in my birth, and I had signed the paperwork prior to it that waived the doctor and hospital of the complication.
What’s more, I couldnt feel the pressure of baby descending and even at 10cm, I couldn’t feel anything and couldnt push him out. In the end after almost an hour of pushing, the doctor had to proceed with vacuum assistance to pull him out.
My baby boy was sunny side up and his had the shape of cone due to the vacuum suction.
And since I had assisted vacuum extraction I had a episiotomy and a more substantial one.
But the worst part was when I had to sit up, the room started to spin around and a painful headache hit me.
I threw up in the labour and delivery room, and had to lie down instead of being able to see my baby in the nursery.
Then after I was wheeled to my room, I tried to eat some dinner, hoping the feeling will pass and at the same time feeling really confused at my symptoms, and I threw up the fried chicken I had.
I then got to see my baby for awhile and started my first breastfeeding direct latch on him, which was the only main highlight of my night.
It went downhill again after that.
I requested for more pain medications and the nurses contacted my aneasthesiologist, and after that I threw up the third time.
By then the head nurse intervened and said that baby will be formula fed and taken care of while I recovered for a few hours.
I slept from 11pm till 4am and then felt better with the new medication from my doctor via drip, but the following days after I was discharged the pressure from the leak came back and the next 7 days was really rough.
This issue had impacted my breastfeeding as it inadvertently affected the method and my direct latch with baby in those early days causing the next issue I had.
The condition lasted 7 days, and resolved after that, but during that period I could hardly sit and stand and relief only came when lying down and having the cranial fluid pressure normalized.
In short, I was disappointed at how the birth went though I was happy to bring a healthy baby boy home from the hospital.
2. Painful cracked and bleeding nipples from baby’s improper latch during early breastfeeding.
You would think after having breastfed three of my older children, that my fourth would be muscle memory by now. I thought so too, but I was wrong.
After birth I couldn’t immediately breastfeed my baby due to the post dura headaches and vomiting, so it was only the morning after that I could hold him and direct latch at the breast, when I felt well enough to sit up.
It may have been a combination of overconfidence and his anatomy, but although his suction was good, I failed to recognize that the latch was not deep enough.
He was born 38 weeks and a few days, and his mouth was small though his birth weight was good at 3.35 kilograms.
After discharging the next day I continued direct latching my baby frequently, and at hours at a time.
It was 2 to 3 days later that the pain came, the soreness, cracked nipples and bleeding. It was excruciating pain during the feeds.
It was so bad that I developed a fear of latching him when it was time for his feeds, but i persevered on, and we also included syringe feeding to ensure he was getting enough breastmilk.
I pumped to stimulate breastfeeding and to get some amoount for syringe feeds, and that too re-opened my cracked nipples and on occasion the milk had blood in it.
I worked on correcting the latch ( deep latch) the next few days, turning to online resources, YouTube, ChatGPT, but the damage once done and if you know newborns , they ate frequently at evety 1,2 to 3 hours at most. This was on demand feeding and due to that my nipples couldn’t heal before the next feed.
I bought 3 tubes of lanolin cream and applied generously , with breasmilk, after every feed.
At every feed I had to work on his latch and positioning, causing delay in feedings so we had to endure his cries every time I waited for his mouth to open wide to get an actual good latch.
Many times, his rooting reflex would not be able to produce a wide enough mouth so I had to wait till he had a full on cry before I rammed his mouth onto my already painful nipples, and then braced myself when the pain ensued for the first few suckles. This was my first 2 weeks of breastfeeding. Since the wound reopened after each latch on one of my breast I had change the breastfeeding hold from my standard cross cradle hold and instead fed him using the football hold to have another angle of his mouth onto my nipple. That too took some learning curve from us both and I utilized it on my right side breast every feed for almost 2 weeks.
Bottle feeding was avoided to prevent nipple confusion as I wanted to direct feed my baby due to convenience. I only introduced it near to the 2 week mark and it was a big relief that he accepted the bottle, with paced slower feeding as we were still cautious to prevent nipple confusion.
This all happened while still recovering from the post dura migraines and lack of sleep, and my episiotomy wound.
This was a very difficult time, and I had cried over it a number of times feeling both guilt that I couldn’t give him my all and that his weight was not increasing fast enough.
I even considered exclusive pumping as an option but I wanted to have the bond of direct latching him, plus it made no sense to only exclusive pump my right side breast while direct latching my left which fared better after the first week after birth, and healed faster than the other ( both my nipples were shaped differently, hence the difference in outcomes).
Eventually the direct feeding issues resolved, I remembered the turning point was when I noticed tehre was no blood or peeled off skin on my disposable breast pads, first on my left side, and eventaully my right side breast pads came out clean at the end of the day during my baths. That was when I neared my 3 weeks postpartum mark.
It was quite the journey, a painful one.
That brings us to point 3.
3. Slower weight gain
He is now a chunky breastfed boy at 7 weeks. But in his first 2 week, weight gain was slow, he dropped down from 3.35kg to 3.2kg before regaining. It was still within the acceptable range for weight loss less than 5-10% for newborns but still, comparing with my other babies who were also breastfed they loss very little weight and regained their birth weight fast, typically within the first 3-5 days.
But for my fourth baby, due to breastfeeding pain and my migraines, he only regained his birth weight at day 10 post birth, and then only started gaining more steadily.
It may not sound so bad all things considered, but there was another reason I was stressed about his weight gain, and here is the next issue.
4. Baby’s prolonged jaundice
His blood type was O positive, which had a higher risk factor for newborn jaundice. Plus with his bruising from his vacuum assisted birth on the top of his head, the excess blood contributed to his increased jaundice levels as well.
On day 3, he had some yellowing of the skin and the blood test confirmed it. I had experienced jaundice with my previous three children, and the way to bring down the levels faster was to feed baby more to flush out the bilirubin (other than phototherapy if the levels are too high for baby based on the number of days post birth).
With mt fear of direct breastfeeding and feeding baby due to the nipple trauma and breastfeeding issues, I was experiencing, I couldn’t freely feed my baby boy as frequently as I did with my earlier three children. I was timing his feeds about 2 hourly and sometimes 3 hourly, instead of aggressively offering him the breast to get him to gain more weight and pee/poop out more of his bilirubin.
It didnt help that his jaundice was prolonged and went up and down, even after 2 – 3 weeks. It required daily blood test and poor baby had to get his blood drain every time we went in to see the doctor, and the same comment on his weight would come ‘ Baby needs to gain more weight, please feed him more’.
So I had stressed myself over me not being able to give him milk to support both his weight gain and to clear his jaundice at a faster rate. Mummy guilt ate at me while I contended with the physical pain of feeding him, at that time in the first 3 weeks of baby.
Thankfully it never went high enough to be a risk to baby’s brain. By week 3 it seemed it was on its way to resolving and by 1 month the doctor’s stopped ordering blood test to check his levels.
How are we now.
To date baby is seven and a half weeks old at the time of this writing.
All issues above have been resolved, in sequence of above four challenges listed.
He is now fully breastfed without pain on my part, he has grown and has become more efficient in breastfeeding and extracting milk from me. He takes both breast and bottle (once a day) and a pacifier without any nipple confusion. He has also cleared his jaundice, and is developing well and meeting his milestones. The one which warmed my heart the most was his smiles, which came at week 6 exactly and I get a feel of my little one’s personality better.
I am healed from my post dura puncture headaches / migraines, and also healed from my breastfeeding injuries. My supply is bordering on the oversupply side, and I have stored about 2 weeks of frozen breastmilk for him and still building up the stash which will be used when I am back at work.
So it has a good outcomes now, but mind you when I was in the thick of it it was a really difficult journey and may prayers were said in that time as well.
I do hope sharing this will help some mothers, be it your first baby of like me, not your first but you still struggled. Some things takes time to get better and as long as we keep trying , enduring and improving, things do resolve, at least those that I’ve mentioned above.
You also need a good supportive family to stand by you if you have to go through these events and for me I had my husband who was there with me all the way.
And this post is also a reminder to myself, to not give up and keep looking ahead at the long term goals, and problem solve these issues where possible, when challenges come my way.