Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding...a magical time for mother and child to bond in the most primitive and natural of ways.  What could be more beautiful than mother supplying her child with life sustaining nourishment?  Ahhhh....

I was and continue to be determined to breastfeed.  I asked as soon as I finished wondering why the ob was killing me and we were back in my labor room from the OR when I could breastfeed.  I've talked to numerous lactation consultants (FYI every consultant has their own ways of doing things...be prepared to hear a lot of different opinions and use what works for you) and am going to start attending a breastfeeding group run by my hospital probably next week.

Why you may wonder when it seems like the breastfeeding is going so well.  Well, it's going okay.  So well may be a stretch.  Originally in the hospital they started me using a nipple shield because while newborns don't have any teeth they can tear some sh*t up with their gums (another thing no one tells you) and I was bleeding.  The nipple shield made it easier for me and less painful.  And for some reason they had us supplement with formula.  Then I couldn't breastfeed for 24 hours due to the iodine they used during my CAT scan (FYI when you get iodine through an IV it feels like you've just drank a huge glass of whiskey except without the pleasant drunk feeling--your whole body warms from chest down until it feels like you've peed yourself except you didn't).  During those 24 hours Emma was given formula exclusively and I pumped to keep things moving in the milk department.  Do you know how hard it is to pump in the ICU?  Although I had a "private" room (FYI privacy in the ICU has a different meaning--yes, I had a curtain I could close over the glass doors to my room, but the curtain left a 2 foot gap on each side so anyone walking by could walk in and see me pumping or peeing) most of the nurses had no idea what a breast pump was and the lure of sleeping through the night lured me more than pumping.  I think I pumped once during the night and once first thing in the morning when I was in the ICU.  Slacker. 

So, we soldiered on with our feeding and formula plan and it seemed like things were going well.  We had our first weight check after we got out of the hospital and Emma had lost weight (down to 7lbs 14oz from the 8lbs 5oz she was when we left the hospital which was down from the 8lbs 11oz she was when she was born--luckily I knew that babies lost weight and did not freak out) so they put us on a 2 hour feeding plan with supplementing and had us come back 2 days later (FYI for those without kids a 2 hour feeding plan essentially means you are feeding or pumping all the time because you time it from the start of one feeding to the start of the next feeding so if you feed at 8pm you next feed at 10pm and on and on...exhausting!). 

When we went back Emma was up to 8lbs 2oz.  We felt good about that until we went back on Friday and she hadn't gained any more weight, but luckily she hadn't lost weight either.  We met with the lactation consultant and the pediatrician and came up with a plan to supplement every other feeding and to let her sleep up to 4 hours at night.  Yay! 

But our sweet little Emma now prefers the bottle to the breast.  Even though we primarily supplement with breast milk (yay pumping j/k) she can be so much lazier on the bottle.  And we have found that our little Emma is a lazy eater.  The breast she primarily uses as a giant pacifier (I wish she'd figure out how to use a real pacifier) and falls asleep as soon as she starts breastfeeding no matter how hungry and how fussy she is before we start. 

So, tomorrow we will get her weight checked again (if she's lost weight or hasn't gained I will probably have a melt down in the doctor's office--thank God I have my post-partum depression check up while we are there, too--I do not want the pediatrician to have to call social services on us and report us for failure to thrive baby--seriously I have worried obsessively about this the past few days) and I will call the lactation consultant and wait for next week's breastfeeding class so I can re-teach Emma to breastfeed instead of loving the bottle. 

And I realized today that despite the 5 months I spent on bedrest researching every baby item under the sun I spent no time researching what to do once the baby actually got here!  Not a good use of those months I'd say.  Dang it.