Time for an update, that is! I really meant to keep updating the blog fairly regularly once Caroline was born. Then life happened.
It's amazing what one little unexpected kink can do to turn your life upside down. I really expected to have plenty of time to be on the computer while Caroline nursed in those early days. I mean, heck, I got a ton of reading done when Anna was born because she was constantly latched on and nursing. I also mastered the art of typing while nursing because I could pop her on, balance her on the Boppy pillow, and have both my hands free.
Well, the best laid plans and all that. When we got home from the hospital Sunday, things seemed to be going well. Caroline was about 8 lb. 2 oz. at that point (down from 8 lb. 14 oz. at birth), but I wasn't worried because babies always lose weight in the first few days. My milk came in Sunday night, and I figured all was well with the world. Yes, I was pretty sore, but I was working on getting her latch better, so I figured the soreness would go away. Then we noticed that the dirty diapers were few and very far between. By Tuesday, they had pretty much stopped completely, and at Caroline's doctor appointment that day, Caroline had dropped to 7 lb. 12 oz., which I thought was odd, since my milk was in, and she was nursing regularly. Wednesday, I went to see a lactation consultant at the hospital, and that began an Odyssey that I never anticipated when I gave birth to this gorgeous creature three weeks ago.
The LC weighed Caroline, and she was down to 7 lb. 11 oz. I nursed her while we were there, and the LC taught me how to do compressions while she nursed to make sure she was getting plenty of milk, and she suggested pumping one side while I nursed on the other. I sat there for over an hour nursing her and pumping, and we gave her the little bit of milk from the pump in a syringe. After all that, she gained less than 1/2 oz. Yikes! So the LC recommended renting a hospital-grade pump and taking some herbs to increase my milk supply. She said that Caroline's latch was shallow, and she just wasn't sucking hard enough to get the milk out. She said I could wait 24 hours and see how she did, but at that point if she still wasn't gaining, I'd need to give her some formula.
So that night, I did everything she suggested. I nursed and pumped and took herbs, and around 3 a.m., when my baby was screaming and miserable, I gave in and fixed a little formula (about 1/3 oz) from one of the bags we got at the hospital. I fed it to her with the syringe, just like the breastmilk I had pumped, and that seemed to satisfy her little tummy enough that she could sleep. The next day, we went back for another weight check, and she had gained about 3 oz, so that was a great sign. The LC also said that I was welcome to come in for a weight check any time, so I continued to do that pretty much every day. Unfortunately, after the initial gain, her weight leveled off and then started declining again. By Wednesday of the next week, she was down to 7 lb. 8 oz., and I was really worried. We started supplementing a little more aggressively, and I started giving it to her in a supplemental nursing system, which is a bottle connected to a little tube so that the baby gets the supplement while she nurses.
Fortunately, that stopped the weight loss, and Caroline has now gained back up to 8 lb. 4 oz. I'm still going for frequent before/after weight checks, and I bought a digital scale so that I can weigh her at home and make sure she's still gaining. It's not really accurate enough to use for before/after checks (the hospital scale is accurate to .1 oz -- this one is only accurate to .5 oz), but at least I can tell that she's going up instead of down.
Because of all this drama, my entire life has been consumed with feeding the baby. She nurses for about an hour at a time, and then I have to offer her the supplement, which takes another 5-10 minutes. Then I have to pump. By the time I finish pumping, I'm lucky to get 30 minutes to an hour before it's time for her to nurse again. I feel like I ought to just superglue my butt to the chair and never leave the house! Feeding her while we're out is practically impossible, partly because it takes so long, and partly because it's impossible to be discreet when I'm trying to get the little SNS tube in her mouth while also trying to get her to latch on.
The good news is that things are getting better. She's now getting between 1-1.5 ounces when she nurses, so that's about triple what she got that first day at the LC. We've also been seeing a speech pathologist, who has shown me how to do some exercises to strengthen her tongue, cheeks, jaw, and mouth so that she can nurse more effectively, and they do seem to be helping quite a bit. Hopefully, we'll continue to see improvement so that we can cut back and eventually stop the supplementing altogether. Those who know me know that breastfeeding is something I feel very strongly about, and I'll do whatever it takes to make it work. This is the hill I'm willing to die on, and failure is not an option.
So, it may be a while before I'm back to posting regular updates, but I will get back to it whenever things settle down here. In the meantime, I'll post pictures and updates when I can. Stay tuned!
