Someone in MOPS suggested to me that when I blog I should try to just pose things as a question or give simply my personal experience rather than state my opinion bluntly when I blog. I TRIED to do that with Breastfeeding part 1. And with Breastfeeding part 2 I think I will be more successful in sharing just my personal experience with feeding Adelaide.
To keep my already long blog from becoming a novel, I've included links you can follow if you have questions about some of my terminology.
The first seconds
There were only about 2 seconds... maybe just one second, that my baby was not on my body after she came out of me. Those seconds were only because someone had to catch her! (Maybe if I have another I could try to catch my baby myself but I'm not that big of a warrior mamma yet!) From the time she was born she was on my chest- skin to skin. No one took her away from me for at least an hour- not even to weigh her or clean her. A nurse simply washed her off while she was on me. This skin to skin contact I am told helps increases milk supply, so I guess that is why the midwife prescribes it immediately!
For about an hour the only people in the room were the people who were their for the delivery. Other loved ones were standing anxiously at the door of the birth room to see the baby. They finally were let in and hung out with us for about 30 minutes. (They waited 8 hours in the lobby for a 30 min visit!) She got the ceremonial weighing and measurements that everyone enjoyed watching and then the crowed went out the door and the lactation nurse came in.
She said, "let's get you to feed her." It was kind of funny at first how the nurse took the baby's head in her fingers and rubbed the baby's nose and lips on me till baby's mouth came open. As soon as the mouth opened the nurse shoved the baby's face into my breast and the baby went to town munching away at the colostrum. She laughed when she heard the snorting sound that to me sound like she was suffocating a bit. The nurse said, "that's so cute... don't worry its normal."
The first days
I was instructed that every two hours I should be feeding her. If she seemed hungry before 2 hours then by all means I should go ahead and feed her then. I would feed her on cue when I saw she was hungry which was about every 90 minutes. I found a special app on my iPhone that would remind me or wake me up every two hours... it even had a special Left or Right button.
The birthing center is a little different from the hospital setting in that they send you home 8 hours after the baby is born rather that a couple days after. So her first night was in our house with no one instructing us what to do. (Though the midwife was on-call for us). I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before so I was exhausted! When I woke up for one feeding at about 2 am, I started loosing it. She wasn't opening her mouth wide and so it was hurting really badly and I kept taking her off the poor latch to try again... she was crying and crying and then I started to cry and cry. My dear husband saw my pain and wanted to relieve it for me. He said, their is some formula that the Similac sent free in the mail, I can get it and give it to her. He had the sincere heart in saying this but it set me off. I'd been studying breastfeeding for months now, I wasn't going to give up not even a day into it. So I gave out a big loud deep NOOOOOOO. I cut back the tears, took a deep breath and tried again. The latch still wasn't perfect, but I knew a midwife would call me in the morning and another would be in the house the next day so I could ask her then. Plus, I'd been told that the baby wasn't going to starve. The 5 ml of colostrum they get is enough for their itty bitty 1-3 day old stomach. It's not till about day 7 that their tummies can even hold up to 2 ounces of milk!
So with my every 90 min feeding and loads of skin to skin contact it didn't take long for my milk to come in. I believe it started coming in at day 2. It was day 4 I believe when I went closer to 4 hours without feeding her in the night and I woke up feeling like I had two huge stones on my chest. I wonder if getting your milk supply in is what it feels like for a woman who wakes up after getting breast implants?
The first week and a half I spent feeding the baby every two hours during the day and every 4 during the night... or at cue. I mean if she acted hungry before the 2 or 4 hour mark, I'd go ahead and feed her and restart the clock.
After a week
When she was 1 and a half weeks old she went to her "one week" appointment at the pediatrician's office. (Austin Area Birthing Center does plenty of newborn check ups for the first 6 weeks so we didn't NEED to go to the pediatrician but we wanted to start our relationship off good with them.) The pediatrician was impressed with the baby's weight gain and told me I could try to sleep through the night now without waking her... just continue feeding every 2 hours during the day and on cue at night. So I started getting 6 hour stretches without feeding the baby at night. Though this caused uncomfortable engorgement so after about 4 hours of sleep I'd wake up, and play on Facebook for 15 minutes or so while I pumped.
Some issues
When she was probably about three weeks old I started noticing that sometimes when she was nursing she would look very frustrated and popped on and off her latch and even "tore" at me. (I don't know a better word to describe it but it hurt). I thought, oh no, she isn't getting enough milk! I got advice to drink way more water so I did, and try special teas, so I did. Maybe those things did help my supply but it actually wasn't low to start with. I pumped after she did this and found I still pumped an ounce or two. When I started practicing Elimination Communication and had diaper free time, I found out this is what she does every time she pees while nursing!
Now at 6 months
In the past 6 months I've mostly just followed my instinct on feeding. I don't have to set a clock for when she needs fed (I think I ditched the app at about 4 weeks) but I just know. Sometimes when I'm super busy in the day I have to look at the clock a little and make sure she has been fed in the past four hours, but even that situation is pretty rare.
Sleeping through the night?
Everyone asks me "does she sleep through the night?" And I would say "no, not really," and get all sorts of advice on how to get her to sleep through the night and not feed her when she cries. For a while I was trying to go by their advice even though I felt like it wasn't the right choice for me. I'm so happy that God gave me a friend who goes to my church and happens to be a lactation consultant and doula. She encouraged me to continue doing night feedings as I felt necessary because God gave me instinct for a reason. She also said it isn't even that healthy for babies to go 12 hours without eating at night. Heck, I never go 12 hours without food or drink! So that makes sense to me! Its funny how I get so tired when people tell me all these ideas of how to get the baby to "sleep through the night." I feel all this pressure to sleep for 8 hours straight and the pressure wears me out! But when I just relax and say, whatever, I'm a mom, its part of the job. I feel totally rested even if I got up 3 times to feed her!
My sleep trick
One way I feel totally rested even if I do night feedings is when I co-sleep. Instead of buying her a crib, we bought her a queen sized mattress to put on the floor. So most nights I start off in bed cuddling with my husband and then when she wakes up hungry, I go in and lay down with her and feed her in a side laying position. She doesn't even wake up and I hardly wake up either. I have actually woken up with her latched on and I don't even remember putting her there... it is just pretty natural now.
My advice
My biggest advice that comes from my experience is get a good lactation consultant who is just as determined to get you breastfeeding as you are. Find out what she/he thinks about breastfeeding before you have the baby. If she says half her clients end up not being able to breastfeed (or bottle feed with expressed milk) then fire her! Find someone who has a great success rate and knows that your body is not a lemon!
Well that has been my experience for the past 6 months. I know everyone has their own ways of doing things, and their bodies and babies may have a different experience. But I hope my experience encourages you in your breastfeeding adventure!
Now Adelaide has begun grabbing food off of our plates so now begins baby-led weaning! I'm sure I will be blogging on that soon enough! :)
To keep my already long blog from becoming a novel, I've included links you can follow if you have questions about some of my terminology.
 |
| Skin to Skin contact after labor and delivery. |
There were only about 2 seconds... maybe just one second, that my baby was not on my body after she came out of me. Those seconds were only because someone had to catch her! (Maybe if I have another I could try to catch my baby myself but I'm not that big of a warrior mamma yet!) From the time she was born she was on my chest- skin to skin. No one took her away from me for at least an hour- not even to weigh her or clean her. A nurse simply washed her off while she was on me. This skin to skin contact I am told helps increases milk supply, so I guess that is why the midwife prescribes it immediately!
For about an hour the only people in the room were the people who were their for the delivery. Other loved ones were standing anxiously at the door of the birth room to see the baby. They finally were let in and hung out with us for about 30 minutes. (They waited 8 hours in the lobby for a 30 min visit!) She got the ceremonial weighing and measurements that everyone enjoyed watching and then the crowed went out the door and the lactation nurse came in.
She said, "let's get you to feed her." It was kind of funny at first how the nurse took the baby's head in her fingers and rubbed the baby's nose and lips on me till baby's mouth came open. As soon as the mouth opened the nurse shoved the baby's face into my breast and the baby went to town munching away at the colostrum. She laughed when she heard the snorting sound that to me sound like she was suffocating a bit. The nurse said, "that's so cute... don't worry its normal."
The first days
I was instructed that every two hours I should be feeding her. If she seemed hungry before 2 hours then by all means I should go ahead and feed her then. I would feed her on cue when I saw she was hungry which was about every 90 minutes. I found a special app on my iPhone that would remind me or wake me up every two hours... it even had a special Left or Right button.
The birthing center is a little different from the hospital setting in that they send you home 8 hours after the baby is born rather that a couple days after. So her first night was in our house with no one instructing us what to do. (Though the midwife was on-call for us). I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before so I was exhausted! When I woke up for one feeding at about 2 am, I started loosing it. She wasn't opening her mouth wide and so it was hurting really badly and I kept taking her off the poor latch to try again... she was crying and crying and then I started to cry and cry. My dear husband saw my pain and wanted to relieve it for me. He said, their is some formula that the Similac sent free in the mail, I can get it and give it to her. He had the sincere heart in saying this but it set me off. I'd been studying breastfeeding for months now, I wasn't going to give up not even a day into it. So I gave out a big loud deep NOOOOOOO. I cut back the tears, took a deep breath and tried again. The latch still wasn't perfect, but I knew a midwife would call me in the morning and another would be in the house the next day so I could ask her then. Plus, I'd been told that the baby wasn't going to starve. The 5 ml of colostrum they get is enough for their itty bitty 1-3 day old stomach. It's not till about day 7 that their tummies can even hold up to 2 ounces of milk!
So with my every 90 min feeding and loads of skin to skin contact it didn't take long for my milk to come in. I believe it started coming in at day 2. It was day 4 I believe when I went closer to 4 hours without feeding her in the night and I woke up feeling like I had two huge stones on my chest. I wonder if getting your milk supply in is what it feels like for a woman who wakes up after getting breast implants?
The first week and a half I spent feeding the baby every two hours during the day and every 4 during the night... or at cue. I mean if she acted hungry before the 2 or 4 hour mark, I'd go ahead and feed her and restart the clock.
After a week
When she was 1 and a half weeks old she went to her "one week" appointment at the pediatrician's office. (Austin Area Birthing Center does plenty of newborn check ups for the first 6 weeks so we didn't NEED to go to the pediatrician but we wanted to start our relationship off good with them.) The pediatrician was impressed with the baby's weight gain and told me I could try to sleep through the night now without waking her... just continue feeding every 2 hours during the day and on cue at night. So I started getting 6 hour stretches without feeding the baby at night. Though this caused uncomfortable engorgement so after about 4 hours of sleep I'd wake up, and play on Facebook for 15 minutes or so while I pumped.
 |
| Breastfeeding at the Texas State Capital |
When she was probably about three weeks old I started noticing that sometimes when she was nursing she would look very frustrated and popped on and off her latch and even "tore" at me. (I don't know a better word to describe it but it hurt). I thought, oh no, she isn't getting enough milk! I got advice to drink way more water so I did, and try special teas, so I did. Maybe those things did help my supply but it actually wasn't low to start with. I pumped after she did this and found I still pumped an ounce or two. When I started practicing Elimination Communication and had diaper free time, I found out this is what she does every time she pees while nursing!
Now at 6 months
In the past 6 months I've mostly just followed my instinct on feeding. I don't have to set a clock for when she needs fed (I think I ditched the app at about 4 weeks) but I just know. Sometimes when I'm super busy in the day I have to look at the clock a little and make sure she has been fed in the past four hours, but even that situation is pretty rare.
Sleeping through the night?
Everyone asks me "does she sleep through the night?" And I would say "no, not really," and get all sorts of advice on how to get her to sleep through the night and not feed her when she cries. For a while I was trying to go by their advice even though I felt like it wasn't the right choice for me. I'm so happy that God gave me a friend who goes to my church and happens to be a lactation consultant and doula. She encouraged me to continue doing night feedings as I felt necessary because God gave me instinct for a reason. She also said it isn't even that healthy for babies to go 12 hours without eating at night. Heck, I never go 12 hours without food or drink! So that makes sense to me! Its funny how I get so tired when people tell me all these ideas of how to get the baby to "sleep through the night." I feel all this pressure to sleep for 8 hours straight and the pressure wears me out! But when I just relax and say, whatever, I'm a mom, its part of the job. I feel totally rested even if I got up 3 times to feed her!
My sleep trick
My advice
My biggest advice that comes from my experience is get a good lactation consultant who is just as determined to get you breastfeeding as you are. Find out what she/he thinks about breastfeeding before you have the baby. If she says half her clients end up not being able to breastfeed (or bottle feed with expressed milk) then fire her! Find someone who has a great success rate and knows that your body is not a lemon!
Well that has been my experience for the past 6 months. I know everyone has their own ways of doing things, and their bodies and babies may have a different experience. But I hope my experience encourages you in your breastfeeding adventure!
Now Adelaide has begun grabbing food off of our plates so now begins baby-led weaning! I'm sure I will be blogging on that soon enough! :)
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