Breastfeeding did nt go too well for me or for my baby girl, Ashu in the beginning! I had these huge engorged water melons and she had this tiny little mouth and she just could nt latch on! The lactation experts and the nurses struggled until we left the hospital and it was too damn frustrating for me! Then they gave me the nipple shield, the silicone nipple thingy which u press to your nipple, and she took well to it and drank from it comfortably! A breastfeeding consultant came home for 2 weeks and checked her progress! As the milk supply was good and she was drinking and getting strength, the nurse said that she will be alright in a couple of weeks! But it was not to be so! It took a little more than 3 months to completely quit the nipple shield!
When I thought all was well, the 4 month Doctors visit dropped a bomb saying Ashu was under weight! It was a shocker! I had nt expected that! I suspect it was because of using the nipple shield for 3 months (I should have tried harder and should have quit it even earlier) Also I think she was drinking a lot lesser from the breast than with the nipple shield! And I was nt regularly pumping and I was nt waking her up in the night to feed her! May be a little of everything I did! May be I did nt do anything right!
Anyway, I have started supplementing with formula twice a day and feeding her on my breast the rest of the time and pumping! She took well to the formula, too well for my comfort actually! She had always liked drinking from the bottle (the lazy bum!!) and now she’s doubly happy! I have started with 100 ml; she finishes it fast and wants more! But I think it’s actually the suckling she wants!
I cant help but wonder what I would have thought about what I just wrote if I had come across it a year back! Funny how life changes and the things I ve least cared about all my life has suddenly become the most important thing!
1 comment:
funny i never found this blog earlier.
i am a new papa and was scouring the net for info on lazy babies. although this post was 2 years old, u may well have been talking of our 'Bumpy' (born a week ago).
after a frustrating week and a panic visit to the paedetrician (gee, i need to learn spellings!), the nurse asked us to use a nipple shield. bumpy would simply doze off at the breast and enjoyed the Lactogen room-service too much to try harder.
day 1 of shield has been ok. we are less frustrated now, altho he's still not gobbling away as expected.
we will keep the issues you raised in mind. will try and wean him off the shield earlier and also try and wake up nights to feed frequently.
good to know we are not the first ones to suffer. hail the internet.
super cute blog, by the way. hope Ashu is doing great now!
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