The Natural Way?!

I can't believe that it's been a month since Lila was born.  Clearly from my lack of posts, we've been a little busy.  Everyone talks about how hard childbirth is, but the real difficulty, to me, is the actual raising of the child part.  Lila has been great; she's not a very fussy baby, and she sleeps a lot.  Yes, lack of sleep for me has been difficult as well as learning how to do everything one-handed while holding her, but the most difficult thing has been something I did not expect. 

I went into having Lila planning to breastfeed.  I didn't think much about it.  We did a class just to learn what to do, and I figured that everything would be hunky dory.  Once Lila was born, I fed her in the hospital.  We talked to a couple of lactation consultants, and everything seemed to be going well except for the fact that she had to have her foot pricked and her blood sugar tested every time she ate since she was so big.  When Lila was discharged from the hospital, her weight had gone down from 9lb 6oz to 8 lb 12oz.  It's apparently normal for a baby's weight to go down, so no one said anything to us, and we went home.

Once we got home, Lila had a really hard time staying awake when I would feed her because of her jaundice and her broken collar bone.  It seemed to me like nothing was coming out, but everything that I had read and heard in class was that it would seem this way, but the baby only needs a little bit so everything will be fine.

The next day, we had to take Lila to the pediatrician from the hospital because of her jaundice and collar bone issues.  Her weight had gone down even more to I think 8lb 4oz.  At this point, her weight loss was way past normal.  The doctor was concerned and told me that he thought I should supplement every once in awhile with a little bit of formula in a syringe until my milk came in.  We followed up the next day with our pediatrician, and Lila hit her all time low of 8lbs.  At this point, Johnny and I were extremely worried about her and wondering what was going on.  The lactation consultants at the pediatrician worked with me for two hours to help her get a better latch and had me give her an ounce of formula with every feeding.  

The next two weeks were a blur of doctor's appointments.  Every time we substituted with formula, Lila gained weight.  When we stopped, she lost weight.  She would want to nurse for 2 or 3 hours at a time when there was no formula involved.  After using two different syringes, a tube, and two different cups, we started feeding the formula to Lila with a bottle, making life much easier.  Our worry with using a bottle was that she wouldn't nurse anymore since the bottle is so much easier, but she has yet to have trouble.  At this point, I was nursing her for about 30 minutes, feeding her with the bottle for about 25 minutes, and then pumping for 20 to try to get more milk to come in.  After all this, she would want to eat again about an hour later (I think that's why I don't remember these first weeks very well!).

Eventually, I called my friend Jane's mom, Sandy, who is a lactation consultant.  She told me to take Fenugreek and had me come in to her breastfeeding support group and do a weight before nursing Lila and after.  We realized that Lila was only getting a third of an ounce from me when she needs more like 2 or 3.  For some reason my milk just never totally came in (normally it comes in four days after giving birth).  Under the advice of Sandy and the consultant at Lila's pediatrician, I decided to stop pumping because I was exhausting myself, and ironically, some of the things that keep your milk from coming in are stress and not sleeping.

Fast forward two weeks, I'm still going once a week to Sandy's support group.  My supply has gone up to an ounce and a half.  I nurse every 2-3 hours for 30 minutes and then give Lila three ounces of formula in a bottle.  This works for us, and Lila is now a whopping 10lbs 6oz!  The reason I'm writing about this is because I really thought that breastfeeding would be the natural and easy way to feed Lila, but the more people that I talk to, the more I'm realizing that a lot of women have problems with it.  I also wanted to write this down because I'm pretty sure in about one year I'm not going to remember any of it.  Anyway, we've survived the first of many difficult situations, and our family is closer because of it (even though one of us can only see 12 inches and in black and white).