My Battle With Breastfeeding

People have been doing it since the dawn of time. Making babies, birthing babies and feeding babies. I went to the classes - I know how it works. It's work, but it does happen. Babies breastfeed. Well MOST babies can breastfeed. Apparently not all, or not all as easily as they make it seem.

In the hospital, everything was going smoothly after the birth of our mcNugget. I was healing wonderfully, and she was healthy! Then Friday morning (3 days old) came around, and things went down hill. Sure she had been losing SOME weight - all babies do. Then the numbers started drifting down more 'than what they wanted to see'. We spent the day with an amazing lactation consultant (Lynn) - but then she lost even more weight! By this point, she had lost 13% of her weight - which is too much. So we decided to supplement with breast pumping and finger-feeding her that pumped milk after each nursing session so they would let us leave the next day. She gained 2 ounces overnight and we were cleared to go home!

At the one week checkup though, things weren't great. She had lost weight again, down now to 6 lbs 5 ounces - a full pound from her birth weight. My breastfeeding just wasn't cutting it. So we went to see another lactation consultant (LC) nearby. She told us that our mcNugget was a 'lazy baby' who was 'very flow driven'. There was nothing wrong with my positioning, or her suck. She didn't have any pallet issues or anything otherwise that would make us understand what was going on. Apparently now, either because of the week that had gone by or the anesthesia or my high blood pressure in the hospital or some mystery reason - my flow wasn't there. So we rented a hospital grade pump from the LC and went along our merry way.

At the next weigh-in, we found that she still wasn't up to 'birth weight' - which had been the goal. The pump wasn't doing enough to stimulate my milk production unfortunately - so now we have to supplement with breast milk AND formula. After blood work to clear out thyroid issues, progesterone and prolactin level issues, my doctor put me on the prescription Reglan. But the good news is that with the addition of formula in her supplementing, she's finally putting on some pounds. At her two week appointment, she was back up to 6 lbs 10 ounces. HOORAY!

Now today (the day after her three week birthday) we're cutting out finger feeding - and using the bottle to supplement. Unfortunately she's growing out of the finger feeding because she's getting older. We have had *a few* good nursing sessions. And the ultra-annoying part of all this is that she has never had issues with dehydration or seeming fussy that would cause us to believe that she "wasn't getting enough". If it wasn't for the weigh-ins, I wouldn't have known!

Anyway, after a lot of crying and frustrations and feelings of being "defeated" by this battle, I have come to terms with the fact that she may not be a completely breastfed baby. It sucks because everyone who knows me knows how very much I wanted that to be the case. I really, REALLY wanted to completely breastfeed for her first year. Well, the war isn't over, but we're throwing up the white flag and letting God take this one where he may. I still have hope that she can breastfeed and we can get her off of the (nasty) formula, but if not, at least we have a healthy baby!