While at the hospital, I had the opportunity to decide if I would be breastfeeding or bottle feeding baby Bree. I had decided earlier in the pregnancy that I wanted to try breastfeeding to see if I liked it. I'm not opposed to bottle feeding, but thought that if given a choice I would try breastfeeding for a few months. Well, apparently lil' Bree had another plan for me. She decided that she was going to latch on, but then sit there like a little lump and not suck. Apparently, she did not get the memo that in order to breastfeed she was going to have to do a little bit of work. At first, we were concerned that perhaps her suck was not developed, but we quickly learned that it was fully developed when we placed a finger inside her mouth. So, we continued to try breastfeeding, but with the same outcome each time, Bree would latch and then refuse to suck. At times, she would be screaming and turning red while the breast was inside her mouth, making me feel like I was suffocating my little girl. We saw three different lactation consultants and various nurses and doctors at the hospital, all who had different opinions and methods to improve her latch and suck. These techniques involved the SNS (where we taped a small tube onto my boob and syringed formula into her mouth whenever she sucked). Of course, Bree being oh so smart, figured out how to suck on the tube like a straw. We then did a finger feeding, similar to the SNS but on your finger. We also syringed fed her and supplemented feedings with formula. Needless to say, she just couldn't get the hang of it by the time we were discharged from the hospital. Now, it would have helped us if the hospital staff gave us specific directions on how much to supplement her formula. Being new parents, we had no idea and went off of what the hospital staff told us in the first several hours of Bree's life. Well, apparently we were incorrect and were feeding her far too little. Bree was born weighing 6 lbs 12 oz and fell to 6 lbs 2 oz by the first full day in the hospital. The doctors weren't terribly concerned by this weight loss since she had not lost 10% of her original birth weight, but she was getting close. It wasn't until the 2nd night when we called the nigh nurse to ask for Bree to be taken to the nursery as she was crying every 30 minutes, that the nurse looked at our feedings and told us that Bree was probably hungry and that we were not feeding her enough. Great, now we were starving our poor little one. Way to make a new mom feel good.
Once we left the hospital, we took Bree to her one week checkup. She received a clean bill of health and had increased her weight by 2 oz, now weighing in at 6 lbs 4 oz. Here we saw another lactation consultant, the first one who didn't make me feel bad for thinking about switching over to bottle feeding. Joan gave us three new techniques to try and later that day one of the techniques worked. Bree finally figured out how to latch and suck. Thinking that once I got her to do this once, she'd be great at it, I tried for a second and third feeding. We went back to the same routine where she would cry, turn red, and refuse to suck. By this time, I started getting a bit emotional. For being the natural way to feed an infant, breast feeding was certainly not feeling natural. Jason knew the direction that I was leaning, but for some reason I couldn't get myself to admit the fact that I wanted to stop trying to breastfeed and move onto bottle feeding. Jason was great at trying to convince me to talk through my feelings, and after an early morning feeding with just me and Bree I realized that the more I tried to breastfeed her, the more detached I was feeling and the more I bottle fed her, the closer I felt to her. It was at this point that I decided that we were going to stop trying and would just move on. Since we rented a breast pump for two weeks, I have been pumping and preparing bottles for Bree. I have to return the pump tomorrow, but now feel that ultimately I made the right decision in the end for our family. I will say that I love seeing Bree attach to Jason, Auntie Kirsten, and the rest of her family as they feed her. I'm sure breastfeeding would have been a wonderful opportunity, but for us bottle feeding seems like the better option.
Milk Coma!!
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