Latching

Wow, I have no time to write in this! This is my first opportunity since Friday and already I can hear Oliver waking up! I guess I'll start again later...

Now Oliver is on the breast, so I am one-handed typing. So much has happened in the last 2 days, it's hard to know where to begin. Well, I guess I'll start with Friday. I met with the lactation consultant at the hospital and she watched me breastfeed and then weighed Oliver before and after. He didn't get a whole ounce from that, so she told me to continue breastfeeding and pumping afterward and to give him every last drop of what I get by cup or syringe, not bottle. (I told her that I had concerns about using a bottle this early. She also told me that she thought Oliver looked jaundiced, so she sent me to the pediatrician to get him checked. I was happy about that though because we got to see OUR pediatrician and not the nurse practitioner, so he got to look at Oliver and he loved the name! The pediatrician called me later with the results and his bilirubin was at 13, which he said was okay and to just put him in his diaper in the sun a few times a day this weekend. So, that was a relief!

Saturday, Oliver started having difficulty latching on. He would latch for 3 suckles and then let go, and this pattern repeated about 25 times with intermittent screaming sessions. It was so stressful and I couldn't understand why he had apparently forgotten how to latch on. It was a tough day. I think breastfeeding can be the worst thing in the world when it doesn't work, and the most wonderful thing when it does, and the wonderful parts make it worth it.

Today, Oliver was still having such a hard time latching on, he was crying, I was crying. Finally, Josh suggests that we call the lactation consultants at the hospital and I have a "why didn't I think of that" moment. The LC says that Oliver is most likely just becoming frustrated that the breast does not feed him as quickly as the syringe and he has to work for it more which he doesn't want to do. Gotta have that instant gratification... She suggests that I pump on one breast for a few minutes and then give it to him once I let down. I tried it and it worked! Although, isn't the baby supposed to learn that they have to suck a while before milk comes out?

Anyway, so this makes me not want to give him the syringe as often, but I am at the same time afraid that he is just really hungry. He feeds a lot and sleeps a lot and then after one feeding at the breast, we decided to give him some of the pumped milk in the syringe and he drank like 3/4 of an ounce! Now I am worried that I have been starving him all day by not using the syringe feedings and I think I am going to let him have that more often and just deal with the latch problems. Tonight after he had it, I was not surprised to find that he was having latch problems, but we just nursed and nursed and finally he was a pro at it again... he nursed for about an hour and a half straight! I hope he is getting a lot of milk out, but I don't know. I always pump right after he finishes and I get about 1/2 to 1 ounce combined. I am still on the Fenugreek and the LC upped my mid day dosage to two pills, so now I am taking one with breakfast, two with lunch, and one with dinner. Hopefully that is all I will have to take. It's something to get used to to smell like maple syrup out of every orifice, lol.

So, although there's a lot of crying and frustration (on both mine and Oliver's part), I am hopeful that things are going to continue to get better! I am trying to remember that even if he doesn't get something now, like getting all of the milk out for instance, that doesn't mean he never will. I think with Evan, since breastfeeding was so hard in the beginning, I just thought that it would never get better and would always be torture. With Oliver, there's light at the end of the tunnel and it's so nice when we have those blissfully successful moments that keep us going.