Breastfeeding

6 Days 

We have passed a tearful, joyful, stressful few days, working with Willa and our caregivers (formal and informal) to help her get started nursing. I'm finding it impressive how terribly vulnerable it feels to be so responsible for our tiny girl and to not be able to give her what she needs. While I'm grateful that there are other ways for her to eat, and that physiologically there is nothing wrong with her and she can drink from a bottle (oh does she like that bottle), it also feels a bit heartbreaking. We are of course worried that she will continue to have trouble nursing once my milk supply is up, since we introduced the bottle, but are getting good support around this and are currently very hopeful.

The back story is that this little peanut came a bit early (full term but still right before 38 weeks) and have since learned that often babies who arrive a few weeks early don't really bring all their breastfeeding skills with them. She seemed to nurse ok in the first 24 hours and then just...got sleepy! She also developed very mild jaundice in the past few days, which apparently makes her even more sleepy, so the deck is stacked against her having to do any real work. And because she wasn't feeding regularly, my milk has not come in! All told, mama's on a round-the-clock pumping schedule and baby's getting supplementation, which is clearly helping her and the right thing to do. But man alive is it hard! Cj made a joke about me being the milk maid and he being the milk man, which I found hilarious on my 15% of brain function. Today she had a weight check and she has regained 5oz in 2 days after an initial loss that got everyone starting to worry. Go little W! I have started having acupuncture, taking milk-making herbs and drinking protein shakes, in addition to eating Bre's awesome oatmeal cookies that help make milk!

The last few days have also taught me some intense new things about friendship and support among mamas and how lucky we really are to have so many giving and supportive people around when Cj and I have been so scared and overwhelmed. One of these dear friends said something to me this morning along the lines of how odd it feels when something that's supposed to be so natural doesn't come naturally. We're definitely caught in this bizarre in-between space and hoping to move beyond soon. Cj would like to know what other things we didn't anticipate about parenting that he can study up on now :)