A little blast from the past

I meant to post some stuff from my old blog, the one from before I started this more public one and removed even more specific details. I had forgotten about it until I was desperate for something to post tonight. I read through this post and it made me cry. It still makes me sad that before she was even three days old, I already had a day and a half where I couldn't hold my baby. Especially when she now regularly squirms away from me, I work 40+ hours a week, she she will only grow farther from me.

Yellow is not a good color for a...

Wednesday, 18 April 2007
Breastfeeding is hard. And there is not guarentee that its going to work the way you want it to, no matter how hard you try. Not to mention, there are like a million different "right" ways to do everything. The worst part is, sometimes its hard to get the support you know you need.

I knew that breastfeeding wasn't going well. I knew because I've seen it actually work, I took the class, etc. I knew it wasn't working, and I kept asking for professional help. I didn't know they won't give you help until you've been there for a day. Then I got ignored, and given at least six different things to do by nurses, none of which worked. By the time the M was a day and half old, while she was peeing OK, she wasnt' pooping, and she was really badly jaundiced.

Problem was, no one really noticed. I noticed she wasn't feeding right, but see two paragraphs above. Then we had an angel. A month and a half ago when I fell during the snow storm, I was sent to Abbott to get monitored for 6 hours. They gave me a delivery room to hang out in (beats a gurney any day), and a really cool nurse to look after the M and I. Friday night she was covering post partum, and came to visit. She noticed that M was really yellow, so she asked to have us for her next shift. She took M to the nursery, ran tests, and found out how bad her jaundice really was. Then she came and actually listened and closely watched me feed, and figured out what the issue was.

M is pickey, and my nipples weren't doing it for her. M got put under photo lamps, and I got a nifty little piece of silicon to help make M notice that she's got something to suck on. Now I know that there are plenty of people out there who think I should have tried harder, that I just didn't give it enough time... but my daughter was sick. Sick enough to get her another day in the hospital where the only time I got to spend with her was when I was feeding her (which ta-da, actually felt right and was working).

For a day and a half, every 2-3 hours, I fed for as long as she could stand it, and then had to pump for another 10 minutes while she was naked under lights, all alone in an isolette for 1-2+ hours at a time. Now tell me again that I just didn't try hard enough. Since she went home Sunday (I was discharged on Saturday, and then hung out in a very very small room for the extra day so I could feed and pump), we saw a lactation consultant in the hospital who thought that the nipple shield was a good thing. As did the lactation consultant at her Pediatricians office. She is gaining weight like well.. a weed. Yeserday, only six days old, she was up from 7 pounds 14 ounces to 8 pounds 2 ounces.

The nipple shields a pain, but if it helps her get what she needs, the lacatation nazi's can bite me. Eventually she should be able to get the hang of it and not need it. If she doesn't, I don't care. She's getting the benefit of breast milk, and time with me, and she's perfect. We've even figured out how to feed and not get both of us entirely covered in milk. (Trickier than you think)