Eh, I dunno. He was up all night doing epic battle with his own farts. Somehow I expected a kid of ours to at least win.
Children are born to disappoint you. The sooner you come to terms with the thought that he probably won’t get into Harvard, win a Nobel prize in medicine, pitch a no-hitter against the Yankees AND be President of the United States, the less annoying you will be to other mommies. The fart thing is a good start.
Well, damn it. I took him in for a peace of mind weight check per the LC and it turns out he hasn’t gained at all in the last week. He’s filling up his diapers like a champ so it isn’t an emergency but it is a problem. Pediatrician wants us to supplement after feedings. Which I’m fine with, totally, but I’m afraid that will make it just so easy to give up on Breastfeeding. And why does my phone keep capitalizing that? I eventually gave in and stopped trying to stop it.
Nope. If you have a daughter first, your first-born son doesn’t have to fast, and if you have a c-section baby, then a son born vaginally, he doesn’t have to fast. There’s some line in the Talmud about the son who “opens the womb,” and the rule was probably established either when the medical guideline was “once a c-section, always a c-section,” or even way back when babies born by c-section were being salvaged from a dead mother, but it’s not likely to get changed, because someone would have to appeal to a rabbinical authority, and aside from the fact that there really isn’t a central authority, like the Pope, I seriously doubt someone who has a second son by VBAC is going to go before a rabbinical court just so her son can be required to fast.
Sometimes that happens because a baby loses water weight, but is still gaining muscle and fat. My son lost weight in the hospital, when I was pumping and bottle-feeding breastmilk, and so we got told to give him an ounce of formula after each alternate bottle of breastmilk. By his second week, his weight was up 8ozs from his birthweight. The doctor told us to use the formula according to our own judgement-- if he was not acting hungry after his bottles, he was fine. He ended up getting about 4ozs a day, but that was mostly so I could get four hours of consecutive sleep once a day. Once in a while, I had a less successful pumping day, and he got an extra 4ozs.
Someone from La Leche League gave me the advice to pump until the milk flow started to slow, and then quit, wait an hour, and then pump again, and that was the best way to increase milk flow with pumping-- this worked really well. Before that, I’d sit there, for a long time, trying to reach some goal, like 4ozs, even if it was clear I was getting almost nothing.
After all that, my son finally got a good latch around four or five weeks, and then proceeded to nurse for the next two and a half years. I finally had to force-wean him.
I’m late to the party, but CONGRATS to you and the ZsofiaClan! Welcome to the world, baby boy!
Honestly, don’t worry too much about that. My little guy was 8lb 13oz at birth and at first was gaining weight like a champion, then suddenly he was gaining nothing or very little. Over months he slid down the percentile charts from 75th to 50th. Despite my growing anxiety the health nurse kept assuring me he was fine: He was alert, ate well, looked well and wasn’t going backwards. She was right. He’s 3 now, and still 50th percentile for height and weight, and he’s a bright, happy, healthy little fella. Make sure you discuss his results with whoever you rely on for medical advice about him, but a single stalled week can be unimportant in the grand scheme.
Dweezil was at his birthweight when he was a week old, and a misguided nurse insisted this meant I needed to supplement (even though my milk had only been in for 3 days or so).
I gave him a couple of bottles, then decided that I’d try just letting him eat as much as he wanted, any time he wanted.
He gained 8 ounces in 4 days.
One thing that worked for me is that I finally figured out how to safely nurse him lying down. I’d lie on my side, lower arm outstretched and then bent at the elbow. His head would be on the upper part of that arm and the lower part was behind his back for support / to keep him from rolling away. I had a pillow behind my back and leaned slightly back onto the pillow; between the arm and the tilted-backward position I didn’t worry about rolling over. Then I’d get him starting to feed (floppy boobs made positioning easier; if you’ve got perky ones, it may be more of a challenge!!).
What this did was let him “snack and snooze” (it was about the only rest I ever got!!) - and I think he took in a LOT more food that way.
I did much the same with Moon Unit nearly 3 years later, once she’d learned to eat (she was a preemie; didn’t nurse well until she was 4 weeks old).
You can also ramp up the caloric content a bit. I recommend ice cream (for you, not for baby, at least not directly). I’m actually serious - ice cream tastes good, it’s got calcium, and we’re reasonably sure this meant I was giving ultra-rich milk. We were dealing with a lot of stress at the time and so we ate a LOT of ice cream. Moon Unit went from a scrawny preemie to a chubby baby in 3 months.
Late to the party, but congratulations!
Also, you’re doing everything exactly right. Ignore anyone who says otherwise. They’re just jealous, because yours is obviously the most perfect and beautiful baby around.
Another also: I’m right down the road from you, assuming you didn’t take my advice to vacation in Lappland during your final trimester. Free babysitting, whenever you want! If you decide not to take me up on my offer, please sniff the top of Tater’s head for me, and smooch every single finger and toe for me, and tell him that’s from his Doper Auntie Lacunae! 
And that’s another thing - everybody says the top of a baby’s head smells really good but I don’t smell it! My husband says he does but I think he’s just expecting to.
Well, the LC fit me in on Thursday by which time via pumping and some supplementing he was up 5 ounces. She thinks the hospital started treating him more like a full term baby because of his size, but that he really can’t suck appropriately and we caught him at a good feeding the last time. So now I’m exclusively pumping except for one feeding a day. Which sucks. And it’s pretty much my full time job but I have yet to actually have a day where I get to 8 sessions. 
Honey, at any point at which you feel that this is making you enjoy your baby less than you otherwise might, you have my permission to switch to formula. You could do part pumping and part formula even.
Shrug, some babies have it a lot, some barely, and like any other smell some people notice it and some don’t. Completely different one, but Dad and us kids could tell milk was off about three days sooner than Mom could.
Did the LC say anything about how to improve his sucking? Simply saying “doesn’t suck well” is, well, not at all helpful. Contact her again, or find a different LC.
A lot of babies really start to “get it” right about the time they would have been full term; that’s how it worked out with Moon Unit (34 weeks). There are also mechanical issues that can be at play - any chance he might be tongue tied? (that’s where the little membrane that connects the bottom of the tongue, to the bottom of the mouth, goes too far forward). That’s fixable with a very quick snip (by a doctor!!!) which the baby of course doesn’t like - but which is forgotten 5 minutes later.
Also: if he’s learned to drink well from a bottle, the breast is a lot more work and a lot of babies simply can’t be bothered. What they tell you about nipple confusion is TRUE. I got a long nasty lecture from one of the neonatologists at Moon Unit’s hospital about how that was a myth and didn’t really happen (yeah, this was a male doctor). A female doctor lectured me for basicallly trying to give the baby pneumonia when I asked of we could attempt alternate feeding mechanisms. Right. “supportive of breastfeeding” my ass.
Obviously you have to make sure the baby is fed. But you can work on retraining him at the same time. Do some searching for “finger feeding” or “suck training”. http://pediatrics.about.com/library/breastfeeding/blbreastfeedingi.htm.
I think I’ve posted about that here before - but with Moon Unit, I had stumbled across a description of that just a few weeks before she was born. When nursing wasn’t going well, I got one of those “supplemental nutrition system” sets, and tried the whole “tape it to the breast” thing which was a joke (and I think made her LESS willing to breastfeed). Then I remembered what I’d read - and tried it, and within 48 hours she was fully breastfed.
Yeah - it WAS that dramatic. No exaggeration. Part of it I’m sure was that she was just about ready to make the switch anyway, but with finger-feeding I could fell when she was sucking well, and jiggle my finger a bit to remind her to nurse, and use my chin to press on the bottle a bit to “reward” her with a bit more milk. She caught on very quickly after that.
Yeah. The boychik was full-term, but I think he just needed to do things his way, and that included getting enough head control to position himself the way he wanted. Also [TMI ALERT], once I ignored the LC’s advice about stuffing the entire areola into his mouth, and let him decide how much he wanted, no more, no less, he was happy. And I wasn’t in pain, not at all, despite the LC assuring me that I would be.
My understanding is that the LC feels this will work better once he’s stronger - which he is now, Thursday’s appointment put him at 7 lbs 4 oz! The doctor is very pleased. I think I didn’t realize quite how skinny he got, being with him all day - I saw some pictures from then and was a little shocked at how hollow his eyes were.
I’ve been sucking at my homework though - I haven’t even been trying the daily feeding at the breast I’m supposed to be doing because it’s just so freaking depressing. When I was, he wasn’t even trying to suck anymore, I assume because the bottle is so much easier.
However, he does have more head control now. The LC and I missed each other on the phone all Thursday and Friday - hopefully Monday now that he’s getting enough to eat now we can move forward one way or another.
That is absolutely an issue. Hopefully the LC will discuss nipple confusion with you and ways to address it. The finger-feeding technique is really worth a try.
You can also pump a minute or so before attempting to breastfeed; it takes a minute or so for the milk to start “letting down”, and baby may get frustrated because “hey, why bother, that OTHER thing gives me milk right away”. If you pump just to the point where the milk begins to flow, it’ll be less work for him.
And just when you think you’ve hit peak dignity loss you shoot yourself in the eye with people milk.
I dunno hon. I thought peak dignity loss was two days after the c-section, when my husband watched two nurses heave me out of bed to go pee, giving him and everybody in the hallway a clear view of my cottage-cheese postpartum ass in its hospital-issue mesh underwear and giant sanitary pad peeking out from the back of my unfastened hospital gown.
I’ve always remembered that as rock bottom.
(See how much better things have gotten ALREADY?)
Oh, I do remember that quite clearly as well. (Closely related: when my husband pretended to still be asleep on that hospital room couch at 5 AM when they showed up to take the catheter out.)