Day 14: Dec 9 - Getting help with our feeding issues

It was a pretty rough weekend, feeding wise. My milk jugs are so tender and sore, and so I’ve reverted to giving her some meals with bottles. The downside of that is that then the bottle nipples get her into bad latch habits, which makes the next BFing session more painful.

We limped through the weekend with feedings, and today we drove over to Clayton to meet with a Lactation Consultant. When she came in and did our first attempt at feeding, Katie had never latched or fed so well in her life!! It was 20 minutes of model feeding. I was actually kind of discouraged, because we had driven all this way, and the LC wasn’t getting a chance to see the bad habits Katie had actually formed in order to help us.

She left the room after our appointment, and since I was so engorged, and she had asked me to bring my breast pump, and it was their lunch time so they wouldn’t need the room, I decided to pump for a few minutes to relieve the pressure. Well thank goodness I did! No sooner had Grandma gotten her in her car seat, but she started screaming. A few minutes later, the nurse came in to see if that was in fact Katie crying, and I explained to her what was going on. She wanted to try feeding her some more, so we got to it. Luckily Katie started doing her bad habits and the LC got to witness it. This second session was so productive, because she was able to observe and give some great recommendations.

We ended up having her come in a third time, because she started witnessing some behaviors that indicated reflux. The doc wasn’t willing to prescribe any meds just yet, and she wanted us to try some other techniques first to see if they helped.

The appointment was so worth the 40 minute drive! We also found out Katie is finally starting to gain her weight back, just not as fast as she should be. She’s now 7lb 11 oz, but the doc had hoped she’d be further along. We have another appointment coming up, so our goal is to continue working on feeding her adequately [and now correctly].