Nursing Dreams and Dream Feeds

Tonight is Kevin's last "dream feed" with Abby.  A dream feed is a bottle you sneak to your baby in her sleep, right before YOU go to bed, with the hope that the little extra will be enough to keep them asleep the rest of the night.  We didn't really start off with that intention.  At the beginning, when we gradually weaned to breastfeeding from full-time bottles, and were still trying to get in 9-10 feedings a day, Kevin wanted to hold on to this one.  It was one less nursing session I had to figure out how to fit in, and Kevin loved this special daddy-daughter time.

When I mentioned in an online mommy-group that we were still doing dream feeds around six months, some gently mentioned that most babies dropped the dream feed around this time.  Kevin practically turned pale when I told him this.  At this point, Abby was sleeping through the night, while most breastfed babies wake at least once during the night for a feeding for at least the first year.  "So," I told Kevin, "maybe the dream feed is like, her night feeding, so you might as well keep giving it to her."  We agreed to wean her off of it around a year.

Abby is nearly 14 months old, now.  We've kept it a little longer than originally planned, because our girl had some other plans.

See, I had planned to breastfeed at least until I get pregnant again, if I do.  Which, if things go as we have planned, would be around 18 months.  I figured she'd probably wean herself around then, anyway, since my supply would most certainly drop.  I always intended for her take the lead, though, and while I don't love the idea of nursing while pregnant, I would've tried it for her.  I imagined we'd drop a feeding every couple of months until we were down to one or two, and gracefully stop.

After a feeding, around 2 months

She did take the lead.  She surprised and confused me by weaning during her eleventh month.  It was very unusual, because it was early (before 12 months), and abrupt.  Both of those usually signal a nursing strike (where a baby won't nurse for a few days for some reason, then hops back on the train).  Around Thanksgiving, she began biting more often than not after nursing...then at the beginning of nursing, repeatedly, so no nursing actually happened.  Within a few days, it was every feeding except for the morning one, and then it was that one, too.

I tried for weeks.  All time, at first, then once or twice a day, then every few days.  I tried every trick in the book to discourage biting.  I was firm, I was calm.  I offered her a teether, I fake cried, I put her down, I left the room.  As it stretched from a two-week, "Well, maybe this is just a long strike" into Christmas, I had to accept that our nursing relationship had ended.

This was the last time she fell asleep after nursing.
 Mid-September.

I think you may have to be a mother, but maybe not, to understand how devastated I was.  I want to tell you, in case you've been through it and you can tell me I'm normal, or in case you're going through it and I can tell you you're normal.  I loved nursing, once we got the hang of it.  I know not all mamas do, and that's okay.  I loved the calm, the sweetness, the excuse to just "be" with my baby.  It was special to nurture my baby in one way no one else could.

When I wasn't sure if she was striking or weaning, I was almost as emotional as I was postpartum.  I'm sure it was partially hormones. But a lot of it was also the "not knowing," and the intense feeling of rejection every time she would bite me or turn her head away.  One of the worst things was, she had just learned the sign for milk, and would do it.  I'd offer her the breast, and she'd bite.  But she kept asking, and it broke my heart.  I don't think she thought the sign meant what I thought it meant.  I cried a lot, and I cry thinking about it now.    I would think crazy, irrational things like, "She doesn't love me," or, "I bet she never did like to nurse."  I had to stop trying, because I couldn't take her refusal.  I was so heartbroken.

I'm mostly past it, now.  Although it happened in an unusual way and at an unusual time, I know it's just the first of many things that I'm going to let go of as a mama, as my baby girl grows up.

Which brings us back to the dream feed.  When Abby's first birthday rolled around, we still didn't know what she was doing with this nursing business, so we thought it would be good to continue the dream feed to make sure she was getting enough milk.  Now that she's pretty well established with cows' milk, I'm weaning off of pumping, and her daddy is weaning from the dream feed.  He's been gradually skipping more nights in between feeds for the past few weeks.  At first, we thought she'd wake up hungry, but not a peep.  Not a single time.

I know it's a little the same for him.  Probably without the crazy hormones, though. But that special, quiet, daddy-daughter time that has become so familiar to him.  How he still holds her like a tiny baby when he feeds her, although she has grown so much since he started.  How he has cuddled and snuggled her the same way before putting her back into bed, although it's been months since her head would rest comfortably on his chest.  He will have to let go of this, too.

I didn't have any pictures of him giving her a bottle, so here's just one of their first pictures.

Our little girl still needs us.  She'll just need us in new ways as she grows up!

Baby Breakfast Groups (+bonus picture!)

I am not crazy about the term "lactation support group."  It sounds very technical and is a mouthful.  So, Kevin and I started calling the groups "Baby Breakfast."  It's morning and the babies are eating, right?  Although, I guess with starting at 10AM, it's really more of a brunch, but Baby Breakfast has stuck for us.

When Abby first went to the group at Upper Chesapeake,  she was only five days old, and one of the smallest babies there.  Everyone fusses over the smallest babies.  I saw moms with these enormous babies, and I gaped at them.  "How old is your baby?" I asked.  I was shocked to hear that these gigantic babies were sometimes only three months old.  It was hard to believe that my brand new little girl would be that big in three short months.

On Tuesday, our friend Sarah took her brand new little girl to Baby Breakfast.  At only two days old , her baby was definitely one of the smallest.  We took a picture of them, along with our other friend Jenny and her six-week old boy, and me and Abby.  Look who has the huge baby, now!

Small, Medium, and Large.  The babies, that is.  Don't worry, we won't let those nicknames stick.

I go to two different groups, and enjoy both of them for different reasons.  Both offer opportunities for weigh-feed-weigh, if you want to see how much your peanut is eating.  If you're in the Baltimore/Harford County area, here is the info for them:

Upper Chesapeake Medical Center - Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10AM - 11:30(ish).  It is basically a big, social breastfeeding hour with two lactation consultants coming around to assist and answer questions.  It's a good way to meet other moms and get one-on-one support.  The upside is that the consultants will sometimes spend a half hour with someone who really needs it; the downside is if you're not that person, you might have to wait awhile to get the help you're looking for.  Usually, though, you can get the help you need.

Mercy Medical Center - Mondays from 10AM - noon(ish). This is run more as a support group, with everyone sitting around a table, introducing themselves and sharing their issues.  The issues are usually feeding related, but are also sometimes about other things, like sleeping or behavior.  These issues are addressed by the consultant who runs the group, Dee Dee.  She has a wealth of information and experience, and is good at acknowledging how new moms feel, which we don't always feel that we can admit. I like hearing everyone else's issues, personally.  Helps me feel less crazy.  :-) Dads are also welcome to this group, but only a few come.

Those are the only two I've been to, but there are many more all across Maryland.  The Maryland Breastfeeding Coalition has a great list if you're looking for one in a different area.

Our Breastfed Baby Girl

Our little angel baby was four months old on Saturday!

It's hard to believe that this wiggly, 13lb chunker with the chubby cheeks and double chin is the same little newborn who struggled to reach her birth weight by the third week (the goal is by two weeks).

 

Look how big her diaper was on her!

I am so proud of her; so proud of us, for fighting through our eating challenges.  Those first few weeks were rough - the problems latching, the nipple pain, the hour to an hour and 45 minute feedings.  Those two days when I couldn't wake her up to eat for more than three minutes before she fell back to sleep, and sometimes couldn't wake her up at all. The waiting for weeks to get an appointment with the ear, nose, and throat doctor and pinning so much hope on that getting her tongue tie clipped would solve all of our problems (which it didn't).  I would whisper to her all those hours at night - "We're two smart girls.  We can figure this out."  

I remember when the lactation consultants advised me to pump after feedings to keep my supply up, and I only had a hand pump at the time, so 15 minutes on each side added up to a half an hour.  After trying to feed her who-knows -how-long.  Before they told me I didn't have to do it at night (OH THANK GOD), I sat, pathetic in a bean bag chair, pumping away and longing for sleep.

When she didn't gain her birth weight back until her third week, another lactation consultant looked grave, and got us on a plan to pump and bottle feed.  I know I already posted about this, but I was so relieved to have a plan, rather than just, "Eh, give her a syringe of milk if it seems like she didn't eat enough." LIKE I HAD ANY IDEA! But, at the same time, I was so scared that if we bottle fed, she wouldn't breast feed.  However, there were two moms at the support group who had been in the same boat we were, and they had chubby, healthy four-month olds.  So I had faith.

And now, here we are, with our very own chubby, healthy four-month old.  We've weaned her off of bottles (save for special occasions and a night time one with Daddy), weaned her off a nipple shield, and gone down from an hour, to 45 minutes, to around 20 or sometimes even less.  So, I'm here to say to moms struggling with breastfeeding their babies:  Hang in there.  You and your baby can do it.  Get help, and there may be more than one way to reach your breastfeeding goals.  When I told Lactation Consultant A that Lactation Consultant B had told us to pace bottle feed, Consultant A looked stern and said that she would've had us use a Supplemental Nursing System (SNS), where Mom hangs a bottle of milk around her neck and tapes a tube to the nipple for the baby to get extra (these are the same people who had us using a syringe and never mentioned an SNS).  Consultant A said she'd never seen a pace-bottle fed baby transition successfully to nursing.

WELL, HERE IS ONE:

I see that a lot of women find the SNS or syringe feeding to be what they need to help them and their baby get through their feeding challenges, so I don't mean to trash those methods. I just want to say that different approaches will help different people, and to find what seems to work the best for you and your baby.  I couldn't be happier with how things worked out for me and my little girl.

I'll write a follow up post with information on some local breastfeeding support groups.

Smiley Girl

For the past several weeks, we've been transitioning Abby from pumped breast milk to breast feeding.  Now, we're at every other feeding on the breast, so I still need to pump about 5 times a day.  As Abby has gotten to be more alert, it can be challenging to squeeze in a pump while she is either asleep or in a good mood.  Little girl wants to be held almost any time she's awake - she doesn't tolerate sitting alone for too long!  And pumping is one of those things I can't really do while wearing her.  For the past few days, it's been working well to have her lay on my lap while I pump.  She  was actually pretty happy last Friday:

I love when she is like this!

Sleepy babies aren't all they're cracked up to be!

It amuses me that some people on Facebook are dying of suspense from the birth story!  That's really exciting for me.  But, come on, you know generally how it ends - we have a baby girl, right?  :-)  I do want to finish that story, but first, I feel compelled to share our major challenge over the last month.  I know new parents typically have no time and get little sleep, and probably all have their own unique struggles.  I don't know how much folks talk about them, though, so here is ours - with feeding.

I'm sure many parents do this - before your first baby, your head is full of ideas about how things will be and how babies work.  Before Abby was born, when Kevin's mom told us that Kevin was such a good sleeper that she had to wake him up to eat, my two thoughts were:

1. Great!  I was a good sleeper, too, so maybe that means we'll have a good-sleeping baby!
2. You had to wake the baby up?  Hogwash!  Babies will wake up when they are hungry!

Guess what?  Abby is a sleepy little baby.  We still have to wake her up to eat.  At first, we ALWAYS had to wake her up to eat.  And, she would fall asleep in the middle of eating.  I'd have to mess with her - pinching her, tickling her, wiping her with a damp washcloth - to keep her awake to eat.  And, a few times, nothing we came up with would keep her awake.  It's only been within the last few days that she's expressed hunger without us waking her up of a dead sleep, first.  Guess what else?  Having a sleepy baby isn't as great as it might sound, although I can see where those with fussy babies might disagree.

Being sleepy is just part of the equation, though.  I had a little bit of a challenge with breastfeeding in the hospital, which I chalked up mostly to lack of experience/practice.  Also, she was especially sleepy those first days, and at that point it was okay to let her sleep, so we weren't even breastfeeding that much.  From the get-go, though, the lactation consultants thought that she might have a tongue tie.  A tongue tie is when the frenulum - the narrow piece of skin under you tongue that connects it to the bottom of you mouth - is too short or too tight.  When a baby has a tongue tie, they often can't latch onto the breast properly.

So, for the first few weeks, we were having very long feedings - 45 minutes, an hour - one night, I was switching her from breast to breast for an hour and 45 minutes before it seemed like she was done.  By taking her to the local breastfeeding support group, though, and weighing her before and after a feeding, I learned that for all that time, she wasn't taking in quite an ounce, which wasn't really enough, especially with all the work she was putting into it.  The lactation consultants advised me to pump and supplement her with a syringe after breastfeeding.

Then, we had a few days when we couldn't wake her up to breastfeed or keep her awake to eat for more than a few minutes at time.  It was very stressful. Also?  Either because of her tongue tie or weak suck or something about my breasts, nursing was pretty painful, and I had blistered nipples and everything.  I am thankful for all-purpose nipple ointment.

So, anyway, this all added up to much worrying and very little sleep or time to do anything else - I was nursing something like 12 hours a day.  It was especially rough over the holidays, when Kevin's family, and then my family visited.  I spent half the day tucked in our bedroom feeding Abby.

Things are starting to look up, though.  I started attending another breastfeeding support group at Mercy, and I like it a lot better than the one here in Harford County.  The consultant there was very concerned about Abby's weight gain, so I am pumping and we are primarily bottle-feeding at this point to get her weight and strength up.  The plan is to transition back to primarily breastfeeding.  This pumping and bottle feeding thing is for the birds.  Kiddo eats 10-11 times a day, so that's how many times I need to pump, and after just a week and a half, it's getting kind of old.  But she's putting on weight at a normal rate, now, and while she is still relatively sleepy, she will let us know when she's hungry and will stay awake during feedings.  We also took her to an ear, nose, and throat doctor to have her tongue tie looked at, and got it and an upper lip tie taken care of.  In case you're wondering, the procedure was not a big deal at all.  Just a little laser zap, and she was good to go.

I'm hoping the next few weeks we'll be able to get back to primarily breastfeeding, and that we will be more efficient at it.  I think I'll feel like we have a little more freedom after that.

Birth Story Part II is coming!