Phew.
This weight gain has been a lot of work. Kev and I are pretty much exhaused into delerium at this point. Feeding every 2 hours... which takes about an hour each. We pretty much live in the nursery. We have a system developed (finally) that has me feeding at the boob while Kev preps a bottle with an extra big nipple on it. Then, while Kev feeds Liam from the bottle, I pump more milk for the next feeding. We found out at the Lactation Consultant that Liam's latching issues had to do with him having kind of a small mouth. He also is sensitive to having his hard palate touched. The big bottle nipple 'de-sensitizes' him to this by giving him the gratification of instant milk reward. He only needed to use it once before he was already better at drinking straight from the boob. It was magic. We hope that by the end of this week we can stop with the bottle and there will be enough milk for satisfying him fully just by feeding at the boob. Fingers crossed please!
Below are a series of pictures of all the different ways we have had to feed Liam in the past 14 days. Looking back - it's been kind of crazy. At the end of the day though - we did whatever we could to get calories in, so we could get energy out and he could learn to suck and drink from Mommy. It has been soooooo worth it.
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| Our First attempt at feeding involved dropping milk onto Liam's tounge. It was messy and wastefull. It fed him though, so we wont complain |
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Next we moved onto a feeding tube syphon. Less messy, more 'active' for Liam to work for his food, but still not teaching him how to feed properly. |
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| And here is the current method. Liam has to take the big round nipple all the way into his mouth so that it touches his hard pallet. This is teaching his to open his mouth wide enough, and be able to take my nipple in deep enough that he can create enough suction to get the milk out. He's doing a great job! |
So there you have it. 3 ways to feed your kid, should you find yourself not able to feed at the boob. Who knew! We are also feeding from the boob - but I am pretty sure no one wants to see a pic of that!
Onward and upward from here. Hopefully by the weekend we will get to cut out all these supplementing things and be 'au natural' from here on out.
Hopefully...
1 comment:
I feel for you Laura. I couldn't go home from the hospital for 4 days because Euan would feed either. They asked me what my "Plan B" was going to be. I had never considered that there needed to be a Plan B nor was I willing to concede to anything else. We eventually brought him home but his first feeding at home was still out of a tube. I had a total breakdown. Eventually everything worked out. I wish you all the best!
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