You go in with no worries with no little voice saying you will fail at it because its natural , your body knows what to do and produce and woman since the beginning of time have been feeding their babies this way! But then you have a baby who is loosing weight and won't sleep and is constant rooting trying to find more milk, and all the "it comes naturally" goes out the window and panic sets in. So we went to a lactation specialist actually 3 times now to help and between her back sucking habits and lazy eating (like a lot of newborns) my milk supply is low, too low!! She is getting about half of a feeding to as little as a quarter of feeding from me and we are having to supplement formula for the rest! It's heart breaking to realize that something that is so wonderful and natural and FREE (let's face it formula so soooo expensive like there goes her college fund expensive ) is something I can't give her! I am on the 2 all natural herbs that have helped a little in my milk supply but not enough and now have gone on a prescription to see if that will help and so far it's not! So it has left me with this... She will get as much as I can pump and the rest from formula until I my milk is gone. Sitting in the lactation room hearing that after 15 min of breast feeding she got 3 measly ML and that all the stuff I am doing and trying is not paying off leads a very tired mom to tears.
I have never been a mom so when I say this please keep that in perspective and I know in the long run this will be a small issue but right now it's not a small issue and is sad and depressing and a huge disappointment for me. I always imagined breast feeding and bonding that way with my daughter and that small dream is fading . And at 4 in the morning pumping is not appealing when you are hardly making anything . :( and then my amazing and rock solid husband steps in and comforts me and helps.
On a lighter happier side I have the cutest kid ever and am so in love with her and we will be posting "what we wore" coming up on the blog, she got some pretty cute clothes !
Happy Tuesday
Nicole
Oh gosh - she is a doll baby!
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry nursing isn't going smoothly for you.
You are so sweet and your angel is adorable. I know how you feel when it comes to nursing. Have your tried POWER PUMPING? Something to look into if you haven't tried. http://www.lowmilksupply.org/powerpumping.shtml
ReplyDeleteyou're doing great, cole!
ReplyDelete^ I've heard good things about doing a pumping power hour, probably same as the power pumping mentioned. I also wanted to share two things I did. For the first couple weeks I had one beer each evening. The darker beers (stouts, porters) are supposed to be the best, wheat beers (hefeweizens) are also good, too. I also made and ate these religiously:
ReplyDeleteEnergy Balls
1/2 cup nut butter (peanut, almond)
1/4 cup honey
1 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
It should be mildly sticky and should form balls. Refrigerate.
I got maybe 15-18 balls from a recipe and ate 3-4 a day. The wheat germ, flax, and oats are all really good for milk production. Plus, they are really tasty.
I haven't tried them, but lactation cookies are supposed to be tasty, too. They usually call for brewers yeast...same thing that makes beer helpful in milk production.