As I think about Sophia's life so far I think it's important to go over a few "key" periods in her life. This helps you as the reader get a "Big Picture" view over time, and it helps me chronicle my experience.
The next few posts will be snap shots of time where something just wasn't quite right, and what we did about it at the time. At the end of this series of posts, I hope to be able to pull them all together into a conclusion.
Starting with: The first week of Sophia's life (July into August, 2011)
Sophia was like all newborns in the hospital that week, except she was one of the only vaginally birthed ones on our floor (I specifically remember a nurse telling me that all the other moms were either in the OR or recovery). I didn't want her to go to the nursery at first, but seeing as she wasn't eating and I hadn't slept in, 24? hours, at one point the first night I decided to let her go. She came back just as I was falling asleep, supposedly hungry. But I didn't have anything to give her, this being my first baby, I didn't even have colostrum yet. So she kind of yelled for awhile and then... dun dun dunnnn... we gave her a pacifier. We got released later that day. I was pumping some colostrum, since Sophia still didn't want to nurse, or didn't want to try to, anyway. We fed her with our fingers, dipping a finger into the bottle and letting her eat it off our finger, since the LC told us to. Once we got home, we had to wake Sophia up to feed her. She had no interest in eating. We blew in her face, shook her very gently, took off her clothes, dribbled milk into her mouth... nothing. It was sort of like talking to a rag doll. My milk took 5 days to come in due to this cause and effect relationship.
We finally had to "force" feed her some formula, because her jaundice was coming back, and I of course had phrases like "failure to thrive" bouncing around my head. Out of sheer will and determination, we got the knack of breastfeeding, but only because I am one of the most stubborn people I know, and refused to give up. For a few weeks I pumped and fed her pumped milk bottles, then we moved up to on the breast with a nipple shield because her latch was all sorts wrong (but did I care, or seek help? No. I was too excited that she was nursing). And then finally around 3 months old I was able to just go cold turkey on the nipple shield and she breastfeed exclusively until 4.5 months of age, at that time we added food because she was a genuinely hungry little monkey, and they hadn't come out with the EBF until 6 months mandate yet.
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