What a week it has been! I can’t believe we have another baby in our home. He has already become so thoroughly intertwined in our lives and I am loving soaking up every minute of his snuggles.
I still need to sit down and write down his birth story, but congratulations are in order because we’ve made it through day six! And while our neighbors were all outside with their drinks the other night, we celebrated inside with dinner and a bottle of Martinelli’s from my friend Julia. (You know, the Mormon way.)
I know a lot of you are anxious to know how we’re holding up. The short answer is we’ve had a few unexpected hiccups along the way, but we’re so close to getting everything resolved! In the grand scheme of things of what we’ve dealt with before these are quite minor, but they’re still rocking the boat at our house nonetheless.
Here’s the long story of what’s going on, but I have to forewarn you: I’m about to talk a lot about boobs. And babies, and milk … but mostly boobs.
I started nursing Owen from day one (last Friday, June 13). He was at my breast about every three hours around the clock for the first two days in the hospital. I soon started to wince every time he touched me, but every nurse assured me his latch was perfect. (Which — in their defense — it does look perfect from the outside.)
My mama friends are all going to laugh right now. Surprise, surprise … breastfeeding hurt and I quickly became very sore. But since I never nursed Jack I didn’t have anything to compare it to, and all my mama friend voices in the back of my head kept telling me to “push through it! it gets better after three weeks!”
So I did. I love you, Owen, but I dreaded every feeding in the hospital.
Finally, a lactation specialist came by to check up on my progress. She noticed his tongue-tie right away, and helped me use a nipple shield. Now I was armed & defended against bleeding, right?
Wrong. But! I persevered! Hours before we left the hospital the next day, a second lactation specialist came in to see my progress. She took one look at my sores and bruises and was shocked that I was still breastfeeding. She had me stop right away and taught me how to syringe-feed Owen. She explained to us that Owen’s tongue-tie was a more severe case, and that he couldn’t cushion my nipple as he ate so I was basically being chomped on by his jaw bone. Hence, my bruising and bleeding — ouch. She sent us in the right direction to get help clipping it after we went home.
But it turns out that even though it’s a 30-second procedure, doctors who clip tongue-ties aren’t a dime a dozen. So (two appointments later) we finally got an appointment for today (Thursday morning) to clip it. Things should get considerably better from here, but because Owen has had six days of bottle- and syringe-feeding, we’re a little behind.
The most difficult thing has been that I couldn’t feed my baby. It’s been heartbreaking and I’ve cried many, many tears. Because he couldn’t suck efficiently until this morning and you can’t really pump much colostrum or any milk at all in the beginning, we’ve had to supplement his feedings with formula. Me & the dear old pump are becoming frienemies here at home; I dread our twenty-minute dates every few hours. I was slowly catching up to pumping even half of what he eats, but good heavens he went through a growth spurt last night and I’m behind all over again.
It’s kind of frustrating that it took so long to resolve because it’s like we’re starting over at the beginning again, but nevertheless I’m counting so many blessings that he’s still healthy. I’ll be back soon with his birth story!
