Oodles of news

In the last three days we’ve had a pediatrician appt, two blood draws, and another LC appointment.  Whew!  We have had an appt or lab visit every single day since we’ve been home with Eleanor, and are so looking forward to a quiet weekend!

Pediatrician on Wednesday:  Nora was up to 6lbs 5oz, which was a gain of 3.6 oz in the 28 hours between the first LC appt and this visit.  Woo-hoo!  She was perfect in all ways but one: I had been worried that she had more jaundice than she should, and the ped shared my concern.  She ordered blood draws so we headed there next.   Her billirubin came back at 17.7.  Under 12 is considered normal, 12-18 is the “watch” zone, and above 18 calls for UV light treatment.  Since she came in just barely in the watch zone this meant another blood draw the next day to see if it would go down.  If it did, then she would be declared ok and no further testing would be necessary.

Blood draw Thursday, and visiting Daddy’s work: we went for the second blood draw on Thursday, and it came back at 15.2!  Still high but dropping, which is what matters.  Even at 15 it’s the likely culprit behind Nora’s sleepiness, so hopefully it’ll be gone soon. 

We did the draw at the same health campus where my husband works, so of course we had to make the rounds!  I was having a good day, pain-wise (I actually stopped taking the Percocet that day and switched to normal acetaminophen), so we wandered around for a good hour showing Nora off to all his co-workers.  They were thrilled to meet her, and I’m glad we got her first round of stranger-meetings in while she still has all my immunities.  I keep reading that the first few weeks are the safest time for babies to be exposed to new people, which is really counter-intuitive to me, but I guess it makes sense. 

LC appt today: This appt went really well!  She’s now up to 6lbs 8oz, and is on track to be up to her birth weight by ten days, which is what they like to see.   My milk supply is now keeping up with her demand, so I’m not surprised she’s started putting on weight so well.  Even better: we were able to get her to latch on to me using a nipple shield, and without causing me a ridiculous amount of pain!  Apparently the problem is that she has a very “narrow palette”, which basically means she can’t latch on to me without causing pain, no matter how good the latch is.  We’ve been doing it mostly right since day one, which was comforting to hear, though I got a few pointers today which I think will help.  This will get better as she gets bigger, and then I’ll be able to wean her off the shield.  I wish I didn’t have shield-weaning to look forward to as I’ve heard it can be very difficult, but at this point I am so happy to have her getting nourishment straight from me that I just don’t care! 

It still hurts a little with the shield, so we’re going to do BFing on the breast in the morning/early afternoon and then just pump during the evening/night and continue with finger-feeding, since she’s more fussy and frantic later in the day.  I’m also only to give her 20 minutes at the breast unless she’s nursing well, and if she’s still hungry at that point we’ll do some finger-feeding to fill her up.  This is both to help me continue to heal and also to encourage her to not dawdle.  She has a tendency to latch on and fall right to sleep, which would be cute if it weren’t so frustrating!  We’re also supposed to keep up with the skin-to-skin, so she thinks of mommy as a safe place to be.  

All in all we’re doing well!  Tired and still trying to figure out her schedule – or rather, dealing with the fact that she has no schedule and there’s precious little we can do to change that at this early stage – but things are improving.   I took some new pics of her last night, but haven’t had time to load them on the comp yet.  Hopefully I’ll have those on the picture page in the next couple days.  She’s developing a little double chin, which is a crack-up!  Nice to see that milk going somewhere.  : ) 

Breastfeeding update

The day Eleanor was born, she BFed really well for about an hour right after the c/s.  I had plentiful colostrum, things were going very well.  Well, things took a turn!  Eleanor was really sleepy the rest of that day, though all the nurses and docs assured me this was normal and she was fine.  She woke about every four hours to eat, which was deemed good enough for those first 24 hours.  She lost 5% of her body weight in the first 24 hours, and needed to lose no more than a couple more % in the next 24 hours.  She did manage to stay just at that threshold, however her sleepiness got worse on day two: she pretty much slept from 1:30am until 6pm!  We woke her up every three hours to try to feed her, but she just wasn’t interested.  Finally, about mid-day, they brought in a pump and I was able to get some colostrum out, and we fed her that from a syringe.  Then she woke up that evening and seemed to nurse well through the night and into the next morning. 

I was hoping things were going to be fine then, but another problem cropped up: bad latch.  Every nurse who watched her latch on claimed it was great, yet I’ve been in horrible pain.  It makes no sense!  We thought maybe it was just sensitive nipples, and the pain would get better in a couple days.  By the time I was discharged, the pain was pretty bad with every latch and persisting through the feed, but Eleanor seemed to be getting enough to eat and the pain was manageable.  My milk also hasn’t come in yet, and she’s so hungry that she just chomps down on me.  I figured everything would improve when my milk finally came in. 

Then she gave me a blood blister this morning on my right which led to quite the meltdown from me (I feel like I can’t feed my baby!), and we made an appt to see a lactation consultant.  We just got back from her.  She took one look at my breasts and told me she really thought it would be best to give them a few days to heal, use a hospital-grade pump in the meantime and give her whatever I can pump, and supplement with formula as needed until we can transition her back to the breast.  She was down 12 ounces (about 11%, which is bad), though the lactation consultant remarked that she only looked a little dehydrated and we had come in in good time.  Another day or two and we might have been looking at bigger problems.  We’re using a syringe with tubing and daddy’s finger to supplement, to avoid nipple confusion issues.

I’m really bummed that we need to supplement, though I feel even worse that my baby has gone down so much in weight in such a short time.  I know I’ve done everything I can, and the LC kept telling me that, too.  She thinks the c/s is what’s causing this (both Eleanor’s sleepiness in the first, vital days for bringing the milk in, and also my body’s inability to heal any minor breast wounds while healing from the c/s, leading to more and more damage.)   She took 10mL of formula at the appt, and was so content and happy afterward.  She should be taking more than that at her age (three days at 9:23am), so it’s so sad that just that small amount was enough to make her happy.  I haven’t seen her content after a feeding from me since her first day of life! 

I hope the pumping works and my milk does eventually come in.  I also hope the pumping doesn’t hurt just as bad as having her on the breast.  It hurt quite a bit in the hospital, but I didn’t have the same amount of pain while BFing her then.  I have to say that I read everything I could find on BFing, and knew all of this could be an issue after a c/s, but I failed to anticipate just how painful it can be!  I’m over-tired and hormonal of course, like all new mothers (and fathers), and I have pain from the c/s itself to boot, but the BFing pain has been the worst.  On top of everything else, it has been almost too much to take.  I don’t think being forewarned of this would have helped, though seeing a LC earlier may have.  I had an opportunity to see one yesterday before we left, but I thought we were ok at that point, and I was so anxious to just get home with my new baby.  : (  My first mistake as a new mom, and I hope it doesn’t make BFing an impossibility now.  I’m determined to stick to it, but I can’t force my milk to come in.