We took Alaska in for her two week appointment and she hadn't regained her birth weight. I'm new at this whole 'worried mother' thing and was not concerned. I've never given much weight to scales. No pun intended. They're kind of dumb and useless unless you're weighing your luggage on your way back to college because your suitcase can't be over 50 lbs without paying an extra fine. She was eating and pooping. Nothing was wrong until that scale got a hold of her weight. However, Steven was interested and asked the doctor what we should be doing to get her up to par. He's such a good dad. Of course, it was up to me to drink more water. Drown myself in the stuff and drink my lungs out. Our goal weigh-in for the next week was an ounce a day, at the very least 5 ounces as a total.
I did my best. I have never been awesome at drinking water. My mom told me in high school that I had better hope I never get in a car crash 'cause my veins would be so small due to dehydration that they wouldn't be able to stick me with IVs. She may have said that to keep my speed less than lightning. But seriously, I would always have a marathon day of drinking water before I went to the doctors, donated blood or what have you to pretend everything was fine.
On top of drinking more water I vowed to wake her every two hours to eat. She has a habit of sinking into a nap of 4 to 5 hours. At a week old I started recording her eating times and she went 6 and 8 hours without anything. I thought this probably attributed to her less than desired weight.
The next week she had only gained two ounces. If there is anything that strips all motherly confidence faster and makes a mother feel insecure about herself it's to tell her that she's not producing enough milk to feed her baby. I cried. I was the worst mother in the world, not even able to feed my own baby, the simplest and most natural and instinctive of all tasks. I couldn't understand how my body couldn't keep up. And then I got mad.
It wasn't just my fault for not drinking enough water. It was her fault, too. This whole 'feeding a child' thing is a 50/50 effort. If she would eat like a normal child we wouldn't be having this problem. Taking long naps between nursing made my body slow down its production. I had woken her up for the most part every couple of hours, but there were a few times when I hadn't set my internal timer and with her being quiet I got busy and totally forgot. I thought back to when I was engorged and needed her the most to nurse and tell me body how much I needed and that whole day she ate next to nothing. And then, of course, the part about how even when I woke her up she was usually too tired to really do a good job at sucking and it was worthless. She would cry for a hour or so from being woken up and I would be lost as to what to do to make her comfortable again since she wouldn't latch.
After my desperate tears came my mad tears and when I was all through crying I lifted my head and decided to drink more water. To pump after every feeding to simulate her sucking and cause my body to produce more than she was actually eating. And then to feed her that extra half ounce right there because the milk at the end is the fattiest and that was the milk she wasn't getting. To not rely on her at all but to let her sleep to her heart's content and pump even when she hadn't eaten. To feed her that pumped milk when she was awake. It was going to be a big job, but I did it.
Again, she only gained two ounces. I didn't let myself feel anything at this point. I figured that she may just have to make her own average weight chart and that at least she wasn't losing any weight. We weren't sliding backwards.
Steven was still convinced that I wasn't drinking enough water. I felt like I was drowning in the stuff and had gone through more toilet paper the past week than I usually did in two. I was having enough, I was sure of it.
Steven made up a chart for me to record my water intake on. Down one side is 12 am to 12 pm, across the top are the dates of the week. Every time I drink a glass of water I get to color a square. And surprisingly, it worked. It was just a job the first day and I drank what I normally did, 5 glasses. I was supposed to be drinking 12-16. Guess I wasn't doing as awesome as I had thought with drinking water, but 5 is a big step up from my usual goose egg. No wonder I was feeling drowned. As the week went on, it became a game. How many squares could I color in a day? Steven would check in on it every time he was home from lunch and therefore, the drinking game was born.
Our game plan right now is for me to color in as many squares as possible and we're offering Alaska a bottle of formula after every feeding. Sometimes she takes it, sometimes she doesn't. She always gets a bottle at night, when she's in the middle of her cluster feeding. I can't keep up with her eating for 20 minutes, resting for 30 and eating again. Not when she's such a bad eater during the day. My mom calls her a lazy nurser, but I prefer to call her a careful eater. She takes forever to feed 'cause she pauses so many times but she also hardly ever spits up. She is definitely listening to her body and its needs. I am so proud of her even if frustrating to feed her for a hour. If I try to force formula or extra breast milk into her it most often ends up coming back out. I've learned to just let her pull away when she's ready. Topping her off does nothing but make a mess to clean up.
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