Three exciting events: first Mother’s Day, a rough night, and a doctor’s appointment.
Our big plan for Mother’s Day was to go to church, which we executed successfully. We arrived only 10 minutes late, and I went straight to the nursery to feed Lucy. After that, she fell asleep in the sling and I was able to be upstairs during the service with her. “Our church”:http://gracechurchchicago.org/ does a wonderful job of honoring all women on Mother’s Day, which I’ve been especially conscious of over the years, particularly when we were struggling through three miscarriages last year. I was glad to be able to give thanks to God for Lucy and to be present at church this week.
Back home, Lucy did a lot more of what she has been doing most of the time lately: eating. I think she is going through a growth spurt, because for the past 36 hours or so, she has been eating just about every two hours (which is a bit taxing for me, since she spends 45 minutes of those two hours eating). Mostly, I was handling it okay. But by the time 11:00 pm rolled along, I was pretty exhausted and grumpy. Lucy has been getting into the habit of biting or latching on incorrectly towards the end of the feeding, which is painful on my already sore nipples and makes me extra-grumpy! She had a couple of longer stretches of sleep during the night, but I found myself weeping and praying that she would go to sleep after her 5:00 am feeding. It just hurt and I needed a break! My tears dropped onto her cheeks as I tried to nurse her to sleep. God was gracious: Lucy did fall asleep, Jon encouraged me, and I got a few more hours of shut-eye.
Part of my stress about nursing has been regarding her weight gain. Jon and I were really glad to have a good report at Dr Minkus’ office today: Lucy is up to 7 lbs 13 oz, just one ounce shy of her birth weight. Dr Minkus was very pleased, and we were too! This means she’s been gaining an ounce a day for the last ten days. It is good to know that she truly can gain weight on whatever she is eating from me!
Mo seems to be having a 3 week growth spurt too! Someone forgot to tell these to babies that they are supposed to wait until 6 weeks to do this.
Take care of those nipples. The pacifier has really helped with Mo when he just wants to fuss on my breast and isn’t really getting anymore milk. It hasn’t interupted his breastfeeding either.
I think I read somewhere that babies are supposed to have growth spurts at 3 *and* 6 weeks. Either that, or Mo and Lucy are just over-achievers! We did introduce the pacifier last week, and she only sometimes likes it, but I have high hopes for her getting used to it when she just wants to suck.
At this point it wouldn’t hurt her to have dad feed her some breast milk from a bottle. I had to do that so my nipples could have a break. Maddy didn’t like it to much, but she got food, I got sleep, dad got to enjoy feeding her and most important my nipples got a break! I think baby’s are in a continual growth spurt…at least mine is. She is sporting 6 – 9 month clothing and she is only 4 months…she is just SO tall. There are two other children with her in the nursery (11 months and 20 months) and she an inch shy of them. It is crazy how each child grows differently at different times.
Keep up the good work.
Benjamin went through a growth spurt around 2 1/2 weeks and again around 5 weeks. Yes, there are generally 2 spurts aroudn the ages of 3 and 6 weeks. When he was growing he would actually nurse every hour to hour and a half (I remember a couple days where he nursed like 12 or more times during the day, when usually he would only nurse 9 times). Very exhausting, but keep in mind that it generally only lasts a few days and then, hopefully, your milk supply will have increased due to the increased feeding and everyone will be happier (at least that’s how it went for us!) I found during these “cluster feeding” times that it was very important to pass the baby off to James or Grandma or whoever else was around whenever the baby didn’t need to eat. I needed the break from Benjamin and the rest. I really enjoyed taking a hot bath at these stages – one because I could take a hotter bath than when I was pregnant, and two, once you’re in the tub, you’re in and it’s much easier to let someone else take care of the baby!
As babies get older, some of them get more efficient at nursing. So those long feeding sessions may get shorter with Lucy still getting the milk she needs. Hang in there, Ann. It really does get easier.
Ann,
You have yet to recieve one of the absolute joys of nursing, your precious little gift stopping all of her eating for a brief moment to look into your eyes and SMILE…then of courst go back to business. For me it makes everythings worth it. It is amazing too that God has designed us to feed our babies and that they actually grow from just that.
Congratulations on a sucessful church outing.
Enjoy this time. It really lasts such a short time.
blessings,
Nicole Wetzel
my babies all grew (and nursed) nonstop too. And I cried a lot as well.
If it helps to imagine someone in a worse predicament, then picture me on the couch for the first five months of the twins being home, one baby propped on each leg, their tiny swaddled bodies on pillows on either side of me. I couldn’t switch sides when one nipple hurt because they BOTH wanted to nurse nonstop. And they were still underweight preemies so I didn’t want to do the pacifier.
I remember waking up on the recliner at 3 AM with Mac nursing, and being surprised because when I fell asleep at 1 AM it was Bubbie that had been nursing! I must have put Bubbie back in the crib and got a whimpering Mac out without even really waking up?!
But yes, that first toothless smile will make it all worthwhile. And after that you’ll get the giggle.
For me it always helped to have something good to read, to take my mind off nursing. I read through every ‘classic’ I owned (CS Lewis, Tolkien, etc) and borrowed every library book in town, so if Baby nursed an hour I didn’t notice, that was just extra reading time. I think being more relaxed (because I was reading) made it hurt less, but it may just have been that I was paying attention to something else.
I didn’t get anything done, but so what? Looking back, I don’t regret that “wasted” time at all. When you have a toddler climbing up on the kitchen table and taking the knobs off the cupboard doors and figuring out how to open the front door and crawl down the stairs – all in the five minutes while you’re down the hall doing laundry… then you won’t have time to read anymore.
Ann,
Definitely sounds like a growth spurt to me. I agree with whomever mentioned that you should try to pump to give your nipples a break. Ben got his first bottle around 3 weeks and we never had any problems. Lucy may or may not accept the bottle, but if she does, it gives you a little bit of a break (even though pumping isn’t painless at that point).
I definitely had my share of breakdowns, particularly in the early weeks when I truly thought that I wasn’t going to be able to take care of Benjamin the next day. It was hard. I plead for God’s help more times than I can remember (specifically for Benjamin to sleep) and sometimes felt like those prayers were falling on deaf ears — although looking back on it now, I see how his hand was holding me up when I didn’t feel like I could continue much longer.
This can be a really hard time. It’s a precious (and short) time in hindsight, but it felt like it lasted forever and ever. It gets so much better and you WILL get through this!
We’ve been thinking about introducing pumped breast-milk, but I am just not excited about using the pump. Maybe I should get over that.
I love what you girls said about babies smiling — I’m really looking forward to that. i can’t even begin to think about how exciting a giggle from her will be!
I find myself praying that Lucy will go to sleep a lot. I feel slightly embarrassed about it sometimes, as if I’m praying for a parking spot — there are much bigger problems out there! But God cares about every little thing we go through, so I pray anyway — and if she doesn’t fall asleep, I need him all the more to give me strength and patience to care for her.
Dr Minkus was my ped too! Isn’t he AWESOME???
One of the first things I had to do was fill out the new patient “questionaire” and I was nervous when he said, “well, there is just one thing here…” and I thought…is it the homebirth, the extended nursing or the homeschooling…hmmm” but he said, “You left this line blank.” It was the “occupation” line. I said sheepishly, “Uh, I just never know what to put there.” He leaned back in his chair and said, “well…what occupies most of your time?” and then he smiled. I said, “my kids.” And he pointed to me and said, “Your occupation is mother and you should be proud of that. It’s a noble occupation.”
From that moment I loved that man. He’s a wise man.
The most important purchase was my pump…but I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love that I will not be giving my child anything other than breast milk, I love that it has helped me through the hard times of pain and tears…I hate how stupid I must look with my boobs being pumped by a machine, I hate not just feeding my child. But overall it provides a service that allows me to have a child and maintain my ministry in an organization that demands a lot of me (although it is really good at letting me be a mom). Also it is quite amazing to see 6 oz come out in less then 2 min (from just one side), it assures me that maddy is getting enough. Especially because babies get more out of you than the pump does. It is also way cool to see your milk in a bottle with the three different layers (we call this skim, 2% and whole milk). Wow! God is so amazing. He has made us perfect. We serve a wonderful father, a mighty counselor, a comfortor, the great physician, the king of kings, the Lord of Lords, the one and only God.