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Wednesday 18 March 2015

Update- no real update

Hmmmm so, updates. Updates on the boob saga. I don't have much to report. I am at an intermediate stage of trying to see if I can revive the milk supply in dodgy boob. It has recovered its shape now. It had a huge dent in it where the cyst was. Baby L did take it sometimes but lately he just battles so much I don't even bother offering it to him. I just pump it. I was very lazy about pumping at first because I am scared of that damn boob! Scared of the alien that will hatch out of it or whatever comes next. But I think I need to get serious about trying to revive it if possible. Right now I give L the right boob and then a bottle each time and it is a pain in the butt. I also figured out that the physio told me to supplement Squirmy based on the formula calculation but I am supplementing with breastmilk at the moment and was giving him way too much. Breastmilk is easier for babies to digest so they only need about 720 ml per day. No wonder the little guy was looking so chubalishious. But now I struggle to know what to give him. I really need to rent a baby scale to tell how much he is getting from the good boob. Ugh I just want to be done with bottles. They make him pissed off with my boobs because the flow is too slow and make him forget how to latch. He sometimes licks my nipples now. How rude.

The clinic nurse who gives Squirmy his vaccinations said I should make a journal of my breastfeeding experience. That was before I found out about the cyst when stopping breastfeeding seemed imminent (again). I realised that that is what I am doing here. She is right though. Breastfeeding is one of the hardest things I have ever done so it does feel right to write it all down. I used to feel angry and tired that my day revolved around feeding the baby but now I just see it as a phase. At most this torture will be 6 months (of course I may breastfeed longer if it ever actually becomes easy, but if not, Squirmy is gonna get cut off the day he hits 6 months, assming that by some miraculous intervention we make it that far).

I recently read a story that really haunts me. Actually I have read a few about women who take this whole breastfeeding thing too far. It is a good reminder for me to just feed the baby. That is why I give him a bottle, of breastmilk or formula, whatever is on hand, without hesitation. Some women are so against formula (for reasons that are not rational. Breastmilk is not magical unicorn juice. It really is not. And formula, as someone in my birth club said, is not Mc Donalds) that they endanger their babies lives. One woman struggled with breastfeeding and her little one was very skinny but she never once called a lactation consultant or went to get her baby weighed. This astounds me because we were told to get Squirmy weighed once a week at first by the doctors and nurses. He actually got weighed about 7 times in his first week of life and 3 in his second because of the jaundice. Midwifes, lactation consultants and the nurse doing the jaundice treatment ,they all weighed him. We took him to the clinic to get weighed too. Everyone put immense amounts of pressure on us to get him to his birth weight, so he had boob and formula and expressed milk back then (kind of like now). So how this woman did not get her baby weighed once in 8 weeks I do not know. She just kept breastfeeding him and did not supplement at all. At his 8 week checkup he was at birth weight. At birth weight!!! My Squirmy had gained nearly 2 kg and grown 5 cm at 6 weeks. They go through a 6 week growth spurt. That poor baby was starving! I think it must not have gone through the growth spurt if it was that malnourished. Its growth must have been stunted. That baby ended up in hospital. There she still would not give her baby formula, but only donated breastmilk. I cannot get this story out of my head. People are putting babies in hospital because of this breastfeeding nonsense. Moral of this story: the second Squirmy cries from hunger he is getting a bottle of fucking formula! As he has in the past. And always will.

2 comments:

Damaria Senne said...

In your case, no boob news is bloody excellent news!

I find it scary how misguided a parent can be. And there is so much information and opinion out there that it's hard work out what's relevant for your needs and situation and what to let go because it doesn't apply, especially when there are so many people willing to insist that they are right and their way is the only way.

po said...

hehe Damaria true, no boob news is GOOOOD news. LOL. You are very right about all the information and opinions, sometimes it is overwhelming