I don’t like breastfeeding

I said it.  I feel almost ashamed admitting it, because I feel like mom’s are “supposed” to enjoy the experience.  But I just don’t.  BabyMort eats pretty much every 2 hours.  Once at night she might go about 3 hours and she’s sporadically gone about 3.5 hours, but usually she’s rooting for food every 2 hours.  It takes her about 30+ minutes to eat and get burped and then we have to hold her upright for at least 15 minutes or she’ll spit up everything she just ate.  As a result, I spend almost half my day feeding with her.  Sneak in a little sleep, meals and a shower and I feel like I don’t have time to do anything else.

That is frustrating to me, but I don’t think it’s the reason I dislike breastfeeding.  I would say the two big contributing factors are that: 1) She’s started arching her back while eating, out of nowhere, taking me with her.  It hurts, and I know she doesn’t mean to hurt me, but oh man it HURTS!!   And it hurts through the rest of the time she’s feeding.  2) The other reason is probably linked to me being a control freak.  I hate not knowing how much she’s eating.  There are times when she’s acting hungry an hour after her last meal, and since I have no idea how much she eats at any time, I don’t know if she really is hungry or just needing comfort.  She tends to fall asleep while she’s eating, which only makes it harder to know if she’s gotten enough to eat.

I don’t plan on stopping.  I know this is what I want for my baby girl, but I can’t say it’s the great bonding experience that I heard so much about.

4 weeks!!

I can’t believe she’s 4 weeks old already, but I also can’t remember life before her (that might just be because of sleep deprivation though :-P)  She’s definitely getting bigger.  As you can see, she’s bigger than her monkey now.

"Me & My Monkey" on my birthday!!

"Me & My Monkey" at 4 weeks

 We’re still getting everything figured out.  She’s colicky, and although deep down we realize only time will totally fix it, we’re still trying to find something that will help her feel better.  When she’s not crying, we’ve noticed that she has a more character in her facial expressions.  We definitely see her eyes a lot more than we did at first – and they’re gorgeous!!  We’ve started trying a little tummy time, but I don’t know that I’ve timed it right for her, so we’re still working on it. 

Our “project” for the next few weeks is to try to go longer than 2 hours between nighttime feedings and have her sleeping in her crib (and not on us) in between feedings.  Wish us luck!!

“Seriously kid, you can’t be hungry!!”

DaddyMort and I have uttered that phrase many, many times over the last few days.  It never seems to work though.  Inevitably, BabyMort convinces us that she is indeed hungry.  You can’t blame us for thinking it though, when she’s already spent 40 of the last 60 minutes eating.  Or when she’s been fed from a bottle, so we know she had 4 oz. only 1.5 hours ago.

I’m really hoping that she’s going through a growth spurt, because it’s getting a little ridiculous.  If this goes on much longer, I’m going to have to figure out a way to just hook her up to some sort of continuous feed…

3 hours – IN A ROW

I got 3 hours of sleep in a row last night.  I attribute it to an amazing husband, a cooperative daughter and a trip to the doctor’s office.

BabyMort was still looking jaundiced to us and she was eating every 1.5 hours or less, but falling asleep shortly into the feedings (and I’d read that being really sleepy can be a symptom of jaundice.)  So we went in to the doctor’s office yesterday.  We found out that her bilirubin level was 13 – and 14 is the level where they’d consider treatment.  It’s all indirect, which means that her liver is working just fine and she has breastfeeding jaunice.  That’s when a protein in  the breastmilk prevents her body from getting rid of the bilirubin because it’s reabsorbed in the small intestine.  Her levels should remain stable and then drop off in a couple weeks.  This information didn’t help me get any more sleep, but I did feel better knowing what was going on with her jaundice. 

The sleep came, because the pediatrician suggested that we try using a pacifier if it hadn’t been long since her last feeding, because she might just want to suck on something.  We’d been trying to avoid using one, at least until we knew breastfeeding had been well established.  Considering that the little lady had gained 14 ounces in 7 days, the doctor was confident that she had gotten the hang of breastfeeding though.  So when she started rooting around about an hour after her bedtime feeding, DaddyMort grabbed a pacifier and cuddled and rocked her until she fell asleep.  She made it 2.5 hours until her next feeding at that point and then 3.5 hours until the next feeding – with some more cuddling from her daddy!!  He actually apologized when he brought her in after “only” 3.5 hours – I was ecstatic though and definitely more energized to make it through the rest of the night.

We’re optimistic, but not terribly confident, that we might be getting this sleep thing figured out.  Regardless, she’s uber-cute!!