I still can't believe that my baby girl will be a month old this week. It's crazy how fast they grow and fast the time flies by.
It's been hard to find the time to update you all about her progress, well, our progress I guess would make more sense right!? I guess it would be best if I started at the beginning of her life since my last update was her birth story.
Birth-2weeks old
Before leaving the hospital we had an interesting meeting with the pediatric doctor. Apparently Brooklyn had lost about 5% of her birth weight in the first 24 hours. No one told us she how much she had lost or what her weight was before the pedi came in and talked to us. She comes in and starts demanding that I supplement with formula. I refused to and attempted to explain my reasons but she interrupted me and literally started yelling at me. She told me that I didn't care if I caused my baby to go brain dead. I couldn't believe this woman was talking to me like this. It was just insane. Well anyway, she refused to see Brooklyn the rest of the time we were in the hospital so I had to find a different pedi to see her in order for her to be released the next day. The nurse found one for me because she believed in my reasons for not wanting to supplement and thought it was great that I wanted to only breast feed. The condition of releasing her was that I had to take her to her regular pedi 2 days after being released.Her weight the day we went home was down 10%, she went from 6lbs at birth to 5lbs 6oz coming home. Friday (2 days after release). First, when they measured her length, they screwed up some how and she measured 18in. I was like what the hell, she was born at 19in. She redid it and it came out right the second time. She weighed 5lbs 7oz. The pediatrition tried to convince me that I needed to supplement with formula. I feel very strongly against this and gave her my reasons on why I didn't want to do this and wanted to try anything else before resulting to formula. This one actually listened to me but still suggested to supplement. When we left, I told Jay there was no way I was going to supplement. She was obviously gaining something, my milk was just coming in, and I really wanted to get breast feeding down. I had to do something though to get her to gain more weight by our next appointment. which was the following Tuesday. The ultimate decision turned out that I would pump and give her milk in a bottle in order to see how much she was actually eating. This turned out to be a bad idea, but I will get into that later! Tuesday (1 week 1day old, 2nd weigh in appointment and 2 week check up) Everything was good, we were really more interested in her weight. She weighed in at 5lbs 10oz. So she was gaining weight thankfully. I decided no more bottle, back to nursing since she was clearly gaining. That didn't go as well as planned though. We were now dealing with nipple confusion. She didn't want to nurse at all. We fought with this for almost 2 weeks. I researched everything I could think of. Unfortunately my insurance doesn't cover a LC so that was out of the question. A LL group wasn't available at the time either do to having to drive over an hour to get to one. Finally I found a nipple shield. This was my last option. My milk was running low since she wasn't stimulating my supply anymore and was only nursing once a day. I had to fix it somehow!
2-4 Weeks
My nipple shield finally came in and let me just say, it was the miracle that we needed! No more bottle. They suggest that after nursing with it for a few minutes, you take it off and trying nursing with out using it. That wasn't working so well though. However, I was okay with that, I was just happy that she was finally nursing and building my supply back up. After a couple of days we started to notice that she was getting really fussy and wasn't sleeping much during the day. She would go to sleep then wake up not 10 minutes later. She was also trying to nurse every 30 minutes instead of every 2-3 hours like normal. Back to the research! I came up with 2 explanations... 1. too much caffeine, and 2. she was cluster feeding. So instead of drinking soda all day (which I'm not supposed to anyway since I'm BF) I cut down to 1-2 caffeinated sodas a day and 1 cup of coffee in the mornings. The rest of the day is water or sprite. Now she's a much happier baby! She's very spoiled already though, always wants to be held. There's a lot of times that she wont sleep unless she's being held. I imagine that since she's breast feeding she's more comfortable being held all the time than laying in her bed or play pen bassinet. I'm okay with that for the most part though, except when I have things that really need to get done. At her 2 week appointment she weighed 6lbs 3 oz. Very happy she was past her birth weight, especially since they only expected her to at least reach her birth weight by that time. We have days that she's not a happy camper and I get a little overwhelmed at times with trying to calm her down and Matt and Bri constantly fighting but thankfully I have Jay here to step in and help calm me down by taking care of one of the two situations. Brooklyn is still cluster feeding some days and I'm not pumping anymore like I should be so that makes it a little difficult when she does the cluster feedings. She sucks me dry and then we have to give her a bottle. That's really the only time she gets one now, well then and when Jay helps out with night time feedings. I am really not looking forward to him going back to work next week!
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