The People’s Choice.
It never fails to amaze me, the glaringly obvious things one manages to overlook until they are pointed out by others. It honestly didn’t occur to me that I could, for instance, feed Simone pumped bottles most of the time and nurse only occasionally. Or continue with the nipple shield even though Simone is past her due date, the date by which the lactation consultants stressed that she should no longer be using it. I’m not sure where I got the idea that I had to either breastfeed nearly all feedings or give up the boob entirely; perhaps the sleep deprivation is finally catching up with me. I have ordered some Domperidone, and until it gets here I am feeding bottles of pumped or frozen milk, letting Simone nurse once in a while, just for kicks. If she gets shrieky, I do not persist.
It has made a vast difference in my productivity—whereas before I was able to get nothing done save the endless roundel of feed the baby/change the baby, now I am able to accomplish one non-baby-related item each day! You can check my math, but I am pretty sure that is an increase. My mood has improved as well (y=1/x, where y= favorable mood and x=screaming baby), so when the Domperidone arrives and I take another shot at nursing, I will be better able to handle a bit of infant resistance.
Simone has been the unfortunate recipient of some stripe of virus, and last night after quite a lot of diaper-related unpleasantness, a fever, and the saddest, wailiest baby cry, I called the pediatrician to see whether I could give Simone a jigger of infant Tylenol and was taken aback when the nurse asked me to bring my daughter into the emergency room. You know, where the sick people go. For emergencies.
At the hospital, the doctor wanted to know Simone’s medical history, and as I answered the questions he kept looking up and gaping at me in disbelief. I started to feel a little embarrassed, like I was being overdramatic, or as if he might wonder whether I had Munchausen by Proxy—two episodes of acute renal failure? How long was she on the intrajugular heparin drip? I had responded to his initial “Does she have any health problems?” with “No,” incidentally. (Ok, so I forgot about the reflux. And the oxygen).
Anyway, Simone’s electrolytes were fine, her fever wasn’t worrisomely high, and today she seems much better. In fact, she appears to be learning how to smile—oh, she has smiled before, in her sleep and such, but suddenly this week she seems able to focus on our faces, and when I collect her from her crib in the morning, she seems happy to see me, and now, now, when I waggle Gunther the Giraffe—a favorite rattle—in front of her, she will sometimes smile, revealing a previously invisible dimple in her right cheek. Watching her suddenly discover the world and find it delightful is the best part of having a baby so far.
It has been suggested, by some, that there is something…fishy about Simone’s eleven consecutive Baby of the Week wins. (I know! I am just as surprised as you are). I would hate to see my baby’s good name tarnished, so for this round I am opening up the voting. I look forward to showing the naysayers that my daughter has earned her victories by dint of hard work—fat little cheeks and starfish fingers don’t grow themselves, you know. To prevent Simone from gaining an unfair advantage due to her notoriety, the other contestants are all famous babies in their own right.
Voting ends tomorrow morning at 9am, CST.
38 Comments
Sweet Jesus, seeing Baby from Dirty Dancing in the lineup made me bark out loud.
God I wish my hair didn’t look like Jennifer Grey’s.
Simone, of course. Hands down.
So glad (give or take the ER visit(!)) that things are looking up. I remember how once I gave up my mid-night routine of {nurse, then pump while bottle-feeding the still-hungry baby} replacing it with {bottle-feed the baby while pumping}, life began to get better. Even with the same amount of stuff to wash in a cold kitchen while cradling a groggy newborn at zero a.m., skipping that nursing step helped me a whole bunch.
Here’s to happier, less-exhausted motherhood.
Yay!!! Glad things are looking up for you (and Simone was not seriously ill).
Hey, wow, once again in a very similar situation as you. (If you haven’t seen yet, your “About Me” page is really about ME). My breastfeeding sessions with my son (27 weeker now 6 weeks corrected) are much more like a wrestling match than the “dance” everyone keeps referring to. (And, he, too, in the hospital learned to BF before bottle feed!). We are beginning to wean off the nipple shield. I got a wretched case of mastitis this week and that made everything harder, and made me really sick of feeling like a sick cow. But I guess I’m going to keep going. Anyway, I am still so grateful for your blog and for all the great women that read and post with sensible supportive advice! Thanks Alexa.
xox Susanna
Who voted for the Gerber Baby?! You sick bastards.
I’m all about the intimidation.
Those of you with nursing at night nightmares who now pump – try this: put a bottle of expressed milk together in the fridge for easy access. Baby wakes up and cries, you fly into the kitchen, run hot water in the sink ’til warm, drop bottle in plastic bag in water then go pee while father of baby does a quick diaper change distracting little one, leave baby and father comfortably bottle feeding while nice Milk Lady makes more expressed milk in a darkened room with a muted TV on, keeping Mommy nice and sleepy, then after 15 minutes of pumping put bottles in fridge and back to bed where baby and father are now settling back to dream land. Much, much better.
You know, it’s true about the sleep deprivation – it prevents your brain from making connections. It hit hardest for me around this 6 week – 2 month period. I remember thinking “no wonder they use sleep deprivation as a form of torture,” and I was not/am not trying to be funny.
Anyway, I’m so glad that you benefited from all the comments and created a decent alternative. Breastfeeding didn’t really settle in for me until 3 months, and it helped me to hear about the hypothesis that human babies are in some ways not really developmentally able to breastfeed WELL until 3 months old when their neck muscles are stronger. So that kept me hanging in there during the tough first few weeks, and lo and behold, at 3 months old, breastfeeding really did kick in, and it all felt and worked better! So my suggestion is to use whatever date Simone would be considered to be a 3-month old as your goal and see then if anything has changed significantly to make you decide to stop or go on. But for now, congratulations on your brilliant logistical insight!
You sound much calmer in this post. Glad things are improving, all things take time. You can even put a star on your Mommy chart for your first visit to the ER, another milestone passed with glory. By the time my younger son was 5 years old we were on the verge of having our own personal bench! A combination of the fearless and the reckless all in the one skinny bundle.
Those first few smiles are wondrous to behold aren’t they, I can still remember my boys’ first gummy grins – and they are 24 and 29 now – pure bliss.
Fingers crossed for some boringly uneventful parenting so that you have a chance to catch your breath and get a bit of sleep.
One of my daughters-in-law breastfed her daughter through nipple shields for months! It kept the breastfeeding going when severe soreness and pain would have driven her to give up early.
Take all the advice people give, and then do whatever works for you!
You’re doing a great job with Simone, and she is absolutely beautiful. How could anyone vote for any other baby? :-)
Yeah my vote is still C. She’s a cutie!
I am glad that you will be starting a system and doing something for you, as opposed to the boob time and poopie time. Trust me you’ll find that sweet balance one of these days, and when you look back you will wonder, how in the world you had managed before the sweet balance.
I didnt want to chime into the nursing discussion until now, but after reading about your struggles i just want to say this: some preemies simply never learn to nurse.
I had a 33 weeker 3 years ago, and when he was five weeeks old i realized the constant pumping and struggling was absolutely killing me and I simply stopped. I cried a lot at first, but when I saw how wonderfully he was doing on Neosure, the crying stopped. Today he is almsot 3 years old and 39 pounds and 39 inches!!!
Please dont feel guilty if you stop the struggle to regain your sanity. The main thing is that you have a beautiful little girl and you should enjoy parenthood, nto struggle.
OK option D just made me laugh so hard I cried!!
Yikes, seeing Jennifer Grey makes me remember a post I wrote alluding to her hairstyle. Talk about guilt inducing. Eh, I’m over it.
Go Simone! 12 weeks, a record!
Simone is a wily little thing, that is for sure. Fiddling with the results like that is quite a significant act of power for someone so young. It’s not too late to teach her that vote rigging is wrong. Wrong!
There was a nurse practitioner and lactation consultant at my Ped’s office that should have been sainted. She was the one who let me know that the shield wouldn’t hurt anything. The info that it does is seriously out of date and she was working with better info. Unfortunately she retired, or I’d give you her name, as she was a life saver more than once, and is local.
Simone is obviously doing wonderfully, so I’m not sure you can make a bad decision here. But I just wanted to let you know that I used a nipple shield for the entire 15 months that I nursed my daughter (a 31 weeker). She apparently didn’t get the memo that she was supposed to wean off of it, so we just kept going. There are a lot of lactation consultants who get in a tizzy about them, but I’m not the only person who has used one for an extended period of time with no ill effects.
I love, love, love that when asked if Simone has any health problems, you said “No.”
That is definitely a great sign of how far she has come!
oh my gosh! I didn’t even *get* that that is Baby from Dirty Dancing! I mean, I knew who she was, but didn’t think “baby”…..that is too funny! You are too funny! and Simone is totally the cutest!
I can’t believe Simone only got 93%!
So glad to hear things are better on the nursing front. I think we get so wrapped in it as moms that we get a little obsessed and the sleep deprivation certainly doesn’t help. Just remember that as long as everything you’re doing is in Simone’s best interest, you really can’t go wrong.
Sorry to hear about the Emergency visit. At least you’re already thinking of her as healthy and hale. No problems with this preemie!
My son never STOPPED using the nipple shield. The entire time I breastfed him he wouldn’t eat without it and he was full term. It just helped him latch better so I bought extras and put one in each diaper bag and went on my merry little way.
Hope Simone is feeling much better!!
My son would never latch. We used the nipple shield for a while and then I just starting pumping and bottle fed breast milk for ten months. It gets to the point where you don’t even think about it and they’re still getting the breast milk!
I didn’t get a chance to vote on the obvious, and only, choice — SuperBaby Simone (option C).
Pumping, nipple shields, latching, shrieking, etc. I know the words to that song by heart. I applaud you for taking charge of the situation and deciding what works for YOU. I’d type more on the subject, but I’ve got to go pump now before my boobs explode…
my girls didn’t nurse fulltime until after their 2-month checkup when they both weighed over 9 lbs. Just make sure you don’t skip any pumpings (middle of the night counts) and try her at the breast at least twice a day. The first morning feeding was always the easiest because that’s when you’re most full and she’ll have the easiest time getting the flow going. I also had to gradually wean from the nipple shield, sometimes they would need it, sometimes they would latch, use it as much as you need to. Switch nursing was also helpful, 5 min left boob, 5 min right boob, keep the flow going strong. Also, nurse, supplement, then pump works but is a pain in the ass. She’s probably just still too little and too young, she’ll get there. I almost gave up at the point you are at, but I recently went on a flight with 8-month olds and was finally glad I had continued because it was so convenient and comforting to them. Also, be prepared for another round of nipple soreness when you get her to go completely back to the breast. Formula isn’t evil, it’s probably got more vitamins and DHA than I do, an occasional supplement especially before bedtime is not a big deal, just pump every time she eats. Oh, I wish you the best of luck, this was the hardest thing for me.
Alexa – so glad to hear that you and Simone are doing better on the nursing front. You sound a lot less frustrated and much, much happier :) Sleep deprivation is a nasty little thing – it can kick your butt and turn you mind to mush. Anyway, hugs and kisses to Simone – she gets my vote hands down!!
Hooray! When I commented before, I just assumed you’d already tried to give her pumped breastmilk majority, and that there was some sort of *reason* a shield couldn’t stay on– so in case I sounded like a spokesperson for the formula company(blech)– let me say for the record that I’m thrilled that everyone’s getting what they need at this moment in time, and that most of it is flowing from thine nipples.
OMG that picture of Baby Bat Boy cracked me up! He kind of looks like Baby Devil?
You’re doing so well with Simone and her pictures radiate it. She is stunningly gorgeous! You could gently start kissing her bare tummy and seeing her reaction – quite often it’s a smile and eventually it will be giggles, which are so adorable! :o)
Poor old baby E. Nobody loves Baby E.
By the way, Domperidone sounds compellingly close to Dom Perignon. Or maybe that’s my sleep deprivation talking.
I am laughing at Laura(above me)… I thought the exact same thing.
That’s all I did this last time around. I was too tired to jump through all of the hoops that I did with my previous child(with the pumping and the nursing and the pumping and the pumping and the nursing and the pumping and the pumping and the… well, you get the point) so pump away I did, and baby to boob contact was cut short! I still felt like I was doing something for her even though she wasn’t hanging off of my nips 50 hours a day(and yes, when you’re as exhausted and sleep deprived as I’ve been for the past 4 years, it really does feel like there are 50 actual hours in a day. Non-productive hours, of course, in where zero loads of laundry are done, no one actually gets fed at any point during the day and somehow you still manage to never get a shower… but hey! 50 hours in a day! Rock on, right?)
I’ve once again forgotten my point.
Screw the nay-sayers.. Simone is allowed to win at least 16 consecutive weeks worth of baby cuteness.
how did A, D or F get any votes? I mean, even if you were completely blind, the answer is always “C”, right?
Gawd.
I’m so relieved that Simone is ok and you’re doing better, too. I agree with the folks who say breastfeeding is a beautiful thing — sometimes. It has its moments. But it’s hard.
With my first daughter, I had supply problems from the beginning and everyone who told me that it was simply an issue of supply and demand drove me further into the postpartum depression I had been ignoring. I stuck it out for a year, but until I finally started supplementing with formula and stopped stressing about it, it was much better.
With daughter number two, the supply has been better, but she had the screamy-arm-flailing thing early on and I honestly was convinced she hated me. Just the sight of my boob would make her scream. Does wonders for the self esteem. We’re past that now, but I’m now fighting my second round of mastitis. Now taking a ton of antibiotics, using the special cream my OB/GYN recommended and trying to ignore the fact that it feels like shards of glass rather than milk coming out when I nurse. Gah.
Thanks again for posting an update about Simone. A faithful reader, I was worried about you both.
Alexa – I have just quit pumping and have a crapload of domperidone left over. Would you like me to send it to you? Email me back if you do. x
Hey I’m glad you sound better this post. You’re doing REALLY well with everything that’s been thrown at you. I just wanted to say, the nipple shield gets a bad rap. My son is now almost 16 months and we’re still nursing a little bit, and it’s still with the shield! He never would wean off it. It’s annoying now because he wants to play with it and bite it, but it has allowed us to have a nursing relationship and I wouldn’t trade that experience. best wishes to you. Whatever you ultimately decide with nursing will be the right decision for you both.
glad to hear things are looking up for both of you– in yoga i always think– what needs to stay tensed or I fall over– and what can give– and relax– and it sounds like you are figuring that out per feeding your little dumpling
I am glad you are feeling better…pychologically anyway. Babies can be exhausting!!! I had the worse time taking my twins off the nipple shield! It was painful and took a long time…but we finally made it! The lactation nurse wanted me to use the tubes taped to my breasts, blah blah blah….but it just took time and patience. We did lots of pumped milk in between. I am happy to say they will be 2 in September and the nursing seems like it was never a problem…until I read other posts and start to remember all the challenges. Just keep telling yourself it will be okay…but if you want to do the bottle…either breast milk or formula…don’t let anyone make you feel bad about it. The biggest hurdle was to get your sweet baby home from the NICU…and you did it. No matter what…your baby doesn’t know if you are messing up or anything….just that you are the best mom and your hugs and kisses are the best. I get all kind of weird questions from people about my babies and the NICU and crap like that…I want to write a book and just have a bundle with me and tell them to read about it. Glad you are feeling better.
Egad…it’s that the Lindbergh baby?
I have to take myself out of this vote…I can’t vote against Simone, but I also can’t vote against that poor behbeh.
(So glad it worked out well. And in case no one has yet mentioned it — TRIPLE PASTE. My kids are prone to awful diaper rashes, especially in the wake of GI things.)
Just a hint on the night feedings…. expressed breastmilk is good at room temperature for at least 4 hours, so if Simone is still getting up pretty often at night, you could try just leaving your last pump session’s output in a bottle on your nightstand. When she wakes, it’s ready to go!
Pumped for twelve weeks here, used the nipple shield until he learned to latch full-time. (30 weeker) As long as you’re not using the preemie sized shield and your nipple isn’t getting squashed in it, you can keep on using it as long as you need to. Simone’s big enough now that that shouldn’t be a problem.
Good luck!