Learning to Nurse, how it all went down for us

This post is for Amy, Queen of the World and her handsome young Dylan. She is trying to get her guy to latch on. It can be very difficult for any baby and for babies with Down Syndrome, low muscle tone and low energy makes it even harder. So, in the hopes it helps, here is how it all worked out for us.

Day 1 - Baby arrives 10 days early in a remarkably quick home birth. I see immediately that she has DS. She can't latch but we keep trying. Midwives call a lactation consultant and refer us to a pediatrician for testing. They advise me to express in the meantime and feed her the precious drops of colostrum with fingertips or dropper.

Day 2 - Still no latch. LC arrives and assesses the situation. She explains the benefits of breastfeeding and encourages me to stick it out as long as possible. I nursed my son for 3 years. I'm already sold. She says the stakes are even higher for kids with DS. It helps their immune system of course like any child but the action helps their jaw and mouth tone which helps future speech. Also they are often less likely to get ear infections which in the long term will also help hearing and therefore speech. I'm still sold but how do we get there?

Pump and feed until she gets strong enough to sustain a latch. Keep her close to the breast as much as possible even when not trying to nurse. Somehow try without trying too hard. Don't make it a stressful experience for either of us. Oh yeah, and get help for everything else that needs doing cuz this is going to be intense.

Pumping, Practice and Patience

Day 3 - My sister is staying with us and helping out. I am pumping every 2-3 hours and then I or DH or sister S is dropper feeding little A. She is sleepy and hungry. She can get a latch briefly on the right breast but cannot sustain it for long enough to let down the milk. Her weight is not going up.

Days 4-6 - Milk supply wavers. I'm not sleeping. I have a long strange history with insomnia. It arrives at the most unwelcome times. There are few chances to sleep and with the pressure to sleep when I can, I can't if you know what I mean. So milk is affected. I start taking milk thistle and fennel supplements. They work. I also call my friend and homeopath and she helps me through the panic.

Week 2 - My mom arrives and starts taking some night shifts. She is my hero. Baby A needs a more efficient feeding system. The dropper is taking nearly an hour. I fear the bottle. Doesn't that mean failure? LC steps in. She reassures me that the main goal is to get little A strong enough to latch. She needs food. She recommends the playtex bottle with the fat nipple. She shows us how to feed holding it horizontally so that gravity doesn't help too much. She still needs to develop her sucking power.

Days and Days go by. Somewhere in there, I have a near miss with mastitis. Pumps do not drain the breast as efficiently as a baby does so there is a tendency to get blockages. I'm advised to massage them out and use hot compresses. I start shaking uncontrollably with fever. I call the midwives and my homeopath. The midwives arrive with a prescription and a homeopathic remedy. I try the remedy first and it works in 20 minutes. Whew!

More time goes by. Friends are dropping by food so I don't have to cook. Other friends are taking big brother out for fun times while I struggle through this grueling schedule. Volunteer doulas are helping me through the 4pm - 7pm stretch where I have to feed two kids and get them to bed. DH is away. Did I mention that the only times he's ever had to travel for work are right after our babies are born? (yes, I've been asking God about that one for awhile). Anyway, we keep trying. Some days we don't even try to latch. Other days she gets on for a significant time. Every time I get discouraged, I call the LC. She says, don't worry. This could take weeks and even months. Great, I think. I can't even give up honourably yet.

Somewhere in week 5 I start using a nipple shield for the latch attempts. It sort of resembles the bottle and it holds any milk drops ready for when she is. Things start to improve rapidly.

Somewhere in week 6 I talk to my homeopath about remedies that might help for DS. She finds one and we give it to baby A.

On the Tuesday of week 6, I put her to the breast and she drains it in 15 minutes. I stare in shock and disbelief. Then I thank God. I pack her and her brother up and head out into the world to start living the busy but manageable life of a mom with two kids. By this time, I'm hardly thinking about DS at all. Who's got the time?

So what was the magic? I have no idea. Probably grace and luck. Baby A has no health issues. We were spared the NICU experience. Her heart is great and she's as calm as I am not. I know of many other people who tried for much longer and eventually gave up. They are heroes. Although it was the craziest time of my life, in retrospect, it could have been alot worse.

So Amy and anyone else trying to get their baby to nurse. Try as hard as you can and no harder. Don't feel bad if it doesn't work out. Just do your best and your little sweetie will know you did.

Thanks to my friend and homeopath, my LC, my families, my friends, the strangers who stepped in, the midwives, the doulas and THANK YOU GOD!

BTW, little A has gone on several nursing strikes starting at 7 months. She is too busy for that baby stuff. Aaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhh. I love her so much. She makes me crazy.

mmmmmm bread

We've been making bread here a few times a week. There's nothing like the smell of a homemade loaf about to graduate from the oven to your table with some room temperature salted butter and if you're lucky some yummy soup. (It rains alot here and we could eat that meal everyday from October to April). So, those of you who know me know that I'm always in a hurry and always trying to cram too much into not enough time. You must be wondering what I could possibly know about baking bread. This no knead bread concept came out a few years ago and apparently swept the continent. It's really easy and simply requires a bit of a think ahead. You need a hot oven and a really good heavy enameled cast iron pot with a lid. I tried making it in a thinner pot at camp this summer and it was a disaster. Also, white flour or predominantly white with a little bit of whole wheat works best. We tried spelt flour and ended up with a cracker. This method is so popular that there are dozens of people blogging about their experiences and variations they've invented. Here's one example. I like it because I know what's in it and organic flour is cheaper than organic bread. Little A loves chewing on it too as of this week. Try it and let me know how it goes!

How's she doing? 9 months old!

You would be forgiven for thinking life revolves around little t around here. However, baby A certainly directs her share of traffic. Being a baby is pretty involved and although she is far more even tempered than her older brother she certainly expresses herself and ensures her needs are met. In fact, our days are structured around her needs as much as possible with interuptions for big brother's school and swimming lessons.

So for everyone who asks, "How's she doing?", here's a summary.

Food: She's loving it. We're adding more texture now. She still favours zucchini and other squashes. She also loves swiss chard of all things. She likes carrots, turnips, lentils, green beans, peas and most other veggies. When offered apple or pear, she screws up her face and looks completely disgusted. It's quite funny. She does like sweet potato so I don't think it's an aversion to sweetness. Not sure what's up there. We are offering finger food too. She still grasps with her whole hand so it's more of an exercise than an actual nutrition input.

Sleep: This area has been quite a struggle but things are improving. I'm a believer in attachment parenting. I like to keep the babies close. A was in a co-sleeper in our room until recently but I noticed that she seemed to sleep more soundly when I wasn't there. It's almost as if she senses my presence and thinks it's party time. So with some reluctance, we moved her bed into the office. After a lousy week of adjustment, she is down to one waking per night which is much more manageable than the 3 or 4 that had been happening.

Elimination: No problems. She's very regular. We have started elimination communication (EC) which means we pay attention to when she's eliminating and we learn the signals and acknowledge it. Thanks to my sister for inspiring us on this project. When she's passing solids we bring her to the toilet right away and most of the time she finishes the job there. When she's peeing we make a sound and change her right away. Sometimes we catch the pee but that's pretty advanced and the goal is more to make her aware that we are aware and to get her used to the toilet early. We're using cloth diapers so that also helps her awareness.

Communication: Here is where she has surprised me. We've been using signs for awhile. Around two months ago, she started signing for milk! She is not consistent about it and sometimes when she does it, she really means she's tired but she is unmistakably following our lead and trying to communicate with her hands. The surprise is that she had made this connection earlier than her brother who is no slouch in the communication department. I'm trying not to get too excited because she doesn't do it all the time and she hasn't picked up any other signs but I still think it's pretty cool. She's pretty clear with vocals too when she's hungry.

Movement: This is probably where we see the most delay. She is certainly not as strong as her brother was or her cousin is but we do see good progress. She sits well. We are working on getting her to move from tummy to sitting and from tummy to hands and knees. She has started to scooch backwards on her tummy and sometimes gets some good distance if she's got a rug under her.

Overall, we aren't as concerned about each milestone as I thought we would be. We're seeing progress and a huge curiosity. She wants to grab everything (especially my glasses) and she's really interested in books. She knows who we are. I think she knows her name, her brother's name but not her parents' names yet. She hasn't had too many babysitters but when she does, she misses us.

We're all in love with this kid and super grateful that she eats well and has no health issues. We're just enjoying this age and this time and learning to trust that all will be well.

Here's A attempting to use the sippy cup. Still a work in progress but pretty cute.

It's been about a month since A started eating solid food. Her first meal was mashed up organic carrots from our CSA farm. I used the hand blender to mash them and they were still a little lumpy so it was a hesitant start. Since then she has tried the commercially prepared carrots and other vegetables which she likes much better. Still we persevere making our own stuff. She has also tried squash, beets, zucchini and sweet potato as well as apple, pear and both rice and oatmeal cereals. Of all these fine offerings I was expecting her to gravitate to the fruit or beets because of the sweetness but no. Her absolute gobble- it- up favourite is............. zucchini. What???!!!! Yes it's true. She can't get enough of it and luckily the harvest is just full of the stuff and it's really easy to make it smooth. So we've had lot's of fun and surprises trying new things and we continue to introduce more each week. She likes grabbing the spoon and trying to feed herself although she often wacks herself in the face. Here are a couple shots of her first meal.

Whoops

Well a few weeks turned into nearly two months. Alot has happened and changed including the season. My blogging time is severely curtailed. Little A's sleep has never been the same since we went east and I find I must follow the kids to bed or risk returning to the state of sleepless grumpy monster.

We had a great trip in July Aug (except for aforementioned sleep issues). We came home mid-Aug to have more park fun. Then we went to a fairly remote island in the Salish Sea altogether including T. This shot is from the mainland on the way home.


Now we are returning to some sort of routine. Preschool, playgroups and next month swimming lessons. A is eating solids and seems to love it. Days are busy and evenings very short. All this crunch will pass someday. Crumbs in the meantime.

End of an Era

We are finally ready to say good-bye to the electric double breast pump. I really had a love-hate relationship with this thing. I resented it because I had to spend so much time with it in the first weeks of A's life. I felt like I was getting to know it better than my daughter. On the other hand it helped me build up a mighty supply to keep her growing and well-nourished with all the great health benefits of breast milk. We've continued to use it even after she was able to feed well because it took awhile to get the supply and demand in balance. I have a theory that my recent insomnia attacks are related to the hormone fluctuations involved in balancing this whole system. Anyway, I'm happy to see it go but I'm grateful for all that it did for us.