breast vs. formula (my experience thus far)

only 8 days old and already life with hannah is an adventure. we had our two-day checkup on friday (15) afternoon and it turns out she is losing weight. we knew this already and that night began supplementing with a little bit of formula. i did not want my baby to be formula-fed but i wanted her admitted even less, which is what the pediatrician needed to do if her weight did not turn around fast.

i was kind of feeling discouraged and all about the whole breastfeeding thing anyways. i am not planning on giving up... just discouraged. i did not make it through 12 hours of HARD labor with no drugs just to complain about a couple sore nipples. besides we don't have the money to throw away on formula all the time. i am planning/hoping to breastfeed for a year or longer if i can. besides i did not have problems with engorgement when my milk came in thank the Lord, so how could i throw away THAT gift and decide to go to formula?

i honestly did not know what was wrong when i started feeding and it hurt. all the classes and books and websites say breastfeeding should not hurt, if it does you are doing something wrong. and it didn't hurt, at least not right away. but by thursday (14) when we went home from the hosptal it did. i told the lactation lady who came in to my room to help me before we left, and she helped but it still hurt. i didn't tell her though, i felt like it must be me if she was making the latch and standing over me making sure i was doing it right and it still hurt. now i think maybe she didn't know well enough what she was doing. then we went for our 2-day appointment with the doctor - usually that one is with a nurse practitioner so she can be sure you are feeding properly because pediatric doctors don't get a lot of training in breastfeeding but pediatric nurse practicioners do for some reason. that was when we found out hannah was SO down on weight, and the doctor recommended supplementing with a little formula. all babies lose some of their birth weight but hannah had lost a lot. 14 oz. in 4 days which was 12% of her birthweight and the doctors do not want to see more than 7% lost. they were ready to admit her if something did not turn around asap which is why the pediatrician suggested supplementation. i did not want to because i did not want her to get used to the (easy) bottle nipple and then not want to suck from mama, because boob sucking is harder than bottle sucking.

(aside: did you ever think i'd be discussing "boob sucking?" i never thought "boob" would become such a "normal" part of my vocabulary, personally.)

so brian went and got some formula. i had him get the liquid kind, smallest bottle he could, because i did not want to mix powders and i thought she might take it better than powder anyways. like how chocolate milk you buy in a refrigerated carton is WAY better than chocolate milk you make from powder. we had a coupon but still, i do not even want to know how much it cost. the liquid formula is more expensive than the powder so it must have been like gold.

we only gave her one ounce on friday night but she did not feed well when i tried later that night. THAT was discouraging, but i did not know then that formula keeps them fuller longer. i think it probably has more calories and less water. (because you can give a formula baby a teeny bit of water in the summer when it is so hot, but you can't a bf baby because they get all the fluids they need from breastmilk and can get an electrolyte imbalance.) it was nice that night to give my boobs a break - and then that night my milk came in. other than that she fed fine and when the nurse practitioner saw her on saturday (16) she had put on 3.5 oz. overnight. she said, otherwise how are things going? and i grabbed my boobs and said, sore, the usual, but otherwise fine. she said, would you like me to show you how to breastfeed her without it hurting AT ALL?

well heck, lady, when you put it like that... does the sun rise in the east?

she said usually babies have the reflex down okay but sometimes they don't know exactly what to do, and moms sure don't, so don't beat yourself up over it. i guess whatever she was doing was pulling on my nipple which caused the soreness and also the cracking/bleeding at the end. and she is not supposed to do that, but f she is not latched on properly sh will in order to get enough milk. i am still not quite sure what is different except in how i hold her back now, but i can feel she is not pulling on me and the cracking/bleeding is all healed on one side and almost all healed on the other. and let me tell you it is so nice to be able to feed your kid without dreading it. except that now i dread it at night because it means less sleep.

we gave her another ounce of formula sunday (17) night. she had another checkup with the pediatrician yesterday, and she had put on another 3 ounces! the doctor said if we only gave her 2 ounces formula and she gained 6.5 ounces in 3 days, that is DEFINITELY my milk (my milk had not yet come in when we first saw the pediatrician on friday) and good breastfeeding. i could sure tell when my milk came in. it is nice to know that for sure i have enough for her because she is putting on weight.

so now there is the rest of a 24-ounce bottle of similac in my fridge and can I tell you how tempting it is at 3 am? breastfed babies only sleep about 2-3 hours at a stretch because breastmilk is so easily digested and they are that hungry sooner. formula babies sleep 4+ hrs at a stretch i guess. and last night, like the night before and the night before that, I could NOT for the life of me get her to sleep in her pack & play. i personally was fine with her sleeping on my chest but brian did NOT want that because what if she rolled off, and i was sleeping HARD at that point so i would not necessarily wake up and notice. he had a point so i tried not to sleep with her on me but often i just dozed off, because when i'd put her in the pack & play (asleep) she would wake up and cry, LOUD. i finally got her to last night, yay me! brian stayed up with me to give me some moral support since it's not like he can feed her. but then about 230 am she was awake again and we heated up about 1/2 ounce of formula hoping it would be little enough to not affect her feeding and big enough to get her to sleep a little extra. we caved. i think she slept about 2 hours (in her crib! or maybe on brian?) and man did i need that. i'm such a better mommy when i have some slep under my belt.