Feeding the baby part two: the midwife, the schedule
We got home. Bliss, joy, sleeplessness, &c.
I fed Josh when he seemed hungry, at least every three hours. I set the alarm clock so I wouldn't miss a feed, because I was worried Josh wouldn't wake up. He needed to get a certain number of calories in order to grow, and I was deathly afraid of him going back to the hospital. There was a newborn in Paeds with feeding trouble, and she cried all the time. The staff were brusque with the poor baby, who was just lonely.
I had lots of people to visit the first few days, and we went shopping, and we were generally very busy. Josh stayed on the hospital schedule, and then started to stray. I was feeding him -about- every three hours, but not really keeping to the hospital schedule as the midwife had recommended. I felt that he wasn't spending enough time eating, and was worried that he wasn't eating enough. I had too much milk, and Josh wasn't getting the right balance of early, protein-rich milk and later, fat-rich milk, and it caused him to be bloated and uncomfortable. It seemed like he was puking up all his food. I wasn't getting enough sleep, and started to freak out.
Enter our midwife! She thinks that the best thing is to maintain a pattern of eating every three hours, like in the hospital, and the way to do this is to make sure that every time I feed Josh we spend about an hour from waking to settling, and if he's hungry outside that hour to bottlefeed him quickly (at least in the early days) and then settle him back to sleep. In order to get Josh back on the schedule, and make sure he was eating enough, we did a punishing 24ish hours of breastfeeding+40ml-or-as-much-as-can-be-teased-in-with-the-bottle. It was awful. I hated trying to stuff Josh with milk that he obviously didn't want, and I hated trying again and again with the breast to get more milk into a sleepy baby. I thought it was the only way to avoid the hospital. At the end, I was exhausted and bitter and Josh had become "The Baby" instead of an individual and equal partner in the eating process. I felt like we were fighting with him instead of listening to what he was saying, but that we couldn't trust him to tell us when he was hungry. I said unpleasant things to the midwife about scheduling and The Almighty Hour.
In the next few days, we maintained the schedule. Josh sometimes ate what I considered to be enough, and sometimes didn't. He sometimes had hiccups during a feed, which limited the amount of time he could eat, and thus caused me stress and/or an inability to keep to the one hour rule.
Slowly, slowly, I began to shift from the schedule. I felt guilty, like I was somehow cheating. Then, one night, Josh began to want to eat every 2 hours instead of every 3. The next morning, I called the midwife, exhausted and a little mad because I had understood that the reason that I was doing the schedule instead of feeding on demand (as I had originally planned, and as even the hospital literature recommends!) was to make sure we got maximum sleep. Plus, I was following her plan (more or less), instead of my instincts and research, and it gave me a lot of stress. She told me that it was totally normal, and should sort itself out in a few days. For some reason, this lit a fire under me: Josh was having a growth spurt, and it was normal! He was a normal baby, doing normal baby things! I thought about the fact that not only was I not quite following what the midwife had recommended, I wasn't doing what I wanted to either. "I am the mom!", I thought, "And I want to feed Josh When He's Hungry, and let him figure out his own pattern instead of relying on an outside expert to tell me what to do!". Just like that, I gained back all the power that I had lost through the hospital experience. It was pretty amazing.
Thinking back, perhaps I did the poor midwife a disservice. She did have us on a pretty firm schedule for a short period of time, but after that she kept mentioning that it was only a pattern, and was flexible. The firm schedule was over-the-phone advice meant to hold us (and Josh) until she could come see him, and then once she'd seen that he was actually doing very well she was more relaxed. I may have been treating her advice a little more rigidly than was intended, and thus rebelling against something that was only in my own mind. Still, at one point when asked what to do when he was hungry between feeds now that we were totally off bottles, she did say, "Now I'm not a person that supports letting babies cry, but just give him your finger or a soother and see what happens". I'm not sure what she intended us to do, but I was sure not willing to have food and not give it to a hungry baby, even if that baby had eaten only an hour ago. Babies don't have wants, they have NEEDS! The wants come later.
The schedule was intended to avoid having a 8 month old that eats every 2 hours, which I can understand, but I think that one first should see what the baby wants, and if, later on, you discover that the baby's idea of how often he wants to eat is not working for the rest of the family, that's when you try to gently alter it. Feeding a baby when he's hungry, and not on an artificial time line is better for the baby, better for regulating milk production (mine has not been well-regulated), and better for my stress levels. I also have an anti-clock bias, and haven't work a watch in years, and I'd much rather do things in an intuitive way. The midwife kept promising me that I'd be able to do this soon, soon, but I'm done with waiting. Josh is growing well, eating lots, and I'm adapting well to the amount of sleep that I'm getting. Plus, I can stay in bed napping all day, if I need to. I think that this is working.. now all I have to do is talk to the midwife about it.
So far, Josh is eating lots, sleeping lots, and *maybe* spitting up a little less. He's gulping less frantically with feeding, which was a symptom of an oversupply of milk. I'm enjoying him more, and interacting with him more. I feel better.
This experience has been filtered through the lens of not enough sleep and rampaging hormones. The highs are higher, and the lows bottomless. I feel like I am slowly working my way out of this liminal time, and towards a new normal.
I fed Josh when he seemed hungry, at least every three hours. I set the alarm clock so I wouldn't miss a feed, because I was worried Josh wouldn't wake up. He needed to get a certain number of calories in order to grow, and I was deathly afraid of him going back to the hospital. There was a newborn in Paeds with feeding trouble, and she cried all the time. The staff were brusque with the poor baby, who was just lonely.
I had lots of people to visit the first few days, and we went shopping, and we were generally very busy. Josh stayed on the hospital schedule, and then started to stray. I was feeding him -about- every three hours, but not really keeping to the hospital schedule as the midwife had recommended. I felt that he wasn't spending enough time eating, and was worried that he wasn't eating enough. I had too much milk, and Josh wasn't getting the right balance of early, protein-rich milk and later, fat-rich milk, and it caused him to be bloated and uncomfortable. It seemed like he was puking up all his food. I wasn't getting enough sleep, and started to freak out.
Enter our midwife! She thinks that the best thing is to maintain a pattern of eating every three hours, like in the hospital, and the way to do this is to make sure that every time I feed Josh we spend about an hour from waking to settling, and if he's hungry outside that hour to bottlefeed him quickly (at least in the early days) and then settle him back to sleep. In order to get Josh back on the schedule, and make sure he was eating enough, we did a punishing 24ish hours of breastfeeding+40ml-or-as-much-as-can-be-teased-in-with-the-bottle. It was awful. I hated trying to stuff Josh with milk that he obviously didn't want, and I hated trying again and again with the breast to get more milk into a sleepy baby. I thought it was the only way to avoid the hospital. At the end, I was exhausted and bitter and Josh had become "The Baby" instead of an individual and equal partner in the eating process. I felt like we were fighting with him instead of listening to what he was saying, but that we couldn't trust him to tell us when he was hungry. I said unpleasant things to the midwife about scheduling and The Almighty Hour.
In the next few days, we maintained the schedule. Josh sometimes ate what I considered to be enough, and sometimes didn't. He sometimes had hiccups during a feed, which limited the amount of time he could eat, and thus caused me stress and/or an inability to keep to the one hour rule.
Slowly, slowly, I began to shift from the schedule. I felt guilty, like I was somehow cheating. Then, one night, Josh began to want to eat every 2 hours instead of every 3. The next morning, I called the midwife, exhausted and a little mad because I had understood that the reason that I was doing the schedule instead of feeding on demand (as I had originally planned, and as even the hospital literature recommends!) was to make sure we got maximum sleep. Plus, I was following her plan (more or less), instead of my instincts and research, and it gave me a lot of stress. She told me that it was totally normal, and should sort itself out in a few days. For some reason, this lit a fire under me: Josh was having a growth spurt, and it was normal! He was a normal baby, doing normal baby things! I thought about the fact that not only was I not quite following what the midwife had recommended, I wasn't doing what I wanted to either. "I am the mom!", I thought, "And I want to feed Josh When He's Hungry, and let him figure out his own pattern instead of relying on an outside expert to tell me what to do!". Just like that, I gained back all the power that I had lost through the hospital experience. It was pretty amazing.
Thinking back, perhaps I did the poor midwife a disservice. She did have us on a pretty firm schedule for a short period of time, but after that she kept mentioning that it was only a pattern, and was flexible. The firm schedule was over-the-phone advice meant to hold us (and Josh) until she could come see him, and then once she'd seen that he was actually doing very well she was more relaxed. I may have been treating her advice a little more rigidly than was intended, and thus rebelling against something that was only in my own mind. Still, at one point when asked what to do when he was hungry between feeds now that we were totally off bottles, she did say, "Now I'm not a person that supports letting babies cry, but just give him your finger or a soother and see what happens". I'm not sure what she intended us to do, but I was sure not willing to have food and not give it to a hungry baby, even if that baby had eaten only an hour ago. Babies don't have wants, they have NEEDS! The wants come later.
The schedule was intended to avoid having a 8 month old that eats every 2 hours, which I can understand, but I think that one first should see what the baby wants, and if, later on, you discover that the baby's idea of how often he wants to eat is not working for the rest of the family, that's when you try to gently alter it. Feeding a baby when he's hungry, and not on an artificial time line is better for the baby, better for regulating milk production (mine has not been well-regulated), and better for my stress levels. I also have an anti-clock bias, and haven't work a watch in years, and I'd much rather do things in an intuitive way. The midwife kept promising me that I'd be able to do this soon, soon, but I'm done with waiting. Josh is growing well, eating lots, and I'm adapting well to the amount of sleep that I'm getting. Plus, I can stay in bed napping all day, if I need to. I think that this is working.. now all I have to do is talk to the midwife about it.
So far, Josh is eating lots, sleeping lots, and *maybe* spitting up a little less. He's gulping less frantically with feeding, which was a symptom of an oversupply of milk. I'm enjoying him more, and interacting with him more. I feel better.
This experience has been filtered through the lens of not enough sleep and rampaging hormones. The highs are higher, and the lows bottomless. I feel like I am slowly working my way out of this liminal time, and towards a new normal.