No-one said it would be easy...

I've been a bit frustrated today. Until the last week, its been possible to follow the 'routine' for feeding Zoe - 7 feeds a day, 6 expressing sessions and feeds about 3-3.5 hours apart because she was being quite predictably sleepy.

But she's starting to be her own little person now and has other ideas. I spent from 10am to 1.30pm today feeding her and trying to settle her, and then 3.30pm-4.30pm waking her and trying to get her to feed, all because that's what the routine dictates.

Now its time to go for the 'mother knows best' regimen. For the next 24 hours, I'm going to let Zoe decide when she wants to feed, and for how long. I think she's old enough and awake enough now that its time. I am starting to think that she might gain weight better if she eats lots when she's wide awake, and sleeps when she wants to sleep.

I might be wrong but we'll give it a try for 24 hours. I am still aiming to give her 350 ml of top-up over 24 hours but now I will give her two lots if she is awake for an extended time and very alert. I'll just adapt the amount according to how she's feeling.

The other thing is that the expressing has become a real problem because I can no longer predict when she will want to be fed, so I keep missing expressing sessions because she wakes up early before I've had a chance to do it.

So now I will express straight after a feed as soon as I'm confident she is definitely asleep.

I am really sure that she's a very normal little baby and we are going to make the 'right' progress soon. I did take her to the GP on Friday and he was a bit bemused when I said the child health nurse had insisted I take her to see him. He had a look at her, listened to her heart but said to be honest, its hard to do any more investigations when nothing appears to be wrong with her. That would include her being unsatisified by her feeds, and not having enough wet nappies.

He said bring her back in a week after her next weigh-in if there is still a problem. He also said that little premmies can be slow to gain weight and often sit around their birth weight for a while before taking off. All of this reinforced how I was feeling as well, and his parting comment was that the nurse was being 'correctly cautious'.

I am also now less worried about my milk supply. I get 25-60 ml when I express and I can really see Zoe swallowing the milk once she actually starting sucking properly, which she doesn't always do. I am going to go to the health service breastfeeding clinic this week to make sure we have got the attachment and feeding right and correct any problems they can spot. I think she could do better on the sucking front and hopefully we will both get better and more efficient at removing the milk as time goes on. In the meantime, the top-ups should get us through.

And its nice to have got a reprieve from the heatwave today! Its been a challenge to keep the wee bug from overheating and yesterday we couldn't leave the house because it was like stepping into an oven in the 40 degree heat. Tomorrow the air conditioning in our bedroom will finally be fixed, so we can stop moving her bassinet up and down the stairs twice a day. We actually had to move out of our bedroom and into the spare room because the temp up there was 30 degrees overnight - too hot for babies and parents.