We had a lovely weekend at the Q station in Manly this weekend. The weather was stunning and the views of the harbour from over there are just wonderful. It was really nice to sit out on the veranda in front of our room and breastfeed Zoe while taking in the beautiful view.
I realised I need to try and get out in the fresh air as much as I can because I am starting to feel a bit of cabin fever staring at the walls at home. Its really a case of mind over matter taking her out and about. The Baby Bjorn sling is a lifesaver. If she's a bit grizzly, she almost always falls asleep if we put her in the sling and walk around with her.
LH and I managed to have a drink and some dinner at a bar while she was asleep - brilliant! The only thing that was a bit stressful was that I was concerned her crying in the night might wake up the other guests in the rooms next door. I am probably being oversensitive and its not like she cried very much. There will be many more times when I am worried her crying is disturbing other people. Guess I just have to get used to it.
We managed well with all the bottles and sterilising equipment and now I've got a master list for Zoe equipment when we go on weekends away. She slept in a travel cot in our room, which worked pretty well. Although she did manage to turn herself around 90 degrees in the night because it was much wider than her bassinet and we struggled to tuck her bunny rug in tightly. She didn't come to any harm but she potentially could have got the bunny rug over her head. I'm not sure how we could stop her moving because I wouldn't want to put any things in the cot to stop her moving.
Unfortunately, the weekend ended badly because LH and I had a dispute about managing Zoe's weight gain - the never-ending obsession at the moment.
It started when I got LH to try and settle her after a feed while I was having a shower. She was crying but then launched into a really strong scream. It really frightened LH and he got scared that she was hungry. Unfortunately I had decided not to give her the comp bottle top-up after that feed because I had lots of milk and there's one of the seven feeds every day where she skips her bottle top-up.
LH misunderstood me and thought I'd made a decision to drop the top-up bottles altogether. He got really wound up and concerned about what the paediatrician had said about her needing to match her weight to her length. He wanted to know was it affecting her brain development and accused me of not following the paed's instructions.
He insisted we go back to the paediatrician. I was really devastated and just so upset because I felt that he thought I didn't have our little girl's best interests at heart. I just felt another visit to the paed would put a stop to the breastfeeding once and for all, and I felt LH was withdrawing his support for me. The paediatrician wasn't particularly supportive of the breastfeeding.
It turns out that LH had misunderstood what the paediatrician had told me. The paed instructed me to top-up the bottles by 10 ml per feed to see if it would help with Zoe feeling unsettled because she might be hungry. It didn't - in fact it made things worse, leading me to believe that the unsettledness isn't related to hunger because giving her loads of formula doesn't solve it.
I made it clear to LH that the extra top-up was to deal with the unsettledness, not to try and get her to gain loads more weight. The paed did say she needs to gain about 200 g a week, which she is almost achieving.
So we sorted it all out in the end, but it shows that our nerves (especially mine) are on a bit of a knife edge, probably because of lack of sleep. As someone commented recently, if your relationship before having a baby wasn't strong, it would be doomed after the baby came along. LH and I are fine again now and I know I am very sensitive about the breastfeeding situation and I feel that I'm hanging onto it by the skin of my teeth at the moment.
Next post: how the breastfeeding holiday worked.
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2 comments:
I know it's easier said than done, but if you have to move away from breastfeeding and onto formula then there is no reason to feel like you've failed! Sometimes it just doesn't work out as well as we'd hope and is no reflection on anything that you could have or can do; and in the end the most important thing is to ensure that Zoe is thriving. Hopefully she will progressively make the weight gains required, and you've got through 2 months! Goodluck!
Thanks for your support. It has been hard to accept using formula, but the most important thing is for Zoe to gain weight, and we seem to be on the right track now. We may combine bottles and breastfeeding indefinitely, which is ok as well.
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