Making the hard decision

Yesterday I weighed Zoe again and the news wasn't good. She'd gained only 100g in a week and its just not enough. I was disappointed to say the least because we had upped the amount of formula by 100 ml a day and thought that would have a good effect. I can only assume that it caused my breastmilk supply to drop away so she still wasn't getting enough.

So I have finally now made the decision to increase her bottles of formula up to the amount she should be getting for her weight and age, which is about 120 ml per feed. I don't know what effect this will have on the breastfeeding but I intend to just keep going and see what happens. Perhaps it will dry up completely, maybe she will start refusing the breast, or perhaps we can just keep going with her getting a little bit of milk from me and the rest from the bottle. Time will tell.

How do I feel? Well I can't help but be disappointed that the breastfeeding hasn't worked out how I expected. It doesn't matter how many times people say it doesn't matter and I've done well, to me it does matter. I do feel that I did the right thing in persisting with breastfeeding for this long. Zoe has plenty of time to gain lots of weight and I really don't think her low weight gains so far have had any bad effect on her. Her head circumference has continued to grow at exactly the right rate on the 50th percentile so we are confident there are no issues with brain development. She is also growing ever longer and some of her clothes are now to short :-)

But if I hadn't persisted with breastfeeding, she would not have got the benefit of 3 months of it and I think it was worth the effort. I also don't think there is any possible thing I could have done differently to increase my supply. In hindsight, I would have woken her up for feeds every two hours in the first day of her life to bring my milk in and I'm a little annoyed that we didn't get any attention on that first day so that someone could have alerted me. But in reality, it probably wouldn't have made any difference. If Zoe was too little and weak to suck, no amount of coaxing would have helped.

Anyway, I am well on the way to just accepting how things have turned out and who knows, perhaps I will be breastfeeding for a while yet. Ironically, last night I had a bad case of blocked milk ducts and one of my breasts was just huge and hard with all the banked up milk. I didn't breastfeed Zoe at dinner time because I had a glass of wine and she wouldn't wait any longer for her feed, so that caused the milk to bank up. But it really came on so suddenly. I expressed later on to relieve the pressure but it didn't help much.

Last night Zoe had 120 ml in the bottle before bed, and she was asleep within minutes at 10pm and didn't stir until 5.50am this morning. That's one big benefit of giving her lots of formula! She had a really long session at the breast and was able to clear the blockages and lumps, which was great. She really is much more efficient than the pump. I also gave her a 100 ml bottle and wasn't sure if she would take it but she drank the lot. Unfortunately, she also managed to throw up quite a bit of it in the next hour or so. I will have to take up the volume slowly.

And the best thing is, when I put her to bed at 9am this morning, she settled herself off to sleep within 5 mins - incredible! I'm just so happy she's nailed this skill. She doesn't do it every sleep but I'm sure she soon will.

So I'm feeling a little sad about the breastfeeding but this has been a long time coming, so I am getting used to it. But also very happy that our little girl is more settled and sleeping well. Life should get a bit easier from here on.