She's hungry and all she wants to do is eat. Unfortunately, it's not natural for her (yet) and she struggles to lay still and latch on. Sometimes it's obvious she's not comfortable and we have to reposition her and try again. Other times it looks like she’s finally got it but we get nothing more than a few sucks and she'll push away. This goes on for 20-30 minutes at a time. Once she finally latches on though, she tends to fall asleep. And understandably so. She just spent all her energy trying to get going, and now she is worn out. Then we have to try to wake her up, and that in itself is a real fun game to play. She's just like her daddie and anything short of a bomb going off right next to her ear isn't going to get that girl awake.
That's not to say we haven't had our fair share of successful feedings either. However, after carefully monitoring all the feedings I came to the conclusion that she simply wasn't getting enough. One of the major contributing factors to our sleepless nights was that she needed fed often. Also, during the feedings, I noticed quite a bit of sucking but not a whole lot of swallowing. Given all that was going on I finally put it all together and figured out that when she was latched, she wasn't getting the amount she needed. She'd go for as long as she could before she'd tire herself out and fall asleep. She wouldn't stay sleeping very long though because she'd wake up hungry. And then it would start all over again.
So at around 4 AM during what felt like our 10th feeding of the night, I finally suggested to Jen that we should bust out the bottles and give her some formula. Now after taking the breastfeeding class and talking to all the pro-breast-milk nurses and doctors, we were a bit hesitant to introduce formula into the equation. But we needed Josie to eat and sleep, so that we could sleep. Lo and behold, giving her that bottle of formula ended up knocking her out for a good 3-4 hrs. She was happy and full and we finally got in a good (albeit brief) nights rest for the first time since she arrived.
On some level I still feel a tiny bit guilty going the formula route since we were adamant about sticking to an all breast milk diet. But things don't always work out as planned and we needed to adjust accordingly. Josie was 3.5 weeks early, so her feeding ability isn't where it should be compared to a fully termed baby. Also, Jen’s milk supply hasn't fully come in yet (and isn't likely to anytime soon) so that doesn’t help. We've been told that this is a common problem for parents with preemies but that it usually gets better as the weeks go by. We just need to let it happen naturally as opposed to repeatedly forcing the issue.
I'm pretty sure this is the way to go for now ... look how happy she is!
