How do you handle night duties wrt childcare when your H comes home? Is he understanding about you needing a break? Or does he feel like he needs a break after working all day/commuting? How do you split tasks like bath/story/bed time? MOTN wake ups?
Do you feel like he sees what you do as "work" that is equivalent to what he does?
We pretty much split evening childcare. He might actually do a little more. He worked from home a few days last week and told me that he doesn't know how I do that every day. I feel like I need to do as much as I can to give him a break at night, but as long as the baby is being good neither of us really minds playing with him and hold him. I try to give him a bath during the day and we are not at the point where we have a long routine at bedtime. My husband is awesome about middle of the night wake ups - he feeds the baby while I pump, we switch off checking on him and changing him.
J hates the D-Vi-Sol(and I don't blame him, that shit smells nasty!) so getting it in him and him swallowing all of it doesn't really happen. I also find it hard to draw up 1 ML into the dropper, always seem to come up short. Should I give him a bottle once a day with the Vit D in it? Or should I switch to the more concentrated DDrops? I guess I'm leaning more towards bottle to get him taking bottles when I go back to work, but I really have not been feeling pumping recently.
We have him suck it out of just the nipple before he gets a bottle.
I was in a situation similar to yours. Pre-e, induced at 37 weeks, and an briefly extended hospital stay. My baby wouldn't latch either. The LC had me start pumping right away. I know that your said before you didn't get to attempt bfing right away either. Since the beginning it has been a struggle to produce enough. My baby is older than yours but he is a big eater. I haven't been able to keep up with him so we supplement when needed.
We never really got bfing. I pump, 7-8 times a day probably 20ish minutes each time. I continue to do it because I know that any amount that I can give him is good for him.
I wasn't quite as low as a producer as you but I was close and I have worked and worked and tried about everything I have seen suggested to up my supply. So far I have tried - a manual pump (fail), fenugreek (good for a while), oatmeal (the best so far), power pumping (not great), increasing pumping sessions to every 2 hours (good - I only did this for a couple of days) and renting a hospital grade pump (great), lactation cookies (okay).
Give it a week. Or give it 2 more days. Whatever you can do. Make a small goal for yourself and when you reach it reassess things.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be for him either. He handled it well. Didn't seem to mind after the first day or so but we continued with the cream for about 10 days until it didn't look so red.
My kid has a lot of gas. We tried the gas drops in every bottle about a month ago when it appeared to be painful for him. He has since gotten better at pushing it out and doesn't scream as much so we stopped the drops for the most part.
I was really hard on myself those first few weeks too. I think that those first 2 or so months I talked about quitting bfing every day with my husband. I was sick of doing it, it hurt, it was stressful, it was hard. Well, it is still all of those things. I have adjusted my outlook though. I feed my baby the best way that I can, no matter what he is eating as long as he is eating it doesn't matter.
We went through, and still go through, times when I try to nurse him and he screams and I have no idea why he is doing that. So, we adapt. I pump and bottle feed him and try to nurse again later.
When I was pregnant I thought that I would love to BF, that it would be so amazing and that my baby and I would have such a bond and it would just be the best thing ever. Well, it is not, at least not for me. It doesn't come naturally, it hurts and I want my body back.
Even if you can give him a little bit of BM a day that is still good. Don't be so hard on yourself. It isn't good for anyone. Having a newborn is so much harder than I thought it would be and having a newborn and breastfeeding is even harder, especially when you are having all the problems that you are describing. I hope it starts to get easier for you!
I signed up. I met up with someone a few weeks ago. There are not many people signed up in my area.
How much corresponding through their messaging system did you do before you met?
I got 2 people that friended me, but they didn't include any new info about themselves. Just a generic request. I've added one person and included a more personalized message, so we'll see if she responds. Just wondering if there's an etiquette for this type of thing, haha.
We messaged back and forth for a week and then made plans to meet that weekend. There was a bad snow/ice storm 0 Friday night so we moved the meeting to the next Saturday. So maybe 20 messages back and forth before meeting.
I signed up. I met up with someone a few weeks ago. There are not many people signed up in my area.
How was the meeting?
It was okay. We met up at a mall and walked for an hour or so. I don't know that it was a match because neither of us has reached out to meet up again. But she wasn't a creeper or anything like that.
Do you always put down your baby in the same place for naps? - No - sometimes in his carseat, sometimes in his swing. Never in the crib.
When did you start seeing a schedule form? Or when did you set up a schedule? A schedule started to form around 2.5 months. He is starting to just go with the flow more. We are all figuring each other out still.
Do you try to make sure the baby naps in a dark place or do you keep it bright during the day? Bright during the day.
Oh and this is a silly question, but E kind of sleeps while feeding- is that considered a nap? Maybe?
We are like you, pretty easy going. Our lack of enforcing a schedule seems to be going really well right now, so we are not going to change something that is working.
We have the same seat. It took my H maybe 20 minutes to install the base, but then I went out and wiggled it around and we decided that it needed to be in there better. He watched a few YouTube videos and tried again. 5 minutes later it was in much better! Now he can move the base from car to car with no issues.
We were looking for a doctor that would include us in decision making (or at least make us feel like we were included). Asking questions and having knowledge about our child before he/she started telling us we needed to be doing this or that without taking the time to get background information.
I'm still in the process of being diagnosed with some sort of PIH or pre-e. I spent Thursday night at the hospital for observation and the lovely pee jug.
Doc has put me on 200mg of labetalol starting off. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this? Did it help your BP? Did you have any side effects?
So far it's making me shaky and giving me headaches. However, if it means I can make it a few more weeks without going on bed rest I'll take it. Id like to keep working and I have an awards ceremony next Friday that I really want to go to.
I had pre-e with my son and my bp wouldn't come down after he was born. They put me on labetalol a few days after he was born (we were both in the hospital a few extra days). I was supposed to take it for 6 weeks after he was born. About 2 weeks later I called the doctor and told them I wasn't taking it anymore. It didn't help with the bp and I felt terrible on it, racing mind, couldn't sleep. I am sure part of that was having a newborn, but a lot of it cleared up when I stopped the labetalol. If it would have brought the bp down that would have been one thing, but it didn't.
Hopefully it works for you and your body can adjust to it!
I'm on the app, so I can't see how old your LO is. DS nursed for an hour at a time until about 12 weeks old. I think that's fairly common. He sped up to about 30 mins a session until about 6-7 months old, then 15 mins ever since. I agree with @littlemoxie, he won't ever speed up without practice.
He is just over 12 weeks.
Thanks for the suggestions. I will see if I can nurse more often. Normally it is just so frustrating for both of us!
Is there a way to speed my baby up when breastfeeding him? I have gotten to the point where I pretty much only pump and bottle feed because he is such a slow nurser. I thought that maybe it would get better as he got older and more alert but he still takes over an hour to nurse and then he still seems hungry afterwards. I let him nurse until my breasts feel soft and he is only sucking every so often.
This is probably TMI. I had my baby in early November, bled for about 3 weeks afterwards and then stopped. December 20th I got what I thought was my period, I thought it was pretty early given that I was breastfeeding. We introduced formula a week or so prior so I figured maybe that was part of it, but the majority of the baby's food was BM. The period, or whatever it was, was very light and only lasted about 4 days, which is not normal for me. (Normally it is longer and heavier). January has come and now almost gone and no period so far. Pre-baby my cycles were regularly 30-32 days.
So I guess my question is, do you think the December bleeding was actually a period or was it residual bleeding from giving birth?
Will he sleep in his car seat? That's what works best for our baby right now. We went through nights like this when he was a newborn. It is just one of those things that you have to push through. I didn't think it would ever get better, but it has. We still get up every 3-4 hours, but now he goes down again better. There were 3 weeks when he was first home with us that we took turns sleeping on the couch with him laying on our chest. It was the only thing we could do to get any sleep. Even though I am not working like my husband if I get over tired it makes it really hard to deal with a cranky baby the next day. Your husband can help, it is his baby just as much as it is yours and it is temporary. Just make it through the next few days, weeks and months somehow and it will get better!