The feeding question

5/10/2009·public·173 visits · notify me ?

I am mainly noting all these thoughts here so I can refer back to it when I get questioned on my choices and inevitably when I worry that I have made the wrong decision 🙂

After much discussion with DH we decided that Ivy will be a bottle fed baby. Don’t get me wrong I really, really wanted to breast feed Ivy, same as I really, really wanted to breastfeed Violet but looking at it practically and pragmatically I don’t think it’s going to be the best course of action for us as a family. Yes breastfeeding when we get home would be wonderful and much easier, no sterilising, little Ivy burning off at least 500 of my calories every day, not having to get up and wander about making up bottles in the middle of the night…..but it’s not as simple as that. I so wanted to be the happy hippy mum, and I thought that as my mum had had 6 of us with no troubles and breast fed and cloth bummed us all that I would be able to. I never questioned it to be honest. And well NNU has got to be the least hippy place in the whole damn world!

If I want to breast feed Ivy, then I will need to be there for more than one feed a day, every day once she starts rooting around looking for milk. (which she already is!) Of course I would LOVE to be there all day and night for her, but it’s simply not possible, even if we went back to having Violet babysat a lot, all our babysitters work – some during the day and some at night, either way making them unavailable to look after Violet during the day. And the hospital is too far away to nip back and forth for feeds. Initially I thought, well we can sort that out when I room in just before discharge, and I know that many mums manage just with that. But it didn’t work with Violet, I roomed in for a fortnight trying to get her to breastfeed at every feed and she was having none of it! Not once, and we had lots of help from breastfeeding experts and nurses and everyone, Violet simply was not going to breastfeed. We don’t have the luxury of that amount of time this time, even if DH could get that amount of time off work to look after Violet, we don’t want to use it all before Ivy comes home.

I know it sounds selfish but I don’t want to delay Ivy’s discharge for the sake of feeding in the way Violets was delayed. Violet could have come home nearly a fortnight before she did. If all else is fine then I want Ivy home, obviously!

And most importantly I suppose, my let down reflex has pretty much gone, and as my previous journals attest, my periods are back, 😦 I want to make this decision before my body takes the option away from me, which it looks like it’s going to. It’s certainly exactly how it all happened last time, once the let-down reflex had gone my supply never recovered, not with all the fenugreek in the world! And yes I know that skin to skin contact and attempting to breastfeed can bring it back and do magic things, but that takes me back to the time issue, when?

I am trying to console myself with the fact that she has only had my milk for her first 2 months; and there are 3 shelves full of frozen milk at her disposal too. As well as anything else I can get frozen in the meantime. It seems to matter so much right now, and it seemed to matter even more when Violet was tiny, but I realise now Violet’s a toddler, that in the long run, it doesn’t matter! She won’t remember or think badly of me whatever way I feed her, so long as I do. I have just called up for my morning update too, Ivy’s on 2 hourly feeds at the moment and was rooting around for milk this morning, so one of the lovely nurses (in fact the same lady who helped out when I caved and gave Violet a bottle!) offered Ivy a bottle, she had half of her feed from it! Awesome for a first go! I feel so much better that Ivy can get a bit of practice feeding while I’m not there, for even if my visit coincides with her feeds, she is often still sleeping and so it’ll all go down the tube. Who knows how long it would’ve been before she’d have had a shot at boob? So, another babystep closer to home 🙂

Baby’s really do enjoy messing with all your well thought out and laid down plans don’t they? Mine certainly do!

originally posted on babycentre community board; x-posted to www.handprints.org.uk/pixiejos-previous-blogs.html

A very quiet Hooray!

I daren’t go for a huge Hooray in case somehow I celebrate too loud and break it… But for the last 2 days ivy has returned to high dependency! It is so much nicer there, they have a radio, comfy chairs and everything! Just don’t quite believe she’s back there, it’s fab but just don’t quite feel comfortable really celebrating it a second time round. Don’t know if it makes sense really. Hmmm. Maybe it’s having our bubble burst once already or maybe it’s meeting other babies and parents. Ivy’s neighbour when she was in hdu last time had been doing really well, there was talk of the ‘h’ word we all wanna hear. And she’s just been transferred via intensive care to a different bigger hospital, it’ll be the third time she’s been. Just awful to go from planning homecoming to having such a leap backwards. My heart goes out to them 😦 ivy is doing really well though! The thing they measure in her blood (crp) has come right down, though not gone yet and she’s now on 4mils of milk an hour! And in clothes! She’s such a wee star! But somehow all going well seems to worry me more. Blah, think I just need much more sleep!!! Anyway hope this makes sense, updating from phone means I can’t proof read… Sorry if it makes no sense at all 🙂

originally posted on babycentre community board; x-posted to www.handprints.org.uk/pixiejos-previous-blogs.html

steps forward, steps back

15/09/2009·public·193 visits · notify me ?

So while we had been awway from the hospital Ivy had done really well with her feeding, gradually making it up to 5 and a half mils of milk an hour and cycling 2 hours on CPAP 4 hours breathing by herself. She was doing so well that when we saw her on Saturday she had had all of her lines out as she was fully milk fed!

Yesterday (Monday) Ivy was supposed to go for her Hida test to check her gall bladder function, seems Ivy had other ideas though.First thing in the morning her tummy gets all blown up again, so distended the skin was shiny like it was for about a week after she was born. This swelling pushes up onto her lungs too making it much harder for her to breathe, so when they come to pop her in the travel incubator for the big journey across the hospital she had a big desat & brady episode. So in the end they decided to leave her on the unit and reschedule for when she;s more stable. And while they were waiting for her to become more stable she had to return back into the intensive care unit for more careful monitoring. Back onto Nil-By-Mouth and drip feeding. Back off the King’s regime thingy. Back out of the clothes she’d only just made it into. And back beside the family that take up all the space. 😦

I managed to spend most of the afternoon with her today and was there when the doctors decided that she can gradually start having milk again which was much more positive, but nobody knows for sure why her belly keeps blowing up. Her x-rays and barium scan pics have been studied by the surgical team at Bristol Children’s hospital (it was them that decided she could eat again) and they’re happy there’s no obstruction and doesn’t need surgery, but it seems she still has quite a bit of meconium stuck up there, despite many stinky nappies now. They don’t know whether her jaundice is linked to the belly blowing up problem, that maybe if she starts having milk all the time and it all gets to function properly it could all resolve itself. But they have to firstly check that it isn’t any one of a number of other things, she’s on 3 lots of anitbiotics even though her blood tests have come back clean for infection. I guess I’m glad they’re being cautious to be on the safe side.

Just feel really bleh and numb about the whole thing, I’m trying to be jollier about it, now she’s more settled and stable again, but don’t seem able to properly pick myself back up. I dreamt she had died and no one was listening to me which was a bit harsh, can’t seem to quite shake that feeling now. Just really bloody tired.Anyway the lovely tesco man brings my shopping hurrah!

Hope you lovely ladies are having better days than me xxxx

originally posted on babycentre community board; x-posted to www.handprints.org.uk/pixiejos-previous-blogs.html

Where did the time go?

12/09/2009·public·180 visits · notify me ?

Ivy is 4 whole weeks old today! Where have 4 weeks gone? But yet and at the same time, it seems eons ago I was pregnant….And for the first time since tuesday we’ll be able to go and visit!!! And we have babysitters already in place (well they’ve had a week off haven’t they?! ;p) for tonight, tomorrow and possibly monday too!

I also figured out, somewhat sadly, that I only discovered I was pregnant 6 months ago on monday, how can she be 4 weeks old already?! I’d have only been 34 weeks this wednesday coming. Oh well I haven’t made this far with either baby, so at least I don’t konw what I’m missing now!

As of yesterday, Ivy is fully milk fed, all 5mils an hour of it, bless her, stil hardly a drop at a time! So she’s finally had her long line taken out!!! One less drip, in fact possibly all drips gone, but lets not celebrate til I can see to check! 😀 She was a big brave soldier about it too, they give the tinies dextrose syrup for pain relief (not sure how it works, but I’ve seen how Violet reacted to it, sugar – good!) and she just stared at them through the whole procedure! She’s also survived her newborn hearing screen, premmie eye test which’ll be done again in 2 weeks and she’s been put on something called the ‘King’s regime’ for her jaundice, which is apparently a variety of vitamins and supplements added to her milk developed by King’s College, but for once google is failing me, I can’t find anything about it! And it’s tough to get all the relevant details over the phone, guess we’ll find out tonight! Hooray!

Happy sunny saturday all!!! xxx

originally posted on babycentre community board; x-posted to www.handprints.org.uk/pixiejos-previous-blogs.html