Adventures in breastfeeding

The weekend came and went so fast. Mia had an interesting weekend of eating and sleeping. On Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening she just couldn't get enough to eat. Breastfeeding, finger feeding pumped milk, finger feeding formula, syringe feeding formula... she was a bottomless pit, and Ashlei was really sore. Just as quickly as a bout of apparent starvation would start, it would suddenly stop and she would sleep for 5 hours straight. It was nice when one of those stretches started late at night and both Ashlei and I got a good run of sleep in.

The lactation consultant came by again today to evaluate Mia. She said everything is progressing well, but we need to supplement a little so that she gets enough to eat, and she also recommended we call an oral surgeon to have the frenulum on her tounge snipped. The frenulum on your tounge is a little fold of tissue that attaches your tounge to the bottom of your mouth. Mia's is holding her tounge down a little too much and she can't stick her tounge out or touch the roof of her mouth. Getting it snipped should help her feed better, possibly without falling asleep so much, which should help her get enough to eat while breastfeeding and avoid the supplements. In the long run, without the snipping there is the potential for speech issues depending on how things develop, and having it snipped has the side benefit of avoiding those issues (at least as it would relate to that little flap of tissue).

We're told that the procedure is a minor 15 minute in and out type thing, but we still need to call the actual oral surgeon to get the details.

Oh, and she also sold us some special bottle for $35 to help feed Mia the supplements (we think she was gulping too much with the newborn size nipple on the normal bottle). It's like going to a mechanic and the mechanic tells you that you need a new catavoltaic belt plug or your 3-phase ejector seat will fire unexpectedly... how am I supposed to know any better? $35 is crazy for a bottle, but when the expert says you should use it, you use it.

$35 would be pretty good for a 3-phase ejector seat controlled by a catavoltaic belt plug