It’s been a couple of days since my milk has ‘properly’ come in, and by ‘properly’, I mean enough for me to be woken up in the middle of the night by the heaviness, feed Noah and still be able to pump. The little boy’s feeding habits change daily and right now, he’s on a ‘one boob, one feed’ pattern. Which means that I feel extremely lopsided after each feed and will have to spend another 20 to 30 minutes pumping. Thank God for the Olympics going on right now, keeping me company through these mind numbing pumps! I know that many people will say that I’m supposed to ‘bond’ with my baby during feeds but he’s busy drinking and it’s rude to talk when you’re eating, right? His eyes are closed during most feeds anyway and although I sing to him on occasion, he seems pretty happy the way things are. I’ve tried to focus only on him but it’s impossible for me to stay awake, so this is what I’m comfortable with. Please don’t judge me. I love my son, I really do.
At the moment, Noah is on total breast milk, something that I’m quite pleased about. I get the confinement lady to bottle feed him my expressed breast milk about twice a day, just so that we can figure out how much he’s drinking. That’s the main issue with breastfeeding, I guess. You never know how much the baby is drinking! Everyone tells me that if the baby doesn’t get enough, he will cry for more, but because Noah is still underweight for his age, the paediatrician told us to monitor his intake closely.
Over the past two days, however, we noticed that Noah doesn’t seem to be able to fall asleep after his bottle feeds. He is the king of stoning and can lie in his cot for two hours, just staring into space with those huge eyes of his. When that happens, he tends to be really tired at night and becomes very difficult to wake for his night feeds. Previously, he used to be able to entertain himself for a little while, then fall asleep on his own, which made us really really happy, but now, no way Jose! The only way to get him to sleep is to latch him on for a while now, and these comfort feeds last between five to fifteen minutes. I feel like I’m encouraging a bad habit but desperate times call for desperate measures. (Yes, I’m full of cliches today.)
The baby also seems to have quite a character of his own. If he’s sleepy, nothing we do will get him to wake up and suckle! We’ve tried undoing his swaddle, touching his face/arms/legs, calling his name repeatedly and burping him, but if he’s determined to sleep or fall asleep during a feed, that’s it. Sigh. I tell myself during these moments that he’s smart enough to wake up when he’s hungry later but again, I don’t know if letting him sleep during/through feeds now is the beginning of a bad habit.
These days, when I hold him, I think he’s a lot bigger but when I look at him in the arms of C or the confinement lady, I realise that he’s still so tiny! He has a long way to go before he gets to the pudgy arms and legs phase… Looking forward to the day that he becomes the Michelin Man! 🙂
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