Tricky week with feeding (posted by Kel)

Well, as this week nears it's end I think I need to jot down a few things that have happened with Elliott's feeding that have caused quite a bit of anxiety in the household (okay, mostly for Kel ... Brett was his usual calm and collected self!). Up until this week Elliott has been the most wonderful baby with feeding - he learnt how to feed quickly, established a good pattern with feeding fairly soon and even learnt how to attach to the breast all by himself pretty soon too (thankfully!). Kel even had relatively few problems early on with sore nipples etc...

How things change!

At 9 weeks of age (well, 8 weeks and 4 days to be precise) Elliott started to get REALLY fussy when feeding. On, off, on, off... 'wrestling' with Kel... only feeding for 2 minutes before pulling of and whinging and crying. Nothing Kel did could make him feed properly. Of course, this was pretty stressful (and upsetting) for lots of reasons:
1. Kel was worried Elliott wasn't getting enough to eat and maybe he'd lose weight;
2. Kel was worried he might get dehydrated (although the whole time there were no signs of dehydration);
3. Kel was worried that her milk would start to dry up if Elliott continued to refuse feeds on a regular basis;
4. Kel started to wonder if Elliott just didn't like her that much anymore (although deep down she knew this wasn't true).

Well, after talking to a breastfeeding counsellor and a nurse at the baby health clinic some of the concerns were eased. Apparently its not uncommon for babied to 'refuse' the breast every now and then and it's usually a temporary thing. Usually it's unknown why they do it but recent immunisations or Kel menstruating can do it ... apparently in the latter case it can make the milk taste salty. The advise was to try to stay calm and just stop feeding when it happens and try again later (and express off any extra milk after feeding to prevent the milk drying up). And of course, as Elliott gets older he'll become more efficient at feeding and only take a fraction of the time to feed than earlier days, so perhaps some of it is related to that.

Anyway, on day 6 of this happening (see why I was worried?!) it started to get better. Instead of feeding for 2 minutes Elliott fed for a whole 10 minutes! Yippee! And today his feeds have lasted that long, if not longer. Phew!! One good thing that has come of this is that, because Kel was worried her milk would start to dry up, she started expressing off the rest of her milk after Elliott had a feed (for the record, anywhere between 20 and 200ml!). So, we have quite a supply of expressed breast milk in the freezer now!

Of course, Elliott seemed to be completely oblivious to all this angst - he was just as happy, alert and settled as usual ... and just as smiley!