Killian was born via elective C-section.
I had a very traumatic experience with my first son (forceps, third degree tear, significant blood loss that led to two transfusions and baby had passed meconium in the womb so he was taken straight into the NICU and given a bottle so we had no skin to skin time or the opportunity to practise breastfeeding).
Killian took straight to the breast the minute he was given to me and put on my chest and he started feeding regularly from that moment onwards. The difficulty was that I gave birth in the midst of lockdown and the staff at the hospital were very stretched, I had zero support from the midwives in terms of latching. They would simply see the baby on my chest feeding whenever they came and would be content with that and the next few days showed that his latch should have been corrected when we were still in hospital.
A few days into it, I started experiencing pain whenever he fed so I started using nipple shields. Baby weighed 3.6kg when he was born and by the time we left the hospital he’d lost 300g and was also a little jaundiced. I stuck with breastfeeding, even though it still felt like hit and miss and I was still experiencing pain. After two weeks or so, Killian had gone up to his birth weight and by the end of week 4 he’d put on 400g in a week.
During this time I sought help from a few breastfeeding consultants, who attempted to help me via Zoom calls but he was still not latching on properly and one of the consultants even said to me that sometimes we may be doing everything right but still experience pain, which I thought to be ridiculous so I stopped seeking their help and persisted on my own.
I got rid of the nipple shields completely to stop confusing the baby on how to latch and expressed a few days to give the sore breast a chance to recover and bottle fed him my breastmilk. My first son was exclusively bottle and formula fed after the first month and he’s the happiest, healthiest and most settled little boy I know so while I had no qualms about giving formula, I just was not willing to give up seeing I felt I was given a second chance to breastfeed and I wanted to give it my best, even though I wasn’t getting any support in getting it done right.
When we hit the six-week mark, I started giving the baby the odd formula bottle at night time (though never every day or more than once a day at most) as I was interpreting what was perhaps fatigue and crankiness as him not getting enough milk from me. I had also been somewhat terrorised by some of the consultants that if the baby wasn’t feeding correctly off of me then my milk supply would go down so I started to lose confidence in what I was doing, but I still stuck with it as the baby kept putting on weight and that was by and large because of my milk.
At around the 4 or 5 week mark (though I don’t remember when exactly to be honest), the reflux began plus many issues with trapped wind. He would bring up quite a lot of milk straight after a feed but also hours after a feed. At first it didn’t seem to bother him and I was told it was normal but then he suddenly started waking up early from his naps screaming and his voice even started to go a little hoarse.
I took him to a paediatrician and he prescribed omeprazol. A few days in when that didn’t help we gave him gaviscon too, but all that both of these did was to constipate the baby who went from producing 6-7 dirty nappies a day to barely one with a lot of grunting and straining and being in pain so I stopped them both completely (he is now back to 2-3 dirty nappies a day, all runny and mustard yellow).
The next thing I was advised was to cut out dairy, which I did. That was three weeks ago and arguably there has been an improvement of sorts but by no means has the issue been resolved completely. I have, however, dropped the formula completely and for the past three weeks the baby has been exclusively breastfed.
In terms of the wind, I have noticed a few things. Firstly, the baby does click when he feeds although it tends to be at the start of the feed when he often gulps as if he can’t handle the let-down. Once the milk is flowing, he stops the clicking. I haven’t experienced any pain in weeks except the odd time when he first latches but it quickly corrects itself. I largely feed him lying down or in the cross cradle position. It’s getting
easier to wind him but sometimes it doesn’t happen and we’ll put him down and he’ll wake up because of trapped wind, which I’m increasingly frustrated by as I genuinely believe it’s down to how he feeds from me.
The paediatrician, GP and midwives all checked and said there is no tongue tie.
He tends to wake between 6:30-8:30AM.
I’ll feed him and then at the hour and a half mark I’ll put him down a nap. He’ll often sleep between 40 minutes to an hour and twenty.
I’ll then feed him again, have some play time and again at the hour and a half, maximum two hour point I’ll try to put him down again as that’s when he seems to start getting cranky.
I have been trying to get him to do a longer lunchtime nap but he’ll often wake at the 45 minute mark and I’ll then have to go and settle him by picking him up or giving him a dummy (he does most of his naps in his crib except for when I’m out walking and he naps in the buggy).
Generally I try to keep the feeds as far removed from his naps as possible to help with the reflux.
Most days he’ll do three naps in a day if he has a decent lunchtime sleep but on other days we’ll squeeze in a fourth nap so he doesn’t go hysterical by bedtime.
We have a very consistent bedtime routine i.e. feed, a little gentle playtime, bath, perhaps a top up feed at least 45 minutes before we put him down, story and lullaby and quiet time and then put him down.
The issue is largely with wind as often he’ll go down but fuss and cry and when we pick him up he’ll burp and then relax.
At night-time, he tends to do a 5-7 hour stretch before he wakes for a feed, followed by another 3-4 hour stretch. Once we get past 4AM he is generally unsettled and will wake an hour and a half after a feed, which I often think ‘it can’t be because he’s hungry’, so now I am trying to settle him back by using a dummy just so I can squeeze in a little extra sleep myself.
He sleeps in a cot next to me and generally speaking I never fed him to sleep (except when he was a newborn). The only aid we occasionally resort to is the dummy and that’s largely in the early hours of the morning and for the odd daytime nap. Overall though he was never that keen on the dummy so it should be easy to get rid of completely if need be.
He will do a 5-7hr stretch followed by another 3-4 hours. Overall he normally does an 11hr night give or take with two feeds.
After the first feed he tends to go straight back to sleep.
After the second one, sometimes he’s very settled and sleeps immediately and others he’ll just fuss in his sleep and eventually wake after an hour and a bit.
At 12 weeks he miraculously slept for 10 hours straight!
I mentioned the reflux above. No other issues with the baby’s health as such. I’m fit and healthy, developed gestational diabetes during the pregnancy but all is well now. My husband is a type 1 diabetic.
