Diary – the first week
Tom was born by c-section, so it was aboujt 45 minutes before I got to hold him for the first time. That was an extremely long 45 minutes, waiting to be sewn up, rolled back to our room. In felt like I only got to hold him for a minute before the nurse took him to bathe him, but that was when I started falling in love with him. That night is a little bit of a blur, but at some point the lactation consultant came in and helped me latch Tom on. He was a tiny little bundle, looking so vulnerable and instinctive, but he was not that good at latching on, and I had no idea what to do. The lactation consultant told me that because Tom was premature he was not ready yet to need to breastfeed, and would need extra help figuring it out.
Shortly after we got back to the room the nurse washed Tom and neglected to put him under the warming light, his vitals all dropped and he had to go upstairs for observation. His dad went with him, and came back a couple times to let me know what was going on. While he was up there they gave him some formula and a passifier, both of which I later learned can cause nipple confusion but soothed Tom which I would have wanted (if I’d had the choice).
About four hours later Tom was warmed up and back down with me. He sleapt on the crook of my arm. Once every hour and a half my husband and I would wake Tom up and put him in the eating position and I would try to entice him to eat. To protect my stomach Tom was laid on a pillow stack next to me, the “football hold”. It was extremely awkward, frustrating and a little scarry. If I could not get him to latch on, which I usually couldn’t, I would push the button for the nurse and ask her to send the lactation consultant. I started getting concerned that I would not be able to figure out nursing when we were home from the hospital.
To make sure my milk production was adequate the lactation consultant brought in a breast pump and I started pumping every hour and a half and then we would put the tiny amount of milk into a syringe and put that in Tom’s mouth next to my nipple, or put it in his mouth next to a finger, to make sure he got the food. This was a lot of work, but was actually a relief to know for sure that he was getting food and exactly how much.
The lactation consultant told me that for the first 5 days, roughly, there is just a tiny amount of milk, but that this milk is increadibly rich in nutrients and in antibodies against all of the illnesses I had ever had, so this was really important to Tom’s immune system.
After we got home I could not get Tom latched on, so we finger-fed him most of the time. We woke up every hour and a half, I would pump, then we would wake him up and feed him. At night when he was fast asleap it would take 15 minutes to pump, 20 minutes to wake him up by taking off his clothes, talking to him, touching him, and another 25 minutes to finger-feed him. Needless to say, there was not a lot of sleep for us.