On Tuesday the 20th of March, Jessica was exactly one month old. Wow! Can’t imagine she has been with us that long, though on the other hand I sort of can’t imagine now what life was like before her arrival…
That day the health visitor came around again about lunch-time, for a chat to see how things were and to weigh Jessica again. She’s now 4.64 kilos (for you ‘imperialists’ out there, that’s apparently 10lb 13 1/2oz). Her weight gain is in line with her previous growth so far, all very healthy and steady.
I told the health visitor about my decision to not breastfeed anymore, as Jessica still isn’t taking to it. Jessica either ends up very frustrated (thrashing about, shaking her head from side to side and getting her hands in the way) or simply gets bored and just lies there in my lap looking lost. Either way, she doesn’t get the food she needs from feeding from the breast. So I’ve decided (finally, after much procrastination…!) to skip that part of the process completely and express my milk instead to feed her from a bottle. That way she still gets all the nutrients I am, after all, able to give her but we avoid unnecessary frustration and time-wasting trying to force a way of feeding that just isn’t happening. The health visitor was supportive of my decision and didn’t insist on me persevering with the breastfeeding; something I hadn’t been sure of whether she would or not.
As an additional result of my decision on feeding, I found that it loosened a knot in my stomach that I hadn’t realised before that I’d had… I’d felt stressed and guilty about not being able to breastfeed Jessica, perhaps especially as I’d been so set on it from start, already from the early days of the pregnancy – I’d simply assumed I’d be able to do it. But, as my sister wisely pointed out, the best thing for Jessica is a happy, relaxed (and preferably also, at least slightly, rested) Mum. Whether she drinks her milk from a breast or a bottle is less important.
Jessica and I spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting Anna in Reigate, and on my way back I popped into a newsagents in Redhill to get some biscuits. The newsagents was all dark and it turned out there had been a power cut – according to the lady at the till this affected parts of Merstham, Reigate and Nutfield as well as Redhill. When we got back to the flat nothing would switch on. It was quite a cold day and the flat was getting colder, with no possibility to turn on any of the boosters on the storage heaters. Also, I was very fast running out of clean, sterilised bottles for Jessica’s food (a big, obvious disadvantage of not breastfeeding)…
If it had only been me, I would’ve just wrapped a blanket around myself, lit a few candles and spent the evening snuggled up in the sofa reading a book, but things felt a lot more serious with a little baby, who would need to be kept warm, safe and fed. Ian’s parents were away for a few days but I texted Ian’s sister, who is staying with them at the moment, and she said they were unaffected by the power cut and we were very welcome to spend the evening there. After discussing things through with Ian, Jessica and I ended up spending the night in Ian’s parents house, whereas Ian stayed in the flat to keep an eye on when the electricity would come back on again. I guess in the back of our minds we also hoped that he might be able to catch up a bit on sleep, too…
The power was back on late that same evening, which at least meant that the storage heaters were able to charge up overnight for the following day, when Jessica and I returned to the flat. Events like this makes one certainly realise how ridiculously dependent we tend to be on things like electricity… As it happened, we were of course fine – actually, it was quite interesting staying somewhere else overnight with Jessica and finding out that we were coping fine with that too.
Gabriella