Wednesday (9th July – Conrad one month old already!) the kids and I went over to the baby weighing clinic at the baptist church in the afternoon. It was chucking it down, so thankfully it wasn’t far to go. Actually, I haven’t done badly in getting Conrad and Jessica out of the house in good time for things – I take them out in the double buggy most mornings, to do some food shopping or to the park to let Jessica have a go on the swings while Conrad snoozes away in the shade – and they seem to time themselves nicely feeding-wise. Especially Conrad, who hasn’t got a real routine yet (i.e. no fixed times for feeds).
The health visitor saw us straight away as there was no one waiting (possibly the weather had put people off). Conrad now weighs 5.3 kilos (11lb 10 1/2oz), which is a little bit above his line on the graph, so there’s no worries about him not feeding well, even if he does throw up a lot. As the breastfeeding advisor had done, the health visitor suggested trying nipple shields, but she also said that she thought seeing a cranial osteopath would probably not be worth our while, as it wouldn’t really help Conrad’s particular situation. She also said that ‘to be honest, when I have seen babies with chins like Conrad’s, the mums have had to give up on breastfeeding because it simply hasn’t worked’. I had a feeling she had tried not to discourage me from keeping on trying before, as she saw how keen I was, but this time maybe she felt that she could speak more directly and openly. ‘You must be exhausted’, she said, when I admitted to not sleeping any more that 3-4 hours per night still. ‘Take at least one or two nights when you don’t express, just to try and catch up on some more sleep!’.
When I tried using nipple shields, I felt encouraged at first – Conrad seemed to feed, staying on for half an hour, with obvious gulping sounds from his throat and stomach and not frustratingly pulling away. But afterwards he still wanted almost a whole bottle of milk and I was able to express quite a lot… So feeding through the nipple shield didn’t seem to have been very efficient. Which didn’t really surprise me: there must be a reason for there being so much emphasis on using the correct technique when breastfeeding, and Conrad obviously still wasn’t using that. So that is a no go too…
The health visitor had said that there were a couple of people she could phone for potentially some additional advice. But the news wasn’t great – she hadn’t been able to get any new suggestions, only what I had already tried. She said to ‘keep going’ and she’d see me next week, but I was starting to doubt my persistence. Conrad’s still not latching on after a month of trying and the problem is physical, something that neither he or I can do anything about. I started to feel more and more like it was becoming a case of grasping at straws.
Ian and I had a chat about the situation and I made the difficult decision to give up on trying to breastfeed Conrad. Over a month on, I can’t afford losing this much sleep expressing, as I need to be awake enough to be a proper mum to him and his sister. When I was expressing for Jessica, I remember jealously watching other people playing with her, making her giggle, being too tired and busy expressing, sterilising, etc., to have fun with her myself. I don’t want that to be the situation now, especially that I now have two little kids that need me to be there for them. I want to be a proper mum, not just some robotic feeding machine.
Thursday afternoon, three of the mums from the post-natal group came over, two of them to meet Conrad for the first time. He was so admired and passed from one pair of arms to other – fed by Nicola and then Paula before he got a cuddle from Lisa. It’s lovely how excited all the mums in the group have been for us, both in anticipation of Conrad’s arrival and now. Several of them have boys and I can’t help hoping that, when they’re all a few years older and the age gap maybe not so much of an issue, Conrad might be playing with them too.
Last night was a bit awful, with Conrad not wanting to settle for most of the night. It’s horrid when I don’t know what’s wrong and can’t help him and he just keeps crying. Ian went downstairs to try and get some sleep on the living room floor. I know this is all normal for little babies, but it’s strange how some nights seem worse than others – if I only knew why, I could hopefully do something about it, but I guess we and Conrad are not unique in any way. We’ll get through it, I have no doubt about that.
Today I experienced that thing which a lot of mums say ‘makes you think it’s all worth it’: Conrad smiled at me for the very first time! It wasn’t one of those windy smiles, where the eyes aren’t involved, but he was looking straight at me, I smiled at him and then he smiled back. As it happened, I was in the process of taking a few photos of him using my mobile phone, as I wanted one of him for a wallpaper, so I managed to capture his very first smile on camera – not at the greatest quality resolution, but still.
Gabriella