Nursing

Each of my children have been fairly different and had different challenges when it came to nursing. Hannah would nurse forever at first and I had to learn when to cut her off because she would never opt to end a nursing. When she was a month old, she got very fussy during nursing and it was a bit stressful. Once I got her on a schedule that ended. My guess is that my inexperienced self was nursing her too much, and once we established a schedule she did much much better with nursing altogether.

Genna was a super fast nurser and only needed to eat on one side. I thought she needed to feed on both sides and would try to get her to. Then she would puke all over me in the middle of nursing on the second side. Once I changed to just one side per feeding, she did great. I could not nurse her laying down though because she would spit up a lot. Her best position, in fact, was as upright as possible.

Isaac had a tiny problem with sucking his bottom lip in, but that was easily fixed. He did great until my milk came in. The morning my milk came in it took me all morning to get him to latch. Then all was well until he got a sore throat and put on a three day nursing strike which is concerning when he wouldn't take a bottle ever either. I was syringe feeding him whenever I could and pumping to keep up my supply.

Drew nursed beautifully the first time right after he was born and then we had some problems. It would take me an hour to get him to nurse for just a few minutes. He would open his mouth just fine, but would not suck. For a good 24 hours he didn't nurse much at all. This caused a bit more weight loss than they like to see. The lactation consultant was amazing (the best part of my whole hospital experience!) and discovered Drew has a high palate. The palate is where the sucking reflex is and so that is why he wouldn't suck. She worked with him and me for about 20 minutes or so and that really helped. For the first week, I had to get him sucking on my finger first and then express some milk . Then I would switch him to the breast to get him to suck, but now he is nursing very well, sucking and latching on his own. Within the last few days he has begun to spit up large quantities of milk, similar to Genna. So I am trying to reduce him to just one side for a few days and see what happens. You think on your fourth baby you've seen it all, but all babies are different and there is always something new.