What the heck is going on? This child seems to be on a nursing strike...kind of. Every few hours she'll "cross the picket line" and go in to nurse with gusto only to pull of a few minutes later (3 minutes to be exact) crying or refusing to continue nursing. I switch her to the other side and she does the same thing. She has never been one to nurse for an extended length of time, but 3 minutes on each side? I can't see how she's possibly getting enough. She doesn't seem super hungry (although she does eat her solids like a "Morta de fam" (I have no idea if I spelled that right, but that's what my mom called her and I guess it means piglet in "I-talian" slang). She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth: rubber ducky, toy car, my keys, her bib, Velcro. But when it comes to nursing, all bets are off. It is a struggle to get her to nurse for more than 3 or 4 minutes on each breast and I'm worried that she's not getting enough milk. If she took the bottle, I wouldn't worry so much because I'd be able to supplement whatever she wasn't getting at the boob with expressed breast milk in the bottle, but we all know how THAT story goes. It is so weird how she starts to nurse like she's famished and within minutes it is like I'm force-feeding her the way she acts. I have read online that it may be because the flow is fast to start and then slows down to a trickle so she gets impatient and just becomes that much more efficient at nursing. I really hope that this is the case because I would hate to think that I'm "starving" my child because there's not enough milk and she just doesn't feel like waiting around for the second let-down. I hope this strike ends soon.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Nursing Strike
What the heck is going on? This child seems to be on a nursing strike...kind of. Every few hours she'll "cross the picket line" and go in to nurse with gusto only to pull of a few minutes later (3 minutes to be exact) crying or refusing to continue nursing. I switch her to the other side and she does the same thing. She has never been one to nurse for an extended length of time, but 3 minutes on each side? I can't see how she's possibly getting enough. She doesn't seem super hungry (although she does eat her solids like a "Morta de fam" (I have no idea if I spelled that right, but that's what my mom called her and I guess it means piglet in "I-talian" slang). She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth: rubber ducky, toy car, my keys, her bib, Velcro. But when it comes to nursing, all bets are off. It is a struggle to get her to nurse for more than 3 or 4 minutes on each breast and I'm worried that she's not getting enough milk. If she took the bottle, I wouldn't worry so much because I'd be able to supplement whatever she wasn't getting at the boob with expressed breast milk in the bottle, but we all know how THAT story goes. It is so weird how she starts to nurse like she's famished and within minutes it is like I'm force-feeding her the way she acts. I have read online that it may be because the flow is fast to start and then slows down to a trickle so she gets impatient and just becomes that much more efficient at nursing. I really hope that this is the case because I would hate to think that I'm "starving" my child because there's not enough milk and she just doesn't feel like waiting around for the second let-down. I hope this strike ends soon.
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I'm sure you're not "starving" Izzy. It sounds like she gets a lot at the very beginning, so it should be enough to sustain her.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!