Me!! MY last child (#4) spat me out at 5 months, the little wretch. She is still very much AP though...very much. She just refused to breast feed anymore. I'm almost over it... I don';t tear up anymore when I think of it!
I'm so glad to know there are more of you out there....I had such a hard time trying in the beginning--Brittany was tongue-tied, refluxed, was a bit preemie and super jaundiced in the beginning--I had to give her a bottle or she wouldn't have eaten. We actually had to set a timer for every three hours to wake us up at night to feed her because she didn't get up on her own. Those who say there is no such thing as nipple-confusion really don't know what they're talking about--if only I had known, I could have tried something differently.
I a mostly upset that our LC did not catch the tied tongue even though we asked for a check
we tried literally every BF-ing gadget there is the nipple shields the feeder thingie with the tube you tape to your nipple, sorta looks like a breast milk IV only without a needle...we, I should say *I* pumped constantly and finger fed (finger in ds mouth for suckling while squirting BM in with syringe) a month went by and I was still stuck to the pump.
At this point I was spending more time with the pump than with ds and decided to go to bottle...he is a healthy little man in spite of it all and he still got some BM
I don't know if what we do can be properly termed APing. We joke about 'attachment parenting by accident', I was home for the first 4.5 months after Molly was born and from a couple of days old she loved the me-tai and fussed if we weren't in eye-shot, so we just kept (keep) her near us most of the time because it seems to make us all happiest. On the other hand, she sleeps in a crib in the nursery because she hated cosleeping from day 1 and every time we've tried it since all three of us have gotten lousy sleep and very little cuddling.
But if that counts as AP, or semi-AP, add me to the list? Between her slightly early arrival (37 weeks), bad jaundice, and my meager milk supply she dropped a pound off her 6 lb 5 oz. birth weight in the first four days, and started formula supplements then. She never did learn to latch properly (the LC at the hospital said something about weak massiters), and I pumped for three weeks before I just dried up. [ETA: Notice how I still have to justify it? This entire paragraph didn't need to be here, but I felt like I had to explain why I don't BF, like I'm chanting 'not my fault, not my fault!']
I still get flashes of awful guilt about not BFing, start running through the lists of things I coulda/shoulda done to keep her on the breast. Sometimes holding her for a feeding I get all teary and start apologizing to her. But she's thriving, healthy as a horse, developmentally on schedule and blah blah blah. What it comes to is that she doesn't seem to be suffering any from our bizarre half-crunchy/half-scientific approach to parenting, we all three muddle along and are mostly happy. So that counts for something, right?
Oh....Well at least you all got the chance to at least try. I had to start back on my anti seizure meds the day DD was born..
There wasnt enough conculsive evidence to convince me that she would not be exposed to it through the milk, and I was not going to risk it.
Congrats to all you moms who made it.
Because of meds and other issues i have been unable to increase my supply, and well....Sara simply hates my boobs...so im right there with ya....(she is however on Milk Bank Breast Milk)
I think even though we were unable to breastfeed, or if we don't co-sleep (we don't because we are all such light sleepers, none of us would get any sleep! LOL) being an AP parent is much more of responding instinctly to our babies, learning what makes them unique and letting them teach us how to parent them, being kinder, gentler parents. At least to me that;s what it's all about. I still feel like I justify why we coulnd't do it--heck, I even took medications to boost my milk supply and was running to lactation consultants when she was 8 weeks old trying to get us on the right track, her tongue-tie issue was brushed aside until I finally sought out a special lactation consultant group that sent me straight to an oral surgeon--that was when she was 8 weeks old. I try to think of it as we are constantly evaluating how we are as parents and how we can be better ones, that's just human nature. That being said, I do feel inferior sometimes when I see someone else BFing or if I have to give her a bottle in public. I too hold her when she gets her bottle as if she's nursing and in the beginning I would cry when I did that and would talk to her and tell her that I was sorry, etc. I figure my guilt as a parent was just beginning, lol. I am ok with it now, but I do still wish it would have worked out. And if we ever have another child--poor thing will be strapped to me and won't leave the hospital until we can do it! LOL.
Does anyone get the comment when their baby starts teething--"I bet your glad now she isn't nursing"--how annoying! And the worst part is--it's my mom--she doesn't mean it in a bad way, I know, but really--do we have to bring it up at all?! LOL
Does anyone get the comment when their baby starts teething--"I bet your glad now she isn't nursing"--how annoying! And the worst part is--it's my mom--she doesn't mean it in a bad way, I know, but really--do we have to bring it up at all?! LOL
Oh yeah--absolutely!! I tried to keep up with pumping for the first 3 months and I went to 2 LLL meetings hoping I would find someone with a magic answer as to how to get her to nurse. They were totally ok with me feeding her by bottle and they really sympathized with me. I'm sure that is the exception rather than the rule...
I'm so friggin glad to hear I'm not the only one facing these challenges. I nurse & want to cry, I know he's not getting to the milk for some reason. I bottle feed him and keep the whinin' going, because I *so* didn't want to go there...then I pump & keep on snifflin' cuz I HATE that machine but I want him to have as much breastmilk as he can get. And we won't even talk about how sorry I feel for myself as I'm poppin' reglan & fenugreek, chugging mother's milk tea & my ever-popular orange juice/brewer's yeast slurry. Yeesh. But I love my baby & will keep on keepin' on as long as I can get my meager supply to hold out...<<<hugz>>> to all who supplement &/or can't bf, cuz it just bites.
Any other AP non-BFing mama's out there?
I don';t tear up anymore when I think of it!
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