Gwen's Due Date

Today is Gwen's due date! I've started writing her birth story but it's going to take a while.

Today's appointment with Lillian revealed that Gwen has lost even more weight. She is down to 8 lb 4 oz (her lowest weight was 8 lb 3 oz). So, in addition to the blessed thistle and fenugreek, which I've been taking since yesterday, she wants me to start on domperidone. And the big thing - she loaned me a Supplemental Nursing System.

I am actually feeling really positive about this. Finally, something tangible I can do to make sure my baby is eating enough! We tried out the SNS right away and here's what we found:
- Gwen continued sucking for a solid 15 minutes with no pauses. Usually, even when she is wide awake, she will suck a few times and then gap out and needs to be prompted (sometimes a LOT) to start eating again.
- After the 15 minutes, she pulled herself off the breast (not due to falling asleep, but because she felt full).
- Because I can hear and see the bubbles coming out of the formula bottle, I *know* she is eating, not just sucking for comfort.

I am excited and feeling positive about this not only because I know Gwen will be getting food (and in a way that will still stimulate my breasts to keep producing) but because that feeding lasted FIFTEEN MINUTES. Sometimes it is an hour and a half, and let me tell you, that isn't fun for anyone.

Lillian really thinks that it was the Norovirus causing the problem. Right around the time Gwen should have been really catching on to nursing is when she got the virus, just enough to make her sleepy and less able to nurse. Since then, it's been a cycle: she's too tired to wake up and nurse purposefully, so she doesn't get enough food, so she doesn't get enough energy to wake up and nurse properly, and so on.

About 5 minutes after the SNS feeding, Gwen spat up huge quantities of milk from her mouth AND NOSE, which was the scariest thing I've ever seen, but Janice has persuaded me to see it as positive: babies spit up! This is just more proof that now food is going into her. I'm so pleased that she can now have more food with the same amount of sucking, and hopefully this is just a stopgap until she learns how to eat a little better.