Allie has started sleeping longer and longer during nighttime. Between midnight and 9am, she was at about 4 hours between feedings in her 2nd week, then in her 3rd week, she went to 5.5 hours one night, 6.5 the next. We were elated. The 3rd night was last nite. She finished a feeding at about 12:30am, and didn’t have her next one until about 7:15am; another nice long stretch…except this feeding was odd.

I had noticed a couple of days ago that often, instead of latching on right away, she’d smack around and have trouble getting suction started. It almost seemed like she didn’t really want to feed, but I don’t feed her unless she’s crying and showing signs of rooting, so I know she was hungry. What was this, nipple confusion? We’d been using the pacifier a lot since being told we could and should. So last nite, she had a harder time latching on, then things went normally for a few minutes, and she pulled off herself in frustration and cried, hard. It was an angry hungry cry, as if I were depriving her of feeding but I wasn’t. We switched sides, and she went awhile, and the same thing happened. Mr. W suggested maybe I wasn’t producing enough milk anymore. Just to see, after she was off and having her fit, I left her with Mr. W (where she cried and was unable to sleep until 2:30 am) and pumped. I got something like 5mL out from both sides collectively, which is ridiculous. What happened to the days when I was producing 2.5+ oz per side? (30mL = 1 oz) I thought about what I’d been doing differently.

When I pumped behind my feedings, my milk supply increased so much that I was engorged and leaked often, and Allie couldn’t drink enough to relieve me all the way. I stopped pumping and made her go 5 minutes on each side to relieve both sides somewhat, hoping my body would realize I was overproducing and cut back. The last couple of days, she was going up to 8-9 minutes each side, which was odd as usually 5 minutes were sufficient to get her in a food coma. After not feeding for over 6 hours overnight (the equivalent of missing 1-2 feedings in the day), I woke up engorged, a rare feeling these days. She latched and fed just fine, went 8 minutes on one side, then after I switched her, she went only a few minutes on the other before dropping off in the old comatose pattern. I got up and pumped out the rest, and got 18mL from the one she spent little time on, 5mL from the side she started on. Wow. I know she didn’t drink 2.5 oz (75mL) in the time she spent, so my production is WAY down.

I guess I’m going to have to find a happy medium. Pumping too much = too engorged within a couple of days. Cessation of pumping = insufficient milk supply within a few days. Oops. I’m going to try pumping daily, but just in the morning, and see if that helps. If nothing else, I can slowly build up enough pumped milk to supplement again if need be. 🙁

Her other problem: pooping. She only poops once a day or so (instead of the guideline of up to 6 a day), and often skips days. She pooped once yesterday, but skipped the 3 days before that. I’d jokingly called her a “pea-shu,” the mythical Chinese creature with the head of a dragon and the body of a lion, depicted in statuettes with its mouth open and used for luck in bringing in money, as it eats but has no butthole to poop out what it takes in (yeah, you read me right). The doctors and nurses are unconcerned as her abdomen is soft and she’s passing gas, so that means she doesn’t have a blockage problem; they assume she’s just using up all the nutrition she gets and creates little waste product. But she strains and sometimes cries from pain or frustration trying to push out gas, so Mr. W is thinking she doesn’t know how to poop. The doctor said to help her feel her anal muscles by bicycling her legs and then raising her knees to her chest for a few seconds in cycles as she lays on her back, but doing this often makes her spit up. When she’s empty enough for us to do this, of course she’s hungry and crying to be fed. So now I have a baby who has forgotten how to latch, and hasn’t learned how to poop. What the heck.