I became a mom on April 1, 2012. My 30th birthday of all days. After 2 days of induction, 2 shots of pain meds, an epidural, 3+ hours of pushing, and a vacuum delivery, my little girl was here. I held for only a minute before she was whisked away to NICU and would not get to see her until several hours later. It was a difficult time. No one had told me that the risks of an induction included a placental infection that could threaten my daughter's life. Or that such a long labor, most of it with her posterior, would lead to muscle tension, torticollis, and issues with a weak suck. Not that there was really a good choice not to have the induction - I was showing signs of cholestasis and diagnostic test results wouldn't be available for a week. Knowing what I do now, perhaps things might have been different. But not likely.
We brought A home on Easter, and for months battled with slow weight gain and even an initial weight loss. I consulted both hospital lactation consultants, and neither could figure out what's wrong. I was nursing her constantly, and was simply told this was normal, even after the 6 week mark where most babies have more defined eating schedules. We finally decided to start supplementing, since we didn't know what else to do to get A's weight where it needed to be. I bought an at-breast supplementer to try to keep the supplementation from undercutting my attempt to nurse. I was happy with that at first. A started to gain weight, and supposedly the supplementer would help increase my supply. But unlike what I was told, the supplements A needed didn't decrease - if anything she seemed to need more. Something else was wrong, and I had hit my limit on where internet research could get me. So we hired an independent lactation consultant. Only then were we told that A had a posterior tongue tie, as well as the above conditions and weak suck. Never once did I think A had a weak suck - it seemed fairly strong to my untrained self. But all the strength was in the lips - her high palate and lack of tongue mobility prevented her from effectively removing the milk, which meant she had a weak suck. This was completely missed by the two hospital lactation consultants, who never once did a weighted feeding or checked her suck. At 3 months, after my supply had already dwindled since my body didn't think it was needed, we finally had an answer as to why A wasn't gaining, why we weren't able to cut back on supplementing, and why I couldn't ever seem to pump much - the milk simply wasn't there, and what was there A had major issues getting out. But that wasn't all, the supplementer itself wasn't a solution - her suck was so weak she was burning more calories trying to get the pumped milk or formula out of the supplementer than she was gaining from the feeding. And on top of that, I was only supplementing about half of what I should be, since I was assuming that A was taking more from me than she actually was.
While it might have been good knowing what was wrong, the road to get A healthy seemed long and wearying. This blog is a record of that journey and beyond, in part because in searching for answers I realized there wasn't a good place to find this information online, and in part because writing used to be cathartic for me.
