On The Downhill...

We reached the peak of difficulty with breastfeeding and are on the downhill slope. We saw another lactation consultant at Hoag on Thursday and all news was good news. Nate ate almost exactly as much as he needed (based on his weight) in 12 minutes. The lactation consultant said, "You're not going to have a 40 minute eater." She said that we could stop using bottles after feedings but that Dan should feed Nate with a bottle once a day to keep Nate familiar with it so that it's not difficult when I go back to work. She also suggested that I cut back on pumping from 3-4 times per day to 1-2 times. I feel like I have been liberated!

Don't get me wrong, my life still revolves around feeding Nate but it is FAR less time consuming than it had been. I had commented that it was a full time job; I was spending an hour to an hour and a half at each feeding, eight times per day. Now Nate has been eating about every 3.5 hours during the day and every 3.5-5 hours at night, and the feedings take about 30 minutes. He has been awake more since we stopped giving him a bottle after feedings; I'm not exactly sure why. At night it still sometimes takes an hour to feed him and get him back to sleep but it's a lot more relaxing than the hour I was spending feeding, bottle feeding, pumping, and cleaning up. He still sometimes goes back to sleep fairly quickly.

The lactaction consultant also suggested that we show Nate pictures during his awake periods. For the last few days I've been showing him pictures in books and he seems to love it! He will actually scan the pages and he particularly likes pictures with lots of color contrast.

Nate and I made it out of the house on our own Thursday. I'm looking forward to having a bit more freedom now that feedings are going much more smoothly. I also went out on my own on Thursday. Dan stayed home with Nate while I went to a Tesoro end of year get together. It felt weird to leave the house without him; he's been with me nonstop for almost 10 months. But once I got out, it was fine.

Tonight Dan and I are celebrating our three year anniversary. Mom and Dan are coming over to watch Nate while we go for some sushi. We have never really been big on celebrating our anniversary with anything more than a nice dinner and cards to each other. I'm really looking forward to sushi and a Japanese beer!