My New Best Friend

"Make the pump your best friend," Carol said.

We were sitting in a quiet exam room in the Gunderson Lutheran Pediatrics Clinic, and Carol was the lactation nurse who had just weighed Sam before and after I nursed him. Despite me stripping him down to just a diaper and flicking the bottoms of his feet and blowing on his face, he had slept through most of the 45 minute nursing session and only gained an ounce.

If you skip the pre-natal breastfeeding classes (as many of my friends had told me to) you miss the important fact that babies lose weight before they leave the hospital. And if you're breastfeeding and waiting for your milk to come in, newborns can lose a lot of weight that first week. Sam had been 8 pounds 6 ounces at birth, and by the time we left the hospital 4 days after my c-section, he weighed only 7 pounds 3 ounces. His significant weight loss had triggered the need for daily and then weekly weight checks at the clinic.

"He's not going to do the work, so you're going to have to," Carol said.

Sam was 4 weeks old and he still wasn't up to his birth weight. He was what they call a "sleepy, lazy nurser." He was more interested in sleep than eating. And at that point, quite frankly, so was his Mommy. He was gaining weight, but it was slow, and I was tiring of the amount of work that each feeding required because he just wouldn't stay awake. I was on the verge of giving up and switching to formula.

A friend had told me that breastfeeding was like marriage. It required commitment to stick with it when it was hard because it would be hard at some point. Amen.

I have been thinking about those frequent visits with Carol a lot lately since Eva seems to take after her big brother. She too lost a lot of weight before we left the hospital. She too would rather sleep than eat.

When we walked into the clinic for Eva's first weight check and lactation consultation 3 weeks ago, Carol greeted me in the lobby and smiled and said "How are you?! You look fantastic." It had been almost 3 years since she'd seen me, but she had been a frequent source of support for many weeks. She said it seemed like just yesterday since I'd been there with Sam. We reminisced about those early days, talked about Sam's good-natured temperament, and developed an action plan to get Eva gaining weight more quickly than her big brother had.

"I'm making the pump my best friend already," I told Carol, and she laughed.

We've been in for weight checks several times over the 4 and 1/2 weeks since Eva was born. Every few days Carol and I have discussed the issues and reassessed and adjusted the plan, and every week we have once again reminisced about the early weeks with my other sleepy lazy nurser. Last week Eva's weight had gone up an entire pound from the previous week, but that was because I was doing the work... a lot of pumping and bottle feeding. This week was the first real weight check of just nursing, no bottles. I am thrilled to know that she's up another 11 ounces since last week, and she's now almost 11 pounds. Great news. But I have to admit I was a little disappointed that Carol had the day off today. She wasn't there to once again gush with support and encouragement and assure me that my commitment had paid off, that we were going to make breastfeeding work again, that the pump doesn't have to be my best friend any more, and that my sleepy, lazy nurser has definitely woken up.