Feeding: 3 weeks in

Well, my little man is 3 weeks old today. Not going to lie to you (that would not be my style, to sugar coat) but it has been a long 3 weeks. Anyone who told me that this baby would seem easy compared to twins didn't think about when the twins were born I had no other children and this time I have 4 other children. Yes, I do like I can strap him in a carrier and walk my other kids to the playground, but I would not classify this time around as "easier." At least not yet.

But I digress. This post is supposed to be a feeding update.

Well, last time we chatted, Ben was eating from a Haberman. We stuck with that for the first 5 days or so, but man, he was a fussy eater. Screaming instead of eating. We couldn't figure out if it was gas or reflux or what was going on. One night, in sheer desperation, Stuart looked at me and said, "We are trying the Pigeon."

The Pigeon nipple/valve is a specially designed feeding says the for babies with cleft lip and palate. It looks like a standard bottle nipple,but one side is hard and the other is soft. Basically the hard side goes up in his mouth on the cleft and the soft side goes down on his tongue. His tongue depressing the nipple causes the valve to open which allows milk to flow. It's pretty neat because all the work is on the baby. With the Haberman, the person feeding was also squeezing the milk timed with the baby's movement. Ben is eating so much faster with the pigeon and we haven't looked back. The goal is to keep a feeding under 30 minutes because once you get past the 30 minute mark the baby is basically burning more calories than they are taking in.

He is eating very consistently every 3 hours, morning and night. He's pretty punctual unless he is screaming his head off. :) He also is very gassy, which at times makes eating a super big challenge. But we are figuring him out, the best way to provide relief, and what he likes and doesn't like.

The other big feeding update is that I have decided to stop pumping. This was a very hard decision for me. One that I still am sad about daily. It came down to the point where even though I was really pleased with my milk production (basically not having to supplement at all) I also was tied to the pump every 2.5-3 hours. I was missing out on a lot of what my other kids were up to. And they were missing Mommy. So after a lot of talking, we decided it was really best for the family if Ben was formula fed. I just don't have the margin to be tied to the pump right now. I have nothing against formula, I just also wanted to be able to provide breast milk for my baby. But I also don't want to be a slave to the pump either at the expense of the rest of my family. Ben's belly wasn't really tolerating the formula we were using on a full time basis, so just yesterday we made the switch to a more gentle one, hoping that will help.

This week we also had an appointment with feeding and nutrition at the craniofacial clinic at the children's hospital. It was so helpful and I wish we would have had a consult like this with Spencer at the very beginning. They watched Ben eat to make sure he was doing what he was supposed to, weighed him to see how his weight gain is going, and then answered any questions I had. He weighed in at 9 lbs, 5 oz (up from 8, 15 at birth) and 21.75 inches (20.5 at birth). Basically he is doing exactly what he is supposed to!

We don't meet with the surgeon until March, but the nurse practitioner snapped a photo and sent it to him (don't you love technology sometimes?) and he recommends a device called a Latham prior to his lip repair. A Latham is an extra surgery (it is placed under anesthesia) but has great success getting Ben ready for lip repair. It is an orthodontic device that is placed in his mouth and daily a screw is turned to tighten and close the gap that exists in his gumline and lip. (If you have followed us for very long, you may remember Spencer had taping prior to his lip repair, just trying to bring the two sides of his mouth together.) Lip repair can be expected when Ben is 3-5 months old and palate repair somewhere between 6-9 months. This surgeon does palate surgery a little earlier than some because he likes to get ahead of the game on speech.

So that's our little Ben update for now!


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