Mother's instinct on feeding their new born baby....

When it comes to feeding your baby, listen to your motherly instinct. If you want to breast feed, bottle feed, formula, syringe it is all up to you.. Never feel that you should do it the way others have told you to do it… If you are having trouble

 Here is why I write this advice…..  

 When my son was born he had trouble latching onto my nipple. My boobs were bigger then his tiny little head and he was being smothered…

 The doctors tried showing me over and over again prodding and poking at my breasts. How ever my son was still having trouble breast feeding and I was not producing enough milk because he was not sucking to be able to make more, and he was losing weight. I was sent me home and told me to keep trying, Two days later a nurse came to our house for a check up and Francis was born 5 pounds 14 ounces and had lost a lot of weight in the hospital and during the two days he was home. We were concerned and asked about formula…    

The nurse said don’t give him the bottle because he will not learn to suck properly and he won’t be able  to switch to breast if you try, so she gave me a syringe with a little tiny hose like thing stuck on the end and I feed him formula through a syringe for a week. As hard as this was I persisted because that is what the nurse said to do even though he still did not seem to be getting enough, and was not putting on the weight he was supposed to, he spat a lot of it back out, was crying even more. Poor little guy seemed to be starving.

  My mother kept saying to me, give him the bottle he is not feeding properly and as harsh as she was she said you are starving him… And I kept saying but the nurse said blah, blah, blah.. I wanted to try the bottle but as I was told not to by a nurse, I did not, and of course when you are a first time mother you tend to listen to every thing the nurse or doctors say. I know I did..

  At the end of that week I was at my whit’s end, tired, upset and getting angry at myself.

We went to my father in-laws for dinner where there was a bunch of mothers. I proceeded to sit down and do the old formula through the syringe trick (I had a bottle as that is how I got the formula in the syringe. One of the mothers looked at me and asked me what I was doing, I told her.. She said just give him the bottle Jess, he is hungry and he does not seem to be drinking as much as he is spitting out.. But I told my story about the nurse again. Then another mother came up to me and repeated what the other mother had said. In the end I got tired of all the mothers coming over and telling me what to do; I was getting upset so handed over Francis to the other mothers with the bottle and formula and walked away.

  I came back 10 minutes later to find a very happy and well fed little baby sitting in the arms of my mother. And I just felt horrible because from that moment I realised I was starving my baby. When I took hold of him I really enjoyed that moment, as he was not crying and neither was I. And so from then on I used the bottle, and three weeks after that with a little coaxing I was able to get him on to the breast and breast fed until he was 8 months (stopped because of teeth).