At the weight check today she had gained 4oz in the last 3 days which puts her at 11lb. I made the mistake of saying something like, "well ok, we'll just keep up feeding for longer periods" out loud and the nurse kinda freaked out and started asking me all the questions like "why would you need to do that?" and I was trying to explain things to her. When I mentioned that Hadley was sleeping 11 hours at night she again, freaked out like she shouldn't be sleeping that long, to which I immediately said, "If I wake her up, she'll be too tired to eat anyways, so I just let her sleep." I had been feeding her for about 30 minutes, and the doctor suggested supplementing with a bottle after nursing to see if she was still hungry. I was a little leery about doing that because I was afraid she'd get even more lazy and only take the bottle. So I decided to try to see if she'd eat for longer than 30 minutes. She kind of did but it was a bit of work, however she didn't want the bottle after eating for 45 minutes or more so I thought that was a better option. After seeing she gained weight with these longer feedings I figured we'd just keep it up, as crazy as it seems to feed her for close to an hour.
The doctor called later this afternoon and said he was glad to see she put on some weight, I was filled with relief. He then followed it with (this is a summary) "So we need to fit one more feeding in during the day since she's sleeping so much at night, which probably means feeding her every 3 hours during the day (we were doing every 5) because sometimes babies sleep so long because they don't get enough calories and they go into a calorie depravation mode and sleep." At these words my heart sank and I started having thoughts that I had deprived my baby of calories/nutrition for the last two months because I thought she was just a good sleeper. "We also need to have you come in for weekly weight checks for the next few weeks to stay on top of this and make sure she doesn't fall behind again." We do like our doctor but this certainly has been a struggle....she seems happy, developmentally on track, and she is growing, just not very much in the weight area so it's hard to see what the big deal is.
I think this week, until the next weight check, we're going to just stick with longer eating times and see what that does, if it doesn't work then I may have to pump and we'll just do strictly bottles....I'm not sure I'm ready to do formula since we've worked so hard at this breast feeding thing. Although it's hard to know what's best for Hadley, like should we just do bottles so she'll get more and we won't have to question how much she's getting? Aye, aye, aye (is that how you spell it??).
On the rice cereal front, we finally tried it tonight and she did ok. Her little tongue kept pushing it out so I think we'll take it slow until she gets her tongue working right to keep the food in. She seemed to like the taste, at least she didn't show any dislike to it. I'll put pictures up on facebook later.
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