Without going into massive amounts of boring detail, we've had a rough couple of weeks with Avery learning how to breastfeed. Since we left the hospital, we've had 4 appointments with lactation consultants, have an appointment with an ENT specialist, and are trying all kinds of things to try to get this baby to get this whole thing down.
The first sign that something was wrong was INTENSE pain, worse than labor and delivery, and resulting trauma to me. We think what's going on is Avery is tongue tied and can't suck right so she's more or less cheating and ends up chomping more than sucking. Plus, I'm overproducing and it's too much for her. We're trying lots of things to correct both of these, including possibly clipping the frenulum under her tongue, but she'll still have to learn to suck correctly. For now, we're mostly giving her bottles that force her to eat correctly and I'm pumping. That means lots and lots of washing bottles and parts and me spending about 50% of my time directly devoted to feeding this kid. We haven't had to give her formula and we're praying that sometime soon everything falls into place.
Of course, on top of that, I also had a UTI a few days after we got home that wasn't responding to antibiotics, so resulted in a trip to urgent care and maddening pharmacy experience. Carter also had a trip to urgent care this morning for a rash that will keep him out of daycare. His school is also closed next week, which makes it tough to do everything we're trying to do with miss Avery and Seth went back to work this week.
We're really thankful for friends and family. We really couldn't have made it this far without them. My mom came over and spent the night to get up with Carter last Monday so we could just sleep for a few hours between Avery's feedings. I'm also personally thankful that no one is here to judge the state of my kitchen floor or evaluate the choice of meals Carter is getting. Sometimes dinner standards just have to be lowered.
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