Feeding baby

As you will be aware from previous posts I really wanted to breast feed baby M.  However as many things with my pregnancy and labour not everything goes to plan.

I felt that I was as prepared as I could be with regards to breast feeding and I knew I had support from  community breast support network but I couldn't prepare for the fact that baby M would be born tongue tied.  Mr M was tongue tied when he was little, he had the procedure when he was 6 years old to remove the tongue tie.  Things have progressed since then and they now try to do the procedure within weeks of the baby being born.

I persevered with breast feeding for 2 days, baby M was getting more and more frustrated and was finding it difficult to latch on due to the tongue tie.  When he did latch on sometimes he would latch on great, other times he was just sucking my nipple which was getting really painful.  I had a visit from my community support and she was brilliant but could only give me advice.  After a long discussion with Mr M we decided it was in baby's best interest to bottle feed.  When we gave him that first bottle he guzzled it down, poor guy must have been so hungry!! I felt bad that I couldn't stick with breast feeding but I had to think about baby M.  I know breast is best but it wasn't best for baby M at that time.

We have been using Aptamil, due to baby M being tongue tied he still guzzles his bottle at times and sometimes spurts milk out the side of his mouth.  We take longer to feed him than "normal" apparently due to winding as he does take in a lot of air, we are hoping that once he has the procedure for tongue tie this will improve.  He has been assessed and deemed appropriate for the procedure however due to him putting on weight he isn't at the top of the list so he will have to wait a few weeks.

Bottle feeding has it's pros and cons, we are able to share the feeding which Mr M loves however it isn't available on demand which causes Baby M to get upset and whilst we try to plan ahead as much as we can and be prepared he still has to wait sometimes.  We make each bottle when needed as per government recommendations.  Whilst he does get gas I am reluctant to change his milk until we have had the procedure for tongue tie.  Plus as our health visitor states, sometimes these milks are a gimmick will they even work?!?

Baby M does seem to store up his poo, I'm not sure whether this is him or the formula, he gets upset when he needs a bowel movement, I wish he could understand us when we say to him to poo more often.

The brilliant news is that Baby M is putting on weight, he's in the 25th centile (all gobbledygook to me) but he is gaining weight as he should and we are all happy with his progress!! What more could we ask for than a healthy, fit and growing baby boy