Breast Feeding Help Coming

     Quinlan is continuing to develop his ability to suck and grasp. He is sucking at his fist, grasping at the bottle, and even holding a rattle (if you place it in his hand, of course). He is also turning his head side to side when propped up in the boppy pillow to look at the rattle when mommy shakes it. We are all very excited at these developments.
     The one area where Quinlan and mom are still struggling is breast feeding. Quinlan seems to have taken quite well to the fast pace feeding from the bottle and is becoming less inclined to really work for his food at the breast. He becomes frustrated at times and refuses to latch, or gets tired midway through and falls asleep with milk dribbling out of his mouth. After some significant regression earlier this week, mom had a mini-meltdown on Wednesday AM. This resulted in 2 good things: an honest discussion with dad about mom's anxieties and fear of inadequacy, and the procurement of a lactation specialist to come Monday.

    Mom also consulted the internet and started trying some of the suggestions she found with some notable improvement. Overall there seem to be lots of suggestions and advice to get babies onto the bottle from the breast, usually in preparation for mom's return to work, but there was significantly less information available about the reverse.
     Mom feels good that some of these new suggestions are helping: like giving him the bottle first for 1 ounce then trying him on the breast and slowing down his bottle feeds by giving him the breast or binky to suckling in between 1 ounce offerings. However, it will be good to have a professional come in and observe the two of us and offer modifications or weaning schedules.
     To the right is a picture of Quinlan after breast feeding only 5 minutes.