So, I figured I'd come out from my study-sleep-ride-the-bus hole to let you guys know how breastfeeding is going. All of y'all who couldn't care less, sorry, and Matt will be back to post more cute pictures in two shakes of Hosea's butt. In the meantime, here's the scoop:

The short story is that it's going pretty well. After my last post, I had continued working myself in a frenzy to get him 100% breastmilk fed. Domperidone! Fenugreek! Gallons of water! Visualisation! Pumping 19 gajillion times a day! (Well, the last one was nice 'cause I could chat with my L.A. buddies online at my 2, 4, and 6:30 a.m. feedings.) All that work was leaving me feeling drained (ha) and resentful, not to mention reeking of mapley-curry-ness and peeing every 30 minutes. Then, the Thursday before last, I just hit a wall. I realised that all the effort I was making was making me feel worse instead of better, and was cutting into the limited time and energy I had for my son.

I decided to let the 100% thing go, to stop worrying about making the ounces of milk I could produce line up with how much he wanted to eat. Instead, I decided on the Patented Jeni Price Method of Breastfeeding- The Apathy Approach.

When I am home, I breastfeed him. If he's just eaten when I get home, I pump. If I have time when I'm at school (more than a 30 minute break), I pump. If I've just pumped at home and he's hungry, I give him a bottle. And so on. With this method, Matt gives him one or two bottles a day and I do the rest of the feeding. So far, we've only had to do about 3-4 bottles of formula a week, with the rest of the bottles using expressed milk.

I know that this is different than my original goal, but you know what? I'm okay with that. He seems to eat enough (um, 12.5-lb. baby?) when he's nursing as well as when he's bottle-feeding. Also, we've introduced an extremely limited use of pacifiers since his desire to suck has shot through the roof in the past week or so. Basically, if we know he's not hungry, and he's fussing and looking for his hands to suck on, we'll offer him the pacifier for 15-20 minutes. Thus far, it doesn't seem to negatively affect his nursing skillz.

Wednesday night, Hosea went down at about 9:40 p.m., and we followed him in at about 10:30. I settled in to bed, thinking I'd have a good two or maybe three hours before he'd want to get up and nurse. When I awoke, my thoughts went as follows:
1. Man, my boobs are killing me.
2. Weird, they feel really...full?
3. What time is it?
4. What? Does the clock say 4:05?
5. Is my baby still alive?

He was. He just slept for 7 and a half hours! WOOO! Thursday and Friday nights weren't quite as good, but there were still 5 or 6 hour stretches in there. That's what I call a positive trend, people. I'm not getting too hopeful, but it has been nice to get a few longer snoozes in!


p.s the title of this post was shamelessly borrowed from Julie of A Little Pregnant.