What can I say? She is her father's daughter. ;-)
My child just loves to nurse. LOVES it. She is a voracious eater. And she wants food every 2 or so hours (I try to hold her off to closer to three hours, but only as long as I can distract her easily).
The good news is that I like to nurse her. I really do. Now that I'm over the initial hurdle and the subsequent run-in between the Velcro on the Swaddle Me and my nipple, I find the whole thing relaxing. So I don't mind feeding her every time she wants it. I do have two issues, though.
~Sometimes she drinks me dry, and I can't keep up with her desires
~Sometimes she's not eating, but using me as a human pacifier
J-money won't take a pacifier. But she has a strong sucking instinct. Sometimes she can find her thumb, but not often. At 6 weeks old she's just not that coordinated yet. So she begs for mama.
I know, I know - I should say NO to the comfort nursing and only let her at the boob when she's truly hungry. The sad thing is that I can't tell the difference. She starts to cry, to suck on her hands, and when you hold her she roots all over your neck, arms, whatever is nearest her mouth (you should see the hickey she gave her dad - that was SO funny). But she does all of these things whether she is hungry or just wants to suck. I don't know until she latches on. If she goes for 15 solid minutes with deep sucking and swallowing, I know she was legitimately hungry. If she lightly suckles for a minute or two and then falls asleep, I can only assume she wanted a bit of comfort to lull her into sleep. But the lead-in is always the same, and I don't want to starve my baby if she is hungry.
I try to use the clock as a guide, but that has betrayed me several times. There have been times when 30 minutes after she's done eating she begs for more, and I tried to distract her. When I eventually caved, she ate like she hadn't eaten for days. And I felt like a terrible mom for making my baby go hungry. There have been other times where she doesn't ask for it for a good 3 hours (usually one of the miraculous times that she naps), and when I offer her food on her begging, she half-heartedly suckles away, no swallowing, just sucking for the fun of it.
Sadly, I have not found any resources for helping her learn to accept a pacifier or find her thumb. Lots for removing those crutches, but none for encouraging them. Of course, once I go back to work she's not going to have any nipples to suck on (or mommies to sucker into letting her comfort nurse), so I guess she'll learn the hard way then.
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1 comment:
Young babies have a strong sucking instinct, and need to do it a lot. My son Zaden found his fingers around 8 weeks or so, which helped. I also felt like a human pacifier in the beginning, but it does lessen over time (it won't necessarily become a habit), plus from my understanding, the extra suckling helps stimulate milk production. Using a pacifier too much can actually reduce how much they feed (because their sucking desire is satisfied by the pacifier) and therefore how much milk you produce.
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