Gracie eats

When we were in the hospital and I only had colostrum, Gracie had a hard time eating. While in the belly, she developed a habit of sucking on her tongue, which prevented her from latching on correctly and persuading the food to come out of mommy. She also bites, and she bites hard.

We had to see the lactation specialist a coupe times and she taught us how we can train our baby to suck correctly by having her suck on our finger and pushing her tongue down when she sucked badly, and giving her a reward when she sucked correctly. Since most of the time she was not sucking right, she wasn't getting much food from me, so the lactation specialist set up an eating plan that I had to try to breastfeed for at least 15 minutes, then pump for 15 minutes, then feed her from a bottle whatever I pumped, plus formula, if I didn't pump enough. The whole ordeal actually took a lot longer than it sounds, and by the time I was done feeding her, it'd be time to start over again almost right when I was finished. Needless to say, I was a very frustrated new mommy.

The good news though is that my milk did start flowing in an abundant supply. Gracie still bites, but she's learned to suck and definitely gets her fill, we can tell from all of her lovely yellow poops that she's practically floating in.

I'm still trying to figure out how to teach her not to bite me, I'm really just hoping that she quits before she gets any teeth, otherwise we'll probably have to stop the nursing sooner than I would like to.

All in all though, Gracie is a great eater. Two more points toward the perfect baby.