I slept until nine this morning, after a rough night with Robert. This meant that I had to start feeding immediately then rush him into the bath, because we had to take him for his second assessment at the Well Baby Clinic.
All this rushing did not help much because we had a long queue in front of us at the clinic. There were many babies and kids of different ages, most were really large and chubby. Robert looked so tiny in comparison. The nurse’s room was crowded and noisy, and I got nervous of the long wait. That is why I immediately started getting Robert ready for weighing and measuring, while sister B was still busy with the patient ahead of us in the queue, and I made the mistake of prematurely taking off his nappy. This, inevitably, resulted in an accident, for which I was ill prepared. My nappy bag contained a spare nappy and an undershirt, but not a complete change of clothing. Fortunately his outer clothes were only a little bit wet.
Sister B did her quick check-up. She said that the navel was healing fine, and pronounced the acne on baby’s face as normal. She also gave me some advice on dealing with gas, and recommended colic drops. Robert’s weight gain was still on the slow side for the second week running; 160g this past week, which means that as of today he has only regained his birth weight. The nurse advised me to make sure that he was getting enough in every feeding, by draining one breast, then switching to the second near the end of the feed, so that baby gets both breasts in every feeding.
It was good to know that baby was okay. Even the discharge from his eye, which is a result of a blocked tear duct has cleared up by itself. His weight gain was within the lower range of what is considered normal, but I was still worried about the quality of my milk and my ability to continue breastfeeding. Ron jokingly suggested that we might need to put Robert on the bottle, but I did not find it funny. From today I started tracking baby’s daily feeds to make sure he gets enough feeding sessions. Tonight we woke up twice for feeding; it was very cold, and the south easter was howling.
The Loskop Diaries 