Breastfeeding progress!

Three weeks from tomorrow Carter and I will fly to NC for two weeks. I'd really like him to be mostly breastfeeding by then, as the idea of lugging around all my pumping supplies and extra milk and bottles from relative to relative is SO unappealing. My goal is that he'll be nursing as exclusively as possible, getting two supplemental bottles a day, and I'll be pumping just twice a day.

In order to see if it would even be possible, I decided to try to cut out supplementing at night and see how that went. I tried it the first time on Sunday night: Carter got his last bottle at 10:00 pm, and then was offered the breast every time he was hungry overnight. I offered him a bottle at 6:30 the next morning, expecting him to guzzle down several ounces, but he didn't! He drank about an ounce and fell asleep again.

We've now had three nursing-only nights in a row, and it's worked just fine. So yay! With any luck I won't need that bottle warmer in the bedroom much longer. I still have to figure out a pumping strategy for overnight, and I'm going to talk to the IBCLC about that.

Since we went nursing-only at night, Carter's been a lot more interested in nursing during the day. He's spent a LOT more time nursing, in fact, and seems to be almost continuously attached to a boob. From what I've been able to learn from folks online, this is pretty normal newborn behavior, so he's just catching up. I had expected that might happen, too -- he gets 1.5-2 ounces when he nurses, so he'll have to nurse more often than he would take a bottle (from which he'll take 3 ounces). It's shifted our days around a bit, and I think I'm going to be a lot more house-bound for the next couple of weeks, but it will totally be worth it!

He had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon yesterday, and that went well. The surgeon was surprised at how much bigger he is now. He's gained at least a pound and a half since his surgery, which is pretty crazy. He gained half a pound while Mom was here, and now weighs 8 pounds, 12 ounces! His surgical wounds are healing well, and the swelling has mostly gone down. Great news!

I usually take a bottle when we go out anywhere, but yesterday I decided not to. I wanted to force myself to nurse him while we were out. It went well, actually, though I had to cut him a little short so we could head home before traffic got too bad, which made him a little cranky in the car. ;-)

Here are some pictures of him taken in the last couple of days. Those clothes are all NB sizes, and you can see that he's filling them up pretty well! It won't be long before we'll have to break out the 0-3 month clothes...