Thursday, April 3, 2008

Surgery and fasting; breastfeeding update

One of the things I've been worried about for Carter's surgery was the fasting prior to anesthesia. For adults it's typically NPO after midnight, which sounded fairly horrific to me. I mean seriously, can you imagine not feeding a hungry baby for hours when he's crying? And then strapping him into the car seat, taking him to a hospital, and handing him over to strangers who will poke and prod him, all the while his tummy is hurting and no one will help him?

So, no. I can't imagine. I was starting to get really nervous about it, but a bit of research online has eased my fears. Kellymom.com is a very good site full of evidence-based information about breastfeeding and parenting, and they have a page dedicated to breastfeeding and infant surgery here. From that site:

The most current studies say that babies can safely nurse 3-4 hours prior to surgery. Breastfeeding may be safely resumed when your baby leaves the recovery room.

That likely means we'll be able to feed him just before we leave the house in the morning. He can go four hours without nursing, so I know that will be doable. And then I'll be able to nurse/feed him afterwards, which will make both of us feel better.

Breastfeeding is coming along, slowly but surely. I nurse him before every feeding now. I do a pre/post weigh at least once a day, and he's taken 1.3 ounces during the last couple of days. That's almost half of a full feeding for him! So I feel like we're making progress. The amount I'm pumping is slowly edging down as he's getting more milk. I was pumping a little more than a liter a day last week, and now it's a little less than a liter.

When he starts getting close to 2 ounces, I'm going to start decreasing the supplements rather than just let him take what he wants from the bottle. I met a woman online who had a 30 weeker and is now exclusively breastfeeding after a similar journey. The IBCLC she worked with suggested cutting back the amount of the supplement so the baby would be good and hungry when it was time to nurse again. She said that really worked for them, and her baby very quickly was up to full feedings at the breast.

I'm so, so looking forward to being able to breastfeed exclusively. At night now I'll nurse him and then fantasize about what it would be like to just be able to go back to sleep after that -- rather than get out of bed, measure off a bottle, heat it up, feed it to him, then get him to settle down so I can pump, then clean the pumping equipment and store the milk before settling him into the co-sleeper and finally getting back to sleep. :-P

Even after we get him to that point, I'll still have to deal with the oversupply. The IBCLC will be able to help with that. It will seem like a small thing by then, I hope!

1 comment:

Emily said...

I really hope that exclusively breastfeeding will happen for you and Carter soon, too. I think it will and you'll look back at this stage with a laugh.

As far as the cloth diaper questions you left on our blog... Yes, I like the Kissaluvs but I dn't use them much because the daycare can't handle them. It's too much! So we just use them when we are out of others. My sis who is a SAHM LOVES the Kissaluvs. I do like the Bummi covers. No leaks so far.. I only use them over the KLs though.. I haven't ventured into prefolds yet. That's my next step because I really want to get into dying PFs..

:)

Where do you buy your diapers? online?