Winning small battles

Last week we were struggling to get Emily to take a bottle. There were several reasons behind us wanting her to take a bottle: to give her some formula in an attempt to boost her weight, and because it's liberating, meaning if I need to be away somewhere for some reason then she won't starve. These rational arguments passed over our Ems though, and she was having none of it. But she does not yet realise how sneaky and devious her parents can be....

We went to see some friends last week and borrowed a breast pump which they no longer had any need for. I'd been really anti-expressing (it's difficult and time consuming, and I was no good at it last time) but decided that the only way to sneak the bottle in might be to start her off with a bottle of expressed milk and work our way up to formula by mixing expressed milk with formula. This process had to move on faster than we had initially hoped - Sunday evening was rather stressful for a variety of mother-in-law related reasons, say no more, and after about 45 minutes I'd managed to pump a paltry one ounce. And had sore bosoms. I even tried again at 5am after I'd fed her, but no joy. The combination of tiredness and stress just meant the milk would not come out. No way, Jose. So, Monday's 10am feed consisted of a bottle which was one third expressed and two thirds formula, and she drank the whole thing. Then today's bottle was 100% formula, and down it went! Hooray, I'm free! Not that this means I'm giving up breast-feeding, but after another month or so I shall start to drop one or more breastfeed in favour of the bottle. I may even go out. In the evening. Without the baby! Although that might be pushing it too far....

The other battle we won today was the battle of the pokey poo. Eldest child has had terrible constipation over the last couple of days, to the extent that I took her to the doctor today. A conbination of lactulose and 20 or so prunes over the last 24 hours finally took effect this evening, and hopefully we've turned the corner. Here's to a good night's sleep - last night she was up at 10.3opm, 12.30am and 5am, and since I was also up at 4am to feed Emily this made for a rather disturbed night. The poor girl's not been able to sit down comfortably or even eat all day. I really hope we've knocked it on the head, since another day like today would be agonising for all of us.