Hannah’s Early Breastfeeding Adventures

At 5 pounds, Hannah was born a very small baby. She was a couple weeks early, and I think if she’d been born on or after her due date she would have been at least 6 pounds like her older sister, Michelle.

Early babies tend to be more sleepy and Hannah was no exception. She got tired easily. When you combine that with her miniature little mouth, she was bound to end up struggling with breastfeeding. And she did. She seemed to get the idea right when it came to latching on, but there was always a clicking sound when she sucked, and before she was finished breastfeeding, she would inevitably end up asleep.

It was frustrating for me because I knew she wasn’t really full, even though she lay in my arms looking as peaceful and happy as could be, sleeping beside my breast.   I made up my mind that I would get milk into her no matter how I had to do it.

I pumped and tried to feed it to her with a spoon,  I woke her up when she fell asleep too soon, or woke her up during a long nap to feed her, and I also figured out that I could hand express breast milk into her mouth, even when she was half asleep. Sleeping didn’t stop her from swallowing, even when she was all tuckered out and couldn’t suck anymore. But I was really careful to make sure that it was all going down the right way. I didn’t want her to drown, just gain weight.

And gain weight she did! At some point she stopped falling asleep before she got a full meal – she loved nursing so much that she tended to overeat and then I had to have plenty of towels on hand to catch the mess she made all over me! She eventually even took to sucking on her thumb, which helped her avoid overeating when she was already full, but I didn’t let her suck her thumb unless she had already filled up.

But for the first few months, whenever she nursed you could  hear Hannah go “click, click, click.” Eventually her mouth grew big enough that she stopped clicking.  She showed me that babies don’t always click because the latch method is incorrect, sometimes they are just small. Small babies also tend to get worn out easily in the beginning. Patience is the key – they will eventually get big enough to be nursing champions if they are given a chance.