6 Months old! And a Milestone

Kieran is 6months old today, October 8th. I can't believe 6months ago I was going in for major surgery to have her here with us today. My little miracle. A year ago I was dealing with a Subchorionic Hematoma, and the fear that we would loose her scared me to death, then the Gestational Diabetes on top of that, then between my 34week Ultrasound and 35week one she decided to flip into the breech position and stay that way. We opted not to do a version, to many risks for us, and the fact that if it was by chance successful(after having an epidural to do it) they'd send me home only for me to come back a week later to get induced for GD. Kieran was born on April 8th, 2009 at 7:51am via c-section and she was footling breech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech_birth), when they went to pull her out, and from somethings I've read that position is even harder to do a version with anyway. She was born at 6lbs 13oz at 38weeks 3days, and was 19.5" long (would have been around the same size as Seamus if she would have been born a week later, he was 7lbs 9oz and 21"). We got to nurse as soon as I went into recovery and she did well, nursed for 20 minutes, though with a shield, I was doomed from the get go again, another baby that could not latch on my breasts without a shield(very large, large areolas and very small inverted nipples makes it hard, even lactation said its hard with breasts like mine). The trouble started when we got home, she was screaming after nursing for 1-2hrs and I couldn't figure out why, and she was always wanting to nurse. We went to lactation on April 13th to figure it out, and I told lactation that I was crying every day because of this, and after almost 3hrs the lactation specialist said "I can see why you want to cry because I do too right now", We couldn't get her to latch right at all, we went with a smaller shield and it semi worked, but I was given a cup and a Medela Harmony pump and told to pump and cup feed her till we could get her tongue issue fixed (she withdrew her tongue too far back and wouldnt' bring it down or forward). At her 2week appt we got the bad news. She lost alot of weight, I knew it already before going in, I had gotten on the scale with her at home and weighed her and me and then just me and my mom said it was around a 4.5lb difference....at her 2week appt she was only 5lbs 9oz she'd lost at least 1.5lbs from her birth weight most likely more because the few days before her 2week appt she had started nursing well. There were 2 issues that caused her to loose weight, #1 was her latching issues, #2 she started sleeping through the night, at least 8hrs, at 5days old. We were told to start forcing her to wake (boy was that fun) and to supplement her, the pedi we saw at her 2week check wasn't our normal one and this one said right off the bat to supplement with formula. I lost it when we got home, I did not want my baby to have formula no matter what. We tried it a couple times and it never worked(I refused to let her have a bottle of it and would only cup feed it to her), in total she got maybe 1.5oz of formula before I said no, she would just spit it all out. A couple ladies on a mommy site I go to told me to supplement with my own milk and thats what I started doing and it worked so much better. By 1month old she had gotten back to her birth weight which was the goal. Between 1-2months I felt safe letting her sleep through the night again and we stopped supplementing too.
We had to take her in to the After Hours Clinic 2 weeks back for a fever, and she weighed in at a whopping 14lbs 14oz! Now this may seem small for a normal 5½month old but I felt great because she was still gaining good on 100% mommy milk (all from the boobies, she refuses a bottle). Shes alot smaller then Seamus was at this age so its kind of funny to me the difference, he was a tank at just over 18lbs at 5½months old(he was also BF, but not 100% at this age, he had solids too)

Our fun milestone is that I've been able to, after all these issues, successfully breastfeed her for 6 straight months with no solids and only that tiny 1.5oz of formula. And we are planning to keep going, Hubby and I dont think shes quite ready for solids yet and since shes gaining well on BM alone I dont thing she needs them. Wonder what our pedi will say tomorrow at her 6mo check, I think she'll be pretty supportive but we'll see.


First Day at Home


Looking through the last 6months