Hospital visit #2

Well nursing Afton has not been a walk in the park. She wasn't able to latch so I've been having to use a breast shield but even with the breast shield nursing was painful. I also kept getting breast infections (2 and started to get a 3rd). She wasn't a good nurser from the beginning because she was was what they call late preterm... which typically early babies have a harder time nursing. Anyway I decided to go to his breastfeeding support group just to continue to get help from the lactation specialist. One of the nurses that was helping me at the group meeting noticed that Afton had a tight frenum. Babies with tight frenums can't latch. We had a few other people take a look at it and sure enough she did. Logan and I had noticed that she couldn't really stick out her tongue but hadn't thought about that being the reason she wasn't nursing well. About two weeks ago we went to the ENT Dr. and he said she needed to have it cauterized but that if we would wait until she was 4 weeks old then she wouldn't have to stay in the hospital over night and instead would only have to stay 6 hours after the surgery. Of course before agreeing to have the surgery I called the best doctor in the world to get his ok....Dr. Jones. He said that putting the baby under light anesthesia was fine and that cauterizing was best because it would never grow back. So I felt good about doing it after getting his approval. I hope that one of these days I can find a doctor that I trust as much as him... but probably not. So we set the date and went in last Thursday to have it done. It was very sad for me. First, I couldn't feed her for four hours before the surgery... she likes to eat every two so she was really hungry. Then of course we couldn't be in the operating room while they did it... I just kept thinking of her in there by herself... so sad. Then, when she starting waking up they came and got me because she was screaming. I got back there and she was sooo out of it. She couldn't really be comforted and her tongue was still numb so she couldn't eat with the breast shield. Luckily I had pumped during her surgery and so I gave her the bottle and slowly she started getting some down. The hardest part for me was the that they ended up giving her an I.V. It wasn't the fact that she had one but how the nurse took it out. She kept grabbing where the needle was. Afton would stop feeding when she did that and start screaming. Finally I told the nurse that she was pressing where the needle was and she said "oh that doesn't bother them... it's the tape that they hate." I've had I.V.'s before and I'm pretty sure it's not the tape that's uncomfortable... if someone was pressing down where my needle was I'd get pretty mad too. So I was happy when she finally got the needle out and Afton could relax. It was also sad because the gas and oxygen that they gave her give babies really bad gas. The rest of the day and the following day she was really uncomfortable from all the gas she had and from the stiches in her tongue. So, I'm glad that's over! So far I haven't gotten another breast infection... it's the longest I have gone without one! And best of all... she's finally starting to latch on her own. It's still and little painful because she still doesn't quite know how to use her new tongue, but it's getting better.

Before the surgery waiting in our room for them to take her into surgery. She was hungry but we got her to fall asleep for a little while with the binky.

After surgery. Logan holding her and figuring out how to get her to sleep longer than 2 hours at night. :) The book came with good recommendations from Hillary. Thanks girl it's working.