The last two weeks have been fairly routine for me: breast feed, pump, rest, repeat. All day long every two hours. However, even with this schedule little Elsa wasn't gaining "enough" weight. Based on set norms, she should have been back to her birth weight at her two week appointment. Well she was just shy of that. Her birth weight was 6 pounds 8 ounces. She dropped to 5 pounds 12 ounces in the hospital and was 5 pounds 13 ounces when we left. At her two week appointment she was only up to 6 pounds 3 ounces. They say she should be gaining 1 ounce per day. So they decided we needed to supplement her feedings with either breast milk (pumped) or formula. Of course I am trying to breast milk.
At her appointment today she gained 5 more ounces, which we got excited about, but that still isn't 1 ounce per day. The ANRP that we have been seeing sent us to a lactation consultant at Shands. At that appointment we had some information confirmed that we had gotten at the hospital, she has a tight frenulum. So what's a frenulum? It's that little piece of skin under the tongue that holds the tongue towards the front of the mouth. This is causing her to not feed efficiently. So my little girl had a frenotomy. Basically, they split the frenulum to allow the tongue to have more movement forward and up.
Now we have to retrain her on how to latch and suck. We weigh again next Friday. Here's hoping this works!
More info: http://newborns.stanford.edu/Frenotomy.html
1 comment:
poor little lady!
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