Bottle? NO WAY!

It is getting increasingly more difficult to breastfeed Julia. She is not a great eater to start. She will only feed when she wants to, not whenever I offer it and not on a schedule (like every 3.5 hours). She will only feed when she thinks she is hungry and wants to feed.

Lately she is biting on me due to teething, popping on and off because of distractions and drinking very little at a time. You can imagine how this affects my day and my life. All day, all I think about is when is she going to feed? I have to time my day so that it goes around her eating schedule. I am not comfortable breastfeeding in public or in the car. I can't go out to buy groceries or meet with a friend. I have no life. There is no structure to my day.

So this weekend, we tried to convert to bottle-feeding. No success. Julia is as stubborn as can be. She fed maybe 5oz on Saturday and another 5oz on Sunday. I was really worried that she is starving or that she may be dehydrated. As a worried Mom, I couldn't take it anymore so I breastfed her to her content on Sunday night. As soon as she got the first few major gulps of milk, she popped off and gave me the hugest grin. That smile I received made everything worth it.

So now we are back to breastfeeding and I am hating it. Julia has a weak latch and I can't seem to fix it. The latch wasn't always bad, but somehow it's changed and she pops on and off all the time so I believe her latch is very shallow. I don't have pain when nursing, like the first week when she was a newborn.

My milk supply is plentiful at the moment, thanks to fenugreek, blessed thistle, nettle and fennel. And I am pumping 15 minutes after every nursing session so my supply doensn't dip. I will try to bottle-feed again this week and hopefully it'll work.