Friday, March 12, 2010

Goodness, woman, don't you ever feed your child?

So it appears I held out too long on the supplementation thing. I took Meg in for her 9 month checkup today. Her weight has fallen to the 16th percentile. She used to be in the 50th-60th percentile. The doctor is concerned she’s not gaining enough weight, so we have to come back in 6 weeks for a weight check. Hopefully supplementation is the answer and she'll start piling on the pounds. The doctor also said she should be getting 3 solid-food meals a day. We've only been giving her lunch and dinner.

I feel like a terrible, terrible mother. I was so determined to build my breastmilk supply back up and avoid formula, I took it too far. I'm trying not to get too depressed about it, but I really feed bad. At least I realized there was a problem and fixed it before the appointment.

She did start crawling recently and is getting into everything, so the doctor said her increased activity level probably has a lot to do with it (burning extra calories). I'm sure that's true, but I also know she has been "saying" for a few weeks her bottles are not big enough. She screamed and wailed and made it clear it was not enough food. And I just told her, keep nursing! Nurse for as long as it takes to increase Mommy's milk supply! Except Mommy's milk supply didn't go up. Oops.

This being a mother thing is hard. I guess this is one of the many mistakes I'll make. Not the first, not the last.

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