I spent that entire day frantically trying to get my son to breastfeed. Trying to pump ANYTHING. All day, I sat on the couch with my son, crying as I fed him bottle after bottle of formula and wondering if this was going to be the end of our nursing relationship. I wasn't ready! We'd tried so hard! He was only 3 months old! I begged him, in tears, "PLEASE, JUST TAKE IT!" as he screamed around my nipple and turned his head away from me.
I recorded all of his feeds. How much he took. What he acted like afterwards. On Thursday, he started nursing a little bit again. So I added the amount of time he spent nursing onto my recordings along with how much I supplemented. I had finally managed to pump a tiny bit during all those missed feeds and noted when he was supplemented with breast milk and when with formula and how much of each.
I went through his baby book and wrote down all of his weights and heights to show Dr. M. I had my mom pull out my baby book so I could compare and I wrote those down, too. Then I packed up my baby and my plethora of note cards and went to see Dr. M for the first time since the morning after he was born. My mother-in-law offered to come with me and I was grateful for the support.
English is not Dr. M's first language. Instead of taking notes, she used a speech-to-text program on her computer, which made the initial interview rather confusing. She started out asking some questions and then pulled out her computer and spoke into it without warning. She said my son's name and that he was referred to her for Failure to Thrive. This was the first time anyone had used that term with me. I literally jumped when I heard it, felt my eyes widen, and shook my head, "No!". She ignored me and kept taking her notes.
She briefly looked over my cards and then asked if she could take photo copies of them. Then she took Lukas to examine him. She checked his startle reflex, noted his head control, watched him push himself up and try to roll over (he couldn't get any traction on the paper, but she took my word that he was capable of rolling front to back). She weighed him.
Finally, she sat us back down to talk about her decision. She agreed that he seemed perfectly healthy and, given the family history, he was likely just a long, skinny baby like his mommy and daddy had been. BUT she wanted us to get blood drawn just to be safe. My mother-in-law asked if she would recommend this even if Dr. F hadn't referred us as a Failure to Thrive case. She said that she would have and discussed it calmly with us for a bit.
So we headed over to the hospital to have blood drawn from my healthy 3-month-old. We waited for over an hour until they finally called us back. The lab techs could not have been more incompetent. They sat us down in the chair where they draw blood from adults. They were going to have me hold him while they drew from his elbow. Needless to say, that didn't work out at all. So they took him back to the room where they drew all of his biliruben levels as a newborn and attempted to hold him down and draw from his elbow. They couldn't get the needle in. They kept commenting on how strong he was...hello! You're drawing from a healthy baby, people, of course he's not going to lay around limply while you stick him full of holes! Finally, they decided to do a heel prick.
He was understandably upset by the time they'd finished, so I asked if I could nurse him and they left me in the room to do so. He, thankfully, latched right on and calmed right back down. Then they sent us back out to the waiting room because they weren't sure if it'd be a good draw (what?). So we waited. For another hour. Until they finally came out to tell us they'd need to draw again because the blood was no good. So they did the heel prick, again. And, again, I nursed him. And, again, we were sent back to the waiting room.
AND, AGAIN, the draw was no good. So they took us back and pricked my baby for the third time. Afterward, while I was nursing him, they commented that the draw was normally a fasting draw, but they couldn't do that for a baby with no warning. Taken aback, my mother-in-law chatted with them and we learned that the reason they kept taking blood was because he'd not been fasting. Why had no one told us this the first time? We told them they could use the blood they had, but we would not be bringing him back to do this again. They said they'd call the doctor and see if it was ok to use the results even though it hadn't been fasting. Shockingly (can you feel the sarcasm?), the doctor was not expecting Lukas to fast and was fine using those results. My 3-month-old had blood drawn two extra times because the lab techs were too incompetent to call the doctor in the first place.
Four hours after we'd arrived, we finally got to go home. I saw Dr. Fe for another follow-up to make sure everything was going ok after the nursing strike and she agreed to take Lukas on as a regular patient. We saw Dr. F for one last follow-up and walked away knowing we would never be seeing him again.
Why didn't I go somewhere else when I first questioned the advice to pump and bottle-feed instead of continuing to try breastfeeding when Lukas was just 5 days old? Why didn't I go somewhere else at the 2 month appointment when Dr. F was clearly not looking at my baby and set that bell off in my head? Why didn't I just switch to Dr. Fe after I first met with her and save us all that pain? Because I was a new mom. Because I didn't feel like I knew better than my doctor. Because I didn't have faith in myself and I thought I'd chosen a doctor I could trust. Because I really needed someone to stand with me and say, "Hey, this is ridiculous. You know your baby. This doctor is no good. You can switch to Dr. Fe!".
I've learned from this and I share my experience with other moms because I know that this should not have happened. I believe that no one should go through what we went through. I believe WE shouldn't have had to go through what we went through, but because I didn't have confidence in myself as a new mom, we were put through the wringer.
Shortly afterwards, I found support in other moms through a couple of groups in our area. Lukas went on to nurse for 13 months, when he self-weaned. Although we got off to an incredibly rough start, our nursing relationship ended gently and beautifully...but that's a story for another time.
