Well, I went to bed yesterday at 5:30 when Derek got home, and I had a 101.3 fever around 9, but a lot of people must have been praying for Lizzie to nurse well, because she woke up every 2 hours all night, and by morning, my duct was unclogged and my fever had broken.
So yesterday while I was burning up with fever and aching from head to toe, I actually drove downtown and lugged Elizabeth (and a large ziplock full of dirty diapers) up to her 4th floor dr’s office. Mucus was the tip-off about the dairy allergy, and her diapers don’t look any different to me now even though I’ve been off dairy for a solid month now. The doctor checked them out, though, and there was no blood, and the mucus looked normal to her (?!). That’s good news in a way…the no-dairy diet is working, and I don’t have to eliminate anything else. She also encouraged me to get Elizabeth to take a bottle by going off nursing cold turkey–she said it could take up to 16 hours, but at some point she’ll be so hungry that she’ll have to give in and drink from a bottle. Apparently she won’t get dehydrated since she nurses so well the rest of the time. Since she usually sleeps 11 hours at night, that means I should pump first thing in the morning and try to bottle feed her that, and keep trying (and pumping to keep my supply up) all morning. Once she does it, I have to keep giving her a bottle once a day to remind her that there are multiple sources of milk. Obviously I’ll nurse her the rest of the time. Does not sound like fun to me (especially the pumping part), but I really do want to use the opera tickets Derek got us for the fall, and she must take a bottle by then! I’m going to wait to try until I’m completely recovered from my mastitis.
But here’s what you really wanted…our girl playing in her bouncy seat. She doesn’t know that lifting your dress up is unladylike. And her stats were great– she weighed in at 13 lbs 4 1/2 oz!
Mohawk!
Glad to hear that the mastitis is gone and that you have a plan to convince Elizabeth to take a bottle. A good day!
I’m really glad that you’re feeling better, Emily! And this picture is adorable 🙂
Edith still refuses to take a bottle, but she will drink water out of a Nuby sippy cup, so we may just skip the bottle and try to get her to drink milk from the cup. I wanted to pass along, though, that one of my good friends was having this same, bottle refusal issue with her second and she had a work trip coming up, so she finally resolved to only bottle feed during the day. It took a couple of days, but by the third day he was coming around and eating after prodding and by the fifth day he was finally quick to take the bottle. So it may take awhile, but hopefully you will have success!
It is so hard to deprive them of something when you know it will fix the fussiness! I had issues with Aidan (you know all about that), but once they do know that milk comes from other places, your life will be much easier! She is so establised in her nursing you don’t have to worry about that being a problem. Have you tried other bottles? I hear that babies that refuse Avent usually like Platex or Dr. Browns.
We have avent, platex, and one other kind I can’t remember… we’ll see!