Argh.

[rivka]

Colin had his six-month well-baby visit today.

His head circumference percentile has increased from 95% to more like 98-99%. His pediatrician recommends another consult with the neurosurgeon.

His weight, on the other hand, has dropped one line on the growth chart. Ped says, not uncommon in an exclusively-breastfed baby between 4 and 6 months.

He wants us to work on getting solids into Colin and consider supplementation. We're to have a measurement follow-up in six weeks. I stopped by Whole Foods on the way home and picked up some oatmeal and some fenugreek capsules to augment my milk supply. If that doesn't work over the next six weeks, we'll argue about whether I should supplement with formula then.

I've been having trouble keeping up with the pumping lately, so it doesn't seem farfetched that I might be having supply issues. (I had been wondering if the pump, which I bought used, was wearing out.) We'll see what a couple weeks of fenugreek does for me.

I really didn't need this when I was already incredibly stressed out.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Of course, after 6 months, supplementing breastmilk with other foods is *normal* behaviour, and why some of the other foods shouldn't be formula milk I can't imagine.

They're going to take away your lactivist card for this, you know. In the first place, you're supposed to tell me that he can only have TASTES of solid food for most of the first year. In the second place, formula starts with an "F" because it means FAILURE.

(And yes, I could mix cereal with formula, and I even have a can of formula because my hospital violates the WHO guidelines and sends a starter can home with every breastfeeding mother. But I am hoping to avoid that.)

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Take away my lactivist card too, but the formula for cereal is what i was thinking too. Since solids are already in play, it's not like there's "virgin gut" to worry about, which is one of the typical arguments against formula supplementation.

I'm sorry you're having to go through all this, and especially right now, when you have so many stressors in your life.

FWIW, which may not be anything at all, when I look back at my nursing experience with Liam, I wonder if I should have supplemented. I had terrible supply problems and it was stressful and nervewracking trying to keep up. When he finally really got into solids he gained 4 lbs in a month and went from 50th percentile to 70th percentile very quickly, so I wonder if I was underfeeding him all that time, and if we wouldn't have all been happier if I'd just sent a couple bottles of formula to daycare. But at the time it was literally inconceivable to me that I would do that - it didn't occur to me until at least a year later that it was a) an option and b) might have been a good idea.

Much hugs and sympathy.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

[sarcasm]

After you feed him the formula, you should vacuum the remaining sparkles off him. Just to make sure that no AP grandma mistakes him for an appropriate mate for her grandbaby.

Not that there's probably many sparkles left, what with the (insert ridiculous thing here). [/sarcasm]

On a less sarcastic note, ignore Alegna and do what you gotta do. Formula in cereal sounds like a sanity-saving measure and a sensible compromise.

Or you could try him on mushed up avocados or something.

[ailbhe]

In my experience, babies will only TAKE tastes of non-milk foods until they are ready. Linnea self-fed with a spoon before 17 weeks, and made the switch from mainly-milk to mainly-nonmilk about six months when she was cruising round the furniture and learning to climb stairs and so on, and Emer didn't make the same switch until much closer to a year, again when she was cruising round the furniture and getting ready to walk.

My main lactivism is that mothers should have an honest chance to make their own choice, without being set up for breastfeeding failure from the word go. My training focussed on that. Using lactivism to further disempower vulnerable women makes me sick, which is why I stayed in the boob nazis community for so long.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Can I be your moderate-lactivist advocacy twin? You sound shiny and sane. :->

-- still exclusively breastfeeding at week 28. She shows some very mild enthusiasm for tastes of food, evinces great enthusiasm for shoving anything we put in our mouths in her mouth (though she was v. nonplussed to dump a cup of water over herself the one time we let her TRY, in the bathroom, instead of being Big Meanie Meaniepants and taking the glasses of ice water away from her).

[ailbhe]

I'm not all that moderate - I'd like to see formula advertising wholly illegal and the moneymaking scam that is follow-on milk burnt at the stake. But I'm sane enough to know that formula sometimes saves lives, though perhaps not as many as breastfeeding does, globally, and to recognise when food is food.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

My husband's antipathy to formula was cemented by reading the ingredient list and realizing if it were sold as a food for adults he'd personally reject it on the 'eew, look what's IN it' grounds.

[ailbhe]

It's less likely to make a baby sick than cows' milk, goats' milk, sheeps' milk, or the many honey-and-soy-and-oats concoctions for which recipes abound on the hippie internet.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. He's just got a bee in his bonnet about processed foods and the evils thereunto appertaining; me personally, I think a certain level of 'processed' is unavoidable if you want the convenience of long shelf-life, ease of reconstitution anywhere, specifically-engineered nutritional completeness, etc etc.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Honey for a baby under a year?!

[ailbhe]

Do *not* google "make your own formula milk" or anything similar. Really, really not.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

That kind of reasoning leads people to make their own makeshif formulas out of things like raw goat's milk. Curiously enough, the scientifically balanced ones turn out to be more complete.

(Also, this thread is coming perilously close to formula bashing, which I am not willing to host.)