When Milly was weighed just before Christmas, we asked
for a little advice. When Milly was
discharged from the hospital, we were told all kinds of things that it has been
hard to forget. “Don’t let her go more
than 5 hours without a feed.” “Don’t
feed her for more than 30 minutes.”
“Make sure her temperature is right, if not she’ll burn energy warming
herself up, and then be too tired to feed.”
This advice came from the very skilled, and professional staff at the
NICU. And when they tell you something,
especially as first time parents, you listen to it, and carry out those
instructions as diligently as possible.
At least, that is what we have done.
While Milly was in the NICU, one of the criteria for her being
discharged was whether she was demanding food, a very important part of being a
baby is the ability to let people know that you are hungry. Milly had no problem with this, she never
really screamed the place down, but always woke up and became agitated around
food time. This was a good thing, and we
were told that we could continue demand feeding. It is here that I come to the first conflict
in the advice that we were given:
- We are supposed to feed Milly when she demands it, but don’t let her go longer than 5 hours.
The problem with this comes when we have to feed through
the night. In the run up to Christmas,
it was becoming increasingly difficult to rouse Milly. As soon as she fell asleep after 8pm, we
would normally have to wake her up for a feed, which never really went well as
she never really woke up for it. It is
this that we wanted to get some advice on, knowing that at some point, Milly
would drop a feed and start sleeping longer at night – well that’s the theory!!
The day before we took Milly to get weighed, she had her
second round of Jabs. After the first
time, and the confusion over the Calpol, we asked the nurse about the correct
dosage to give Milly seeing as she had been premature and, at that stage, we
didn’t know if she was over 4kg. The
answer we got was reassuring. We were
told that Milly was to be considered as a normal 12 week old baby (again, at
that time) and we could follow the directions given on the box. As it turned out, she didn’t have a bad
reaction, and we didn’t feel the need to give her any Calpol.
On the day that Milly got weighed, we asked our question,
“Is it ok to let Milly sleep longer at night, and feed her when she
wakes?” We were told that this was OK,
and Milly would wake up when she was hungry.
We were quite happy with this , after all it is what we thought that we
should be doing anyway. However, the
first couple of nights, Milly didn’t wake up.
She was soundly asleep. Elaine
and I were not. We lay awake after 5
hours, waiting for Milly to stir and to feed her. We eventually decided to wake her up at 6
hours because we felt that she shouldn’t go that long through the night without
a feed. At this stage, it was causing us
some concern, so we consulted the ‘baby bible’ that every family is given the
first time that the Health Visitor comes to check up on you. In this, it said that some babies at 3 months
will start to sleep for 8 hours at night!!
We were quite happy to read this, and actually considered that we were
lucky that Milly seemed to want to sleep for longer. Over the next couple of weeks Milly’s sleep
pattern eventually settled, and, on average, she was sleeping for about 6 hours
through the night. It took her a little
while to get used to only having 5 feeds also, and the daily amounts that she
was taking dropped a little. But
eventually they started to increase, although not to level they had been at
previously.
When we took Milly to be weighed earlier this month, her
weight had gone up to 9lb 11oz. While
this was a good increase, it wasn’t as big as it we had expected it to be, or
as big as the growth charts said that it should be. Again, this caused Elaine and I some concern,
and we called our Health Visitor to ask if this was ok, and if we were still
doing the right thing. At this point, we
were told that ‘early’ babies don’t really grow at the same rate as ‘term’
babies, and that we shouldn’t worry too much about the growth charts. We were also told that the advice we had been
given about dropping a feed through the night, was good, but not really for
Milly because she is small. Apparently
we should have been told not to let Milly go more than 6 hours through the
night without a feed, or 4 hours through the day. As an ‘early’ baby, it is important that we
keep her calories up, especially as she becomes more active through the day
(and she is definitely becoming more active through the day!!!). So now we get to the second contradiction in
the advice that we had been given:- We should no longer think of Milly as a premature baby, treat her as a normal healthy baby. But we should feed her every 4 hours (even if that means waking her up) because she is an early baby.
As I write this, I realise that this blog seems to be a
bit of a whinge, and what I am describing as contradictions seem like
reasonable exceptions to the advice we had been given. But I am being honest, and trying to explain
how we interpreted everything that we had been told. As you can see from the pictures that I post
along with this blog, Milly is clearly growing, is happy, and is becoming more
alert. So we must be doing something
right!!! Our new mantra is now: “If
Milly is happy, then we’re happy.”
Sometimes it is easier said than done though.
