Wishing and Hoping and Pumping and Nursing

So you know how a few months ago I was all "breastfeeding rocks! It's totally easy! My kid is growing like a champ!" Sounds pretty smug, huh? Yeah. About that.

Little O is doing great - really, he's a delightful child and it's a joy to be with him - but it turns out that he's not exactly growing like a weed. He's growing like a... houseplant. A plant that actually, when you touch the soil, does feel kind of dry to the touch. And now that you think about it, when was the last time it had a new flower? And, oh G-d, I'm comparing my baby to a houseplant! The exact thing you're supposed to be able to keep alive before you have kids!

Basically, our little man's weight slipped from the 50th percentile at birth to the 25th at 4 months and the 6th at nearly 6 months. That is not good. That isn't terrible - he's still generally very healthy and happy - but it is not, shall we say, ideal. In fact, it kiiiiiiind of fits the definition of the whole "failure to thrive" thing. Spoiler alert, this appears to have a happy ending, but I think my reliance on breastfeeding was to blame.

In the very early days after O's birth, we did do a little bit of supplementing with formula because my milk was so slow to come in. But by two weeks or so, it was all breastmilk all the time. He started growing out of his clothes at an alarming rate and I was even pumping a little extra milk each morning to put in the freezer. This lasted up until I went back to work, at which point I began pumping twice a day and giving him that milk at daycare in a bottle - still pretty easy. Until, at his 4-month checkup, the pediatrician mentioned that he had fallen from the 50th percentile on the growth chart to the 25th. She and I talked about how he was still exclusively breastfed, how the growth charts are not as accurate for many breastfed babies, how he was doing so well overall that she wasn't concerned. Still, I was worried enough that I looked up whether my milk supply (estimated at about 25 oz. per day) might be inadequate. No, said the experts. Breastfed babies need about the same amount of milk from 1-6 months, and after that their need should even start to gradually decrease because they get more solids in their diet.

All the same, I figured that more must be better, so I bought some disgusting tea and some fenugreek pills and tried to change up my pumping routine a little. I saw an increase of about an extra ounce per day in what I was able to pump while at work, but nothing dramatic. Honestly, I didn't expect big changes - my breasts only have so much milk-producing tissue, and there's only so much time I can realistically put towards pumping. And after all, if O needed more milk from me, he would be requesting it by nursing more on the nights and weekends, right? And then my supply would increase as a result?

Yeah, not so much. We had to bring him in to the pediatrician unexpectedly right before he turned 6 months old, and I was horrified to see where he now showed up on the growth chart. We immediately started giving him more milk - a full 30 oz. of formula and breastmilk every day at daycare, plus as much nursing as possible in the mornings and evenings. A week later, I could tell that he was a much heavier baby. And a week after that, he clocked in at the 22nd percentile, so I'm very relieved and feel like we're back on track.

I feel terrible that my baby was deprived of what were clearly necessary calories for so long. As his mom, I feel like I should have noticed that something was amiss before it reached this point. But I also have to say, what the hell, breastfeeding researchers? Is my kid just the statistical outlier for whom the steady diet of 25 oz. of breastmilk actually wasn't enough? He doesn't seem to have any actual feeding problems, and the fact that he gained weight so quickly once he was getting more food suggests to me that it really was an issue of volume. And I hate pumping, mostly because of the aforementioned D-MER, plus I really hated drinking that lactation tea, and now I feel annoyed that I've been doing all of this for nothing. I mean, I know it's not nothing - I'm glad that O is getting some breastmilk every day, and so is our pediatrician - but I do feel a tiny bit misled about how easy and natural this process would be. And in terms of breastfeeding not going perfectly, I know I'm in good company.