Do you worry about your child's development?
We've been going to baby groups, and other babies my son's age (7 weeks) have longer stretches of time to look around, explore things, to notice other babies and learn the beginnings of play skills. Micah nurses so often for such long times that he misses a lot of that (he has slow weight gain due to feeding problems, lip tie, mild tongue tie and reflux - he feeds little and often and I pump to supplement but he's still gaining very little/slowly as my supply was effected by his ineffective milk transfer, I'm on domperidone and double electric pumping to try to up it at the moment).
He does have happy alert time, but it's shorter than most babies I meet (both breast and bottle fed), and I can't plan when it'll be. I'd love to take him swimming but I expect he'd get hungry and upset if it took too long to get ready, get in the pool, play, get dry etc.
I guess I feel a lot of guilt that he's missing some of these experiences. Our lives are very much on hold while I try to encourage better feeding habits and build my supply.
I'm not sure if the benefits of exclusively breastfeeding outweigh the experiences he's missing development-wise. I thought we had breastfeeding sorted during the first 4/5 weeks and we were going out, enjoying life and nursing in public, now I don't have the confidence to nurse in public as I have to watch him like a hawk to check he's actually swallowing. It feels like we're trapped and he's suffering.
I know it's hopefully short term, but does anyone else feel this way?
Even my lactation consultant said that he needs more milk and I could consider formula top ups in the short term. I've got to see if domperidone makes a difference first. Ugh. I was so determined to breastfeed exclusively, but it's stopping me enjoying my baby and I don't think he's benefiting from my stubbornness.
He feeds (badly, on and off) for an hour at a time, sometimes more, often with less than an hour in between. He takes a bottle (of EBM) BRILLIANTLY, and has less wind afterwards than he gets from nursing. I'm starting to think my obsession with breastfeeding him is actually affecting his development (and my ability to be a good mum) negatively.