Postpartum Recovery

After we were transferred to the Postpartum Unit, we met our nurse for the day who I absolutely loved! She had been a nurse on the unit for decades and really seemed to know what she was doing. Despite being a Registered Nurse, I pretty much knew nothing about breastfeeding and pumping. The day shift nurse walked me through all of it and made sure I felt comfortable.

For those of you who don't know, your milk doesn't come in until a few days post-delivery. Most women will produce colostrum right away, which has so many good health benefits for the baby and is very nutrient dense. Colostrum is typically enough calories for the baby until your milk starts coming in, as their stomach are so small and can't handle much volume at one time.

I was able to pump a very small amount of colostrum while in the hospital, but when I say very small I mean drops to 1mL at most. Emmett also was not sucking great because he was so sleepy, which I was told was very common with 36 week old babies. I fed whatever I could pump to Emmett, but after a little while the hospital staff recommended I start supplementing with a high calorie formula because they were worried Emmett would loose too much weight. I began to feed him Enfamil Enfacare formula, which was recommended for him because it has 22 calories per ounce.

Normal breastmilk has 20 calories per ounce, so this higher calorie formula would allow him the additional nutrition to help prevent him from losing too much weight.

It is normal for babies to loose some weight after they are born, but the gold standard is that you don't want them to loose more than 10% of their birth weight.

After a full day on the Postpartum Unit, Emmett was not quite as sleepy and had improved a little bit with his sucking technique. A Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) came in to evaluate how he was taking a bottle to determine if he had a good latch and sucking technique, as well as any concerns with his breathing and swallowing during feeds. She had recommended that we use a specific Dr. Brown's bottle with an ultra premie flow nipple because she felt the regular flow was too much for him.

She explained that a slower flow nipple allows the baby to feel in control of the feed, which typically helps them have better overall feeding technique.

She came back the next day to see how Emmett was doing with the new bottle and she felt he was doing great! Emmett was still dribbling a little bit of milk from the corners of his mouth, which can often happen with nipples that have a higher flow rate, but she felt as he was still doing significantly better with the new bottle and nipple. She showed us a few different positions we could feed him in to help pace his feed and further improve the amount of milk that would dribble down his cheeks and chin. She mentioned that if we needed to follow up with an SLP outpatient, that they do have an outpatient clinic, but if he continues to do well she didn't feel it would be necessary.

I do want to mention that I also worked with the Lactation Consultant team during my hospital stay. I was originally planning to try breastfeeding, but with Emmett struggling to suck after birth and then him doing so great with his new Dr. Brown bottle, I decided I didn't want to disrupt his progress and I would exclusively pump once my milk came in. After all, I would eventually have to move to exclusively pumping once I had to return to work and Emmett went to daycare, so I just felt that continuing to solely pump instead of confusing him with introducing breastfeeding would be best for my little guy.

After another night in the hospital, it was finally discharge day! Brett and I were so eager to get home to offically start our lives with our son. The Pediatrician came in for one last visit the morning of our discharge and had recommended that we continue to feed Emmett the Enfamil Enfacare formula until our first outpatient appointment to ensure that Emmett's weight was on track. At that time, if his weight was still on track and my milk had come in, we could transition him to breastmilk.

Emmett did loose some weight in the hospital as expected, but it was well within 10% of his birthweight. This recommendation was made to air on the side of caution as our Pediatrician kept mentioning that 36 week old boys tend to have higher rates of regression in their eating and weight gain than girls.

Once our nurse reviewed all of our discharge paperwork with us, it was time to put Emmett in his car seat. The poor guy was NOT happy about being in the car seat. It took quite awhile to get him to settle, but eventually he fell asleep and we were off to the car to bring Emmett home!💙