It feels a bit like things are not running so smoothly with the feeding over the past few days. When I analyse it, it has 100% coincided with me taking the meds, though I can’t blame it on them at all.

I subconsciously began to change things a little, really trying to ensure that he fed very regularly with no long gaps between (though holy moly, we have been blessed with a real sleeper this time! The total opposite of our sleep-allergic first boy!), and offering just a little less formula in the SNS than usual. I have been feeding him until he just stops fussing for food. I just kind of upped my determination a bit, I suppose. But that has gone hand in hand with me losing my confidence, never knowing for sure if he is hungry or tired or bored, when just a few days ago I had that totally sorted.

… And I read this stupid thing on a stupid website run by a renowned service that I have never received good advice or support from, that pleaded with new mothers to remember that every supplement you give, every millilitre of external milk you give, is doing your milk supply damage and drastically reducing your hopes of exclusively breastfeeding. It is rash, unsympathetic advice like this that sits in my belly and festers away, making me question everything that I am doing and every decision I make at every feed. I would love to have the strength and the will to ignore such things and know that I am doing what I can and what is right for us, but it still sticks and eats away.

So today my boy was the fussiest  he has ever been, screaming blue murder every moment he seems to have even a twinge of hunger, and becoming frantic in an instant. And it is tough to get a frantic baby to latch on with the SNS tube.

Plus for some unknown reason, he has never liked my left boob, and today he has pretty much blankly refused to drink from it. I did the football/rugby hold with him this evening for that side and it worked, which has me convinced that it is because of the way his body comfortably lays that he doesn’t like that side.

And then of course there is that thing in the back of my brain that just notices that my boob doesn’t hurt or feel full or really any different at all, even after a full day of not being drained…