It's been a long couple of days.

The past few days have been challenging, but I feel like we're starting to make progress. My goal is for M2 to exclusively breastfeed for at least 24 hours without having any bottles. Sounds simple? Not so simple when you have a reflux baby who will have an episode of reflux that prevents her from eating even though she wants to eat. With the breast, baby has to work harder to get the milk going. With a bottle it takes very little effort for her to get the milk. So I can understand while in times of pain from the reflux, M2 just doesn't want to work for her food.

I have stayed home with her the past 3 days and worked on BF. I've made the environment calm and relaxed by staying in bed in my PJ's with her, and letting her nurse whenever she wants and for as long as she wants. So far today (Thursday) we have made it bottle free since 6 AM, so we are so close to reaching the 24 hour goal. Of course I'd like to surpass that time limit and see if we can go at least a few days or longer of exclusively breastfeeding. But, one step at a time.

My LC has been awesome, I am so thankful to her and the great encouragement I have received from her. She has called me daily to check in and see how things are going, and she always has a great list of ideas for troubleshooting problems. She thinks that M2's acid reflux medicine may not be strong enough (I agree to this since she is still having a lot of reflux despite the medicine). We have an appt for early next week with the pediatrician to reassess M2's reflux severity.

Until we get things under control, I'm kind of homebound. I haven't been able to get anything done because feeding her and holding her take up all my time (she likes to be upright and leaned against my chest to sleep during the day). If I set her down so she is laying flat, she often refluxes up through her nose and will wake up crying. In the evening after working all day, Mr.P will hold her for a short amount of time, but he then wants to relax and surf the web or watch tv. This has caused some frustration because I am pretty much taking care of M2 24/7 with little help. Right now she is finally calm and asleep in her crib, though she hasn't eaten in nearly 4 hours. I spent over an hour trying to feed her a little while ago, but she was just too fussy to latch on. I am hoping that I can get her to "sleep eat" after I finish writing this (she is often calmer when she sleep eats, though it takes her twice as long to eat).

I had heard that BF would get easier by about 6 weeks...that is not the case with us. We got off to a slow start with BF, and with all the weeks of pumping and bottlefeeding early on she didn't fully learn to BF effectively. I am hoping that within a few weeks we can get caught up and things will be easier. I have a hard time sleeping at night because even between feedings, I wake up a lot to check on her; she often makes this wheezing sound when she is laying down and sleeping, and sometimes she starts spitting up and coughing in her sleep which wakes me up to check on her. I am exhausted.

Speaking of exhaustion, the sleep deprivation thing is getting a little easier. I guess it's become so normal to me now, I hardly remember what it was like to feel well rested. I still cry sometimes when I am up feeding and changing M2 because I am so tired, but I have accepted that this is just how things are. I haven't been able to really nap during the day because of how M2 likes to be held against my chest, I have to be sitting up for her to be at an angle against me. I have dozed off for 10-20 minutes sometimes while in this sitting position.