need support! convince me not to throw in the towel. (long)

kris_kelsey

Of course I am hormonal, and I just want to give up.  Please help give me hope, goals, support, or reasons why I want to keep going.

DD is a relatively good baby.  She probably feeds 8-9 times in 24 hours and is usually calm or sleeping inbetween, but once or twice a day she will stay awake for a a few hours and fight sleep and sort of cluster feed.  Now I know this is normal (I am an L&D/postpartum nurse and LC for gosh sakes), but she feeds for 45min to an hour.  this baffles me because DS would nurse for 15min MAX due to my high supply and flow.  I can feel let down with DD and she takes a few gulps and then stops sucking.  She always stays in the breast, but she just is a very lazy nurser and does more non-nutritive sucking (pacifying) but with intermittent nutritive sucking (with swallows).  So I keep her on the breast because every 7th suck or so she swallows and I need to get milk in her, but these long drawn out feedings SUCK.  Especially with my 4 yr old wanting me to interact with him.  Then when she is done sometimes she is calm and sometimes she is still rooting...really?  after 45-60min and still rooting.  I massage the milk down to get her to swallow more but she still takes it at her own pace. 

DD takes a bottle lickity split, maybe 10 minutes or less like any other baby.  It only takes me a few minutes to pump off 1-3 oz ...i give her an oz if she breastfed but is still rooting, or i pump 3oz if I am replacing a breastfeed.  The downfall of pumping is...do I want to be an EP???  Do I want that time and commitment?  Should I do both throughout the day to keep her on the breast but also to keep some of her feeds shorter?  Also, the bottle (tommee tippee) doesn't go without it's own issues.  Almost every single time she has had a bottle she has aspirated (choked).  I sit her up to bottle feed and she will be doing fine but then out of no where she aspirates and starts coughing, but each cough gets smaller and then she doesn't take a breath and starts turning blue-ish.  I usually pat her back but one time I actually gave her one breath of mouth to nose/mouth to expand her lungs again because she just wasn't breathing.  I was talking to my NICU RN friend and she suggested continuing to try the bottle because she will gradually learn to coordinate her suck/swallow/breath.  I agree, but for now I won't let anyone else give her a bottle since I am the only one trained in neonatal resuscitation. 

To top it off I MIGHT have a plugged duct but I can't tell.  One area of my right breast feels more firm (like there is a pinky finger in my breast pointing toward the nipple), and it is tender.  But with DS I remember this area being more tender in general and I'm not sure if it is tender because of a plug, or if it is just part of my normal breast tissue and I have made it tender by pushing and pushing on it to try to get any milk out.  The area does not seem to be getting any more full, red, and when I massage really nothing comes out from it.  Anyone just have a small area of their breast that is more firm without a plug???

Any support, advice, thoughts you could share would be appreciated.  I have been bawling and bawling because I just don't want to have to think about any of this stuff anymore.  

p.s. I EBF DS (plus complementary foods at 6 months) until he was 23 months.  So really I have done this and made it through, but she is just a whole different feeder and I am an emotional wreck.