AW: BF DD1 for first time today!

Brummy14

DD1 and DD2 have been home with us for just over a week (after an 81 day NICU stay), during which time I've been EPing (like CRAZY) to keep up with their demand. I had a super frustratingly slow increase in supply, but eventually got to 50oz a day (after 11 weeks of 7+ hours of pumping per day), and have probably a 400oz freezer stash by now (which the NICU LCs still think is amazing based on where I started!)

DD1 has been off of her NG feeding tube for nearly two weeks now, and now that we're confident she "gets" it, DH actually suggested we try BFing (I'd been putting it off -- probably out of fear of failure), and so we went for it today for the first time in weeks -- and so did she! We didn't even need to use the shield!

We had done lots of nuzzling in the NICU, but stopped about a month ago when DD1 hit a road block in terms of bottling progress, so we started ruling out variables (different bottles, nuzzling, etc) to try to help her along. And, back then, she didn't do much except suck here and there, choke, brady (the whole NICU rigamarole...), so it wasn't really a great experience -- but more for practice for both of us with the assistance of the LCs.

DD2 is still only 50% by mouth bottling, so BFing is a ways off for her, but man -- I had more or less resigned myself to not being able to BF at all with these little ladies, but now it looks like I might get the chance to.

Yay! Small victories = the best.