Well, I haven't given up yet. My mom and I finally had it out about how I felt she was undermining me, and I think I got her to understand. I know she means well, she has more of an attitude of "whatever it takes for a happy baby and less-stress household" whereas I'm terribly Type A and want to do everything exactly right. But she's stopped trying to micromanage his eating, and meanwhile, I'm trying to take a page out of her book and stop trying to take everything so seriously.
My dad put it to me this way: There's a lot to love about the baby stage, but there's also a lot that's really hard. Sometimes it's just about surviving that phase and getting to the point where he's a little person, and then the real fun begins.
Anyway, I'm still going, but it's still been tough.
Typically it goes like this: He latches and starts drinking. He'll be fine for 1-2 minutes, all snuggled up and making little happy noises. Then he'll start bobbing on and off (and I'll start doing breast compressions), looking around (sometimes with milk spilling out of his mouth). Then he'll latch, take a couple sips, then pull off and start crying. At first he'll alternate -- he'll cry for a second, then latch again for a couple more sips, pull off, and cry. Eventually he starts crying more and drinking less. I'll switch to the other side, and the whole thing will start over again. When he's done with both breasts, he'll be crying for awhile and I'll have to walk or bounce him to cheer him up.
First thing in the morning he seems to do better, but as the day wears on, he loses patience. Especially the last feeding of the day, he just wants none of it. He'll be all happy and relaxed from his bath and a little mini-massage with lotion, and I'll bring him to my breast, and he'll skip straight to the little sips/crying part. I can feel the milk in my breasts, but he just won't drink it. That's probably the worst part of the day for me because I just want one last cuddle before bed.
In an ideal world, I'd just nurse more often and pump after feedings to help my supply, but trying to do all that while working would be difficult to impossible. Right now I feed him when he first gets up from a nap, then again after an hour or so, then he gets 30 minutes to an hour of activity (depending on his mood) before he goes to sleep.
Is this just a phase, or is it something else? It seems to only have been getting worse over the past month.
