Mistakes
It's been an interesting 24 hours in the nursing world. I'll be brief for this will quickly become too much information. In summary, yesterday morning Adlai started spitting up blood. As is the usual course, we calmly freaked out and called the advice nurse who gave him an appointment right away. And then I fed him and figured out where the blood was coming from - me. Apparently I'd been feeding our little vampire blood all night long and just hadn't noticed. (My blood isn't actually harmful to him in any way.)
Let me point out here that nursing just isn't for me - it never really has been. I do it because of guilt and love and love and lots and lots of guilt. If formula were proven to be just as good as breast milk, I'd be running to the formula section of the grocery store. So, in any case, since I stopped using the "shields" I've been in a lot of pain but I figured it was necessary pain; the pain of breastfeeding. I figured it would go away with time.
Once I figured out it was me, we canceled the appointment for Adlai and they asked me to come in. I did. It wasn't a completely successful appointment. I'll be using the shields from now on. Adlai has learned some bad habits - things you can do to plastic boobs that you shouldn't do with the real thing - and it doesn't seem worth forcing him to adjust at this point. We only have eight months to go!
However, and this is probably the most interesting part of the experience, they weighed Adlai and found him to be an entire pound heavier than he was just last Thursday. I'm pretty sure he didn't gain a pound in four days so now I'm sure that he isn't in the 6th percentile of weight. That was a weighing mistake.