I was always under the impression that my baby would breastfed immediately. (I clearly had no notion of how this premmie thing works.) But then I figured my baby would be bottled fed the breast milk. Wrong again.
Imagine my shock when I first saw a baby being cup fed. I kid you not. It is the most amazing sight ever. But it is also very frustrating as well.
The cup feeding is great in teaching baby how to suck, swallow, breathe. But it is so time consuming and frustrating, especially if you have never done it before.
I was lucky in that I got to try breastfeeding when baby reached 1.5kg. So although the feeding tube was still being used, baby was learning how to suck.
You really take for granted how much a term baby can do in comparison to a preemie baby. I mean I had no idea in the beginning that baby would need to learn how to breastfeed. I never knew that my milk would not come in naturally as soon as baby was out. I also never knew how hard pumping and sustaining milk supply would be, because baby was separated from me and because he was not sucking.
So many unknowns. So many new things to learn.
I think the most frustrating thing is pumping. It's all you do, all day and all night. In the beginning I was super frustrated but once I realised that my baby's life depended on getting that breastmilk, momma went into overdrive. I did everything and took everything I could to help my baby. And trust me it was extremely hard work. But we did it. We were one of the luckier ones because not everyone is able to produce milk.
The first time I tried cup feeding I was so scared. I didn't understand how a baby so small would be able to do it. But I sat and watched other babies doing and enjoying it and I just perservered.
When we were discharged I thought that that would be the end of cup feeding but no, in order to administer the vitamins baby needed I still needed to cup feed and also to make sure he was in fact still getting enough milk.
One of my biggest goals was to make sure that baby put on weight as he should be. Measuring every gram gained (and sometimes lost) became part of everyday life.
I don't know who came up with the cup feeding phenom but boy are you a smart someone. And thank you.
I've put up a little video that we took back in our cup feeding days so that you guys can see just how amazing it is.
XOXO, T
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