Two great things happened last week. One of them truly brilliant and a dream come true and the other really promising. This is a quick blog post to share the news with you all.
For those of you that don't know, The Popster attends physio to help correct a neck problem called Torticollis. The neck problem has led to Plagiocephaly. Is that enough big words for you? Basically, since birth The Popster has had a problem with her neck. She has a tight muscle on the left side which makes it difficult for her to move her head. The neck problem is called Torticollis. A consequence of the neck issue meant that since birth The Popster has always turned her head to the right. When she was lying down on her back, (which equates to about 99% of the time!), her head would be turned to the right which would mean her right side of her head would be against a flat surface -mostly a mattress. This meant her head went flat on the right side - it's really noticeable, and not something we want to last. Lot's of babies get some kind of flat head, mostly the back, and it sorts itself out as they get stronger and can hold their heads up. Due to The Popsters neck problem she has big problems in holding her head up and is therefore behind other babies in terms of development. We go to Physio to help strengthen her neck and get to the stage where she is able to turn to the left when laying down. We can then encourage her to turn that way and slowly her head should start to round out again. So that's it in a nutshell. So what is the good news?
The good news is, on Wednesday I went to physio with the news that The Popster had started to turn her head slightly left of centre but I was unable to do her exercise as she fought it too much and was too strong for me. I was given new exercises and reassurances that she was definitely getting stronger and showing improvements. Then the brilliant news happened. On Thursday, she started turning her head properly to the left when on her back, and Friday morning she actually went to sleep lying with he head turned left!! Eureka!!! She can do it! We'll have a normal looking baby in no time!!! Although, the only potential problem we may now have is she loves the left so much, it is all about the left. Right is out of favour!! What if she spends the next 4 months only ever looking left and never looks right again? She'll end up with a flat head both sides, that's what. Not a good look! Anyway, all joking aside, it is a great breakthrough and I'm very proud of her. I feel like it is her 1st major achievement in life. You all might take turning your head to the left for granted, but for The Popster this was a big step. Now I have no fears for her ability at learning the Green Cross Code - she'll be crossing roads like a pro!
The other great news is that on Friday, (Friday was a great day!), she drank expressed breast milk from a bottle!!! Another really easy thing I hear you say. What kind of backwards baby is this that can't move her head or drink from a bottle? Well, it is The Popster that's who, so back off!
The Popster is breast fed. When we were trying to establish breastfeeding in the early days there was no way she would survive on breast alone so we topped up with expressed breast milk from bottles. She loved those bottles. I would start by putting her to the breast where she would mostly lick, and probably fall asleep. I would then put a bottle in her mouth which she would guzzle down as fast as possible. I would then put her back to the breast where she would likely bite and then fall asleep. As time went on, her time at the breast would involve more and more actual feeding which meant she used the bottle less and less. Seeing as behaving like a cow and having a pump attached to your boobs is really not that much fun I slowly stopped expressing until I wasn't at all. Great - breast feeding successfully established.
It felt good, until breast feeding wasn't that convenient one day and I tried giving her a bottle. It must have been only 2-3 weeks since she had last had a bottle but in that time it seems she had developed a massive aversion to bottles. There was no way she was accepting milk from anything but the source. This was not good news - this tied me to The Popster 24/7. The longest break I could safely have was just under 3 hours. Much as I love The Popster I really wanted the ability to not be with her! She may not have existed for long, but I've got her forever and quite frankly I need a break now and again. Every other person in the universe gets to leave her for a bit, I want to too! That meant we had to train her in the way of the bottle again. As it turned out it also meant I had to pour pints of breast milk down the drain as we encountered failure after failure.
The reason I was pouring milk away was because The Popster was defiant. She hasn't had milk from a bottle for at least 12 weeks. In that time we tried everything.
We tried me hiding and Jon feeding it to her.
We tried different bottles.
We tried different teats.
We tried waiting for her to be really hungry.
We tried feeding her early.
We tried tricking her by swapping her dummy for a bottle and quickly switching back before she got too upset.
We tried different positions.
We tried a cup.
We tried warming the milk.
We tried filling a teat with milk and putting over my nipple -messy failure.
We tried it all.
We listened politely when people made suggestions - we had always already tried.
Nothing worked. The results were either uncontrollable hysterical crying, or she would just play with the teat, or she would suck but not swallow and allow it to all just dribble down her chin.
It was very disheartening so we had a break from trying for a couple of weeks. I have a hen weekend to go to which is rapidly approaching - if she doesn't take the bottle I'm not going. This means we have a time limit on this training, so I decided I needed to start up again. With not a great deal of hope, on Friday I stuck a bottle in her mouth and amazingly she didn't cry and appeared to be drinking - there was actual swallowing going on. I couldn't believe it! Where did this come from? After 5 mins I couldn't contain myself and removed the bottle from her mouth to see how much she had drunk. 5mls. Big deal!! She was being really slow, but she was drinking. She did get a bit faster, and she finished the whole bottle!! I only had 40ml in there as I hate throwing it away. I can't tell you how happy I was, but I knew this didn't mean we had cracked it. But it did mean we had made progress and it was promising. We had to keep up momentum. We had to give her a bottle every day, if she took it we would slowly increase the amount until it was actually a full feed. Progress since then has been slow. Saturday no chance - scream. Sunday, success. Monday - uh uh, no thank you. Let's see what tomorrow brings. We don't have a lot of time, but if this is successful I have a lot of cow imitating to do - hook me up to that pump!!
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