Intro to Spiky

Spiky is a boy with red-spiky hair. He doesn’t think he is a baby and gets very frustrated when he is treated like a baby or when he can’t do what he wants to do.

When I was pregnant I had certain things that I KNEW were going to go a certain way. Of course like most first time moms I was wrong. I thought that breastfeeding would be easy, that my child would be perfect, never cry, and always be pleasant. In all honesty it hasn’t been that bad. The first few weeks of breastfeeding was hard; I know that some people don’t believe in nipple confusion but I personally think it’s a real problem.

I had a c-section so we were in the hospital for longer than “normal” births but those extra days really let me get used to taking care of the new little being that is Spiky. While in the hospital he was the “perfect” child, he took to nursing right away only woke up once during the night to eat. (Yes while still in the hospital) With going home everything changed. My sister thought that paci’s were the cutest thing ever and anytime she was around she would put a paci in his mouth even if he wasn’t crying. The whole pacifiers are to PACIFY argument didn’t work with her and she would actually sneak around to give him a paci. Well after a few days of that mess he stopped latching. He would scream until I leaked and then eat like a hamster. We started calling him Hamster Boy. After 3 days or so of him not really eating and just screaming at me and then getting fed by syringe I talked to a lactation consultant and was told to nurse or try to nurse for 20 minutes, pump and then get someone else to feed him from a bottle with the slowest flow nipple possible. It took him 2 days to figure out it was going to be faster to get his food straight from the tap and he quit screaming at the boob. But it took a couple of weeks paci free to correct the latch issues. I got so much grief because I refused to let him have a paci until after he was 4 weeks old. The nay-sayers were quickly told that once his habits affected their boobs they could tell me what to do.  After the 4 week mark I did let him have a paci but it took some research to find a paci he could use that wouldn’t affect his latch. I’m sure that its different for every baby but for Spiky Avent was the only one we tried that didn’t mess up his ability to latch. The worst was Soothie ; which is the one he was given in the hospital. I have heard a few other people say that their babies also had problems latching after using the soothie. But of course it could just be a few random occurrences and there is nothing wrong with the design of the soothie pacifier.