Kenzie is 2 months old!

Dear Makenzie,

You have changed so much in 4 weeks! The biggest and best change is that you give smiles out willingly to pretty much anyone who gives you their time. Your smile is usually pretty crooked which makes your dimples pop out so much. It is a complete replica of daddy's which makes mommy so happy since he is still in Korea at the moment. Speaking of that, you are so interested in the screen when we talk to him. I'm not sure if its cause you hear daddy's voice or if you are wondering what the screen is. You finally smiled for him the other day and it made him so happy. Your features are also changing and you are looking more and more like a cute little baby instead of a newborn. Although you were always cute! You still have brown hair and even the hair growing in is brown. I think it is very pretty:) Your eyelashes are getting super long and so pretty! I love them! I'm coming to the conclusion that you have daddy's eyes which most people would now agree with me on that. They are still blue and have a light blue ring around the pupil which is so stunning! You love to look around and are very alert and aware of your surroundings now. I'm sure soon we will be ditching the swing and switching to a jumper play-set. You outgrew your newborn Jammie's and have upgraded to 0-3 months. Your a growin girl!  You love to nurse! It is one of my favorite moments with you because I can rub your head and snuggle with you :)   I am so relieved that we are breast feeding with ease now! The first week that we were not supplementing with formula you only gained 2.5 oz which is not very much and you also didn't poop for 7 days which made me start to worry. You had a huge blowout diaper finally and after that you have been a great pooper :) I was also worried about your slow weight gain and was anxious that we would have to go back to supplementing but wanted to give it another week and go from there. The second week you gained 5.2 oz which is right in the middle of the weight gain tracker which was just fine with me! At your 2 month checkup your pediatrician told me you were perfect in every way and that your weight was perfect! I was so excited! He also told me he was proud of me for sticking to bf and that I was a great mom. It made me tear up some because we had done it! We had overcome a huge obstacle! You are such a great sleeper which makes me ever so happy! You give me the most smiles when you wake up and it makes a great start to every morning. You have found your thumb and have grown quite fond of it. Like mother like daughter I guess. You still love and enjoy bath time which still makes you my water baby! Makenzie you are such a joy and give me and daddy so much happiness in our lives! We love you more than you will ever know!

~Breastfeeding Update~

So as of 7 days ago we are now exclusively breast feeding! YAY! I have to say I really had my doubts about a positive outcome due to the overwhelming process of the whole thing. I ditched my old lactation consultant and got in touch with a IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) in my area. Best $80 I've ever spent! She really helped me with improving our latch as well as giving me tons of references for everything you could think of in terms of bf support. I had like no breast milk left to the point that I could maybe get a drop out of each boob and that was it. We had a long way to go and I knew it would be a long process. I became members for the mom-to-mom and la leche league groups on facebook which was a great help as well. I also go to the mom-to-mom meetings every Wednesday which is kind of silly but it surrounded me with other bf moms. I have to say though that even when I decided to proceed with bf again I still thought of giving up about 10 more times along the way. Formula feeding does have its benefits as well which I was not going to admit at the time. But seriously just looking back at the process that I had to go through at EVERY SINGLE FEEDING just makes me wonder how I actually succeeded. Here was what I did at every feeding:

1. Make a bottle of formula

2. Put formula into SNS (supplemental nursing system)

3. Set up the SNS on me (clip to my shirt and then tape tube above my boob)

4. Nurse her for about 30-45 min. without any formula

5. Nurse her with the SNS until it was empty or she was full

6. Pump for 5-10 min after every feeding to empty my milk ( didn't do every time because I didn't like it)

Crazy huh. Eventually I would start weaning her off the formula by taking away 0.5oz every week. It took us about 3 weeks to finally get to where I felt comfortable with her not having any formula. After a while I also started just nursing her and gave no formula only like twice a day making her total intake of formula to about 6oz total. After doing this for about 3 weeks I can finally say we are exclusively breastfeeding! Looking back I am almost glad it happened the way it did because now I know I can do anything I set my mind to and if anyone ever says they "cant do it" I can say "yes you can and this is how!"