Oh those 2 days between the hospital and the pediatrician appointment. The longest of my life. As we waited for Wednesday to arrive, I diligently maintained my pumping schedule: every 2 hours during the day, every 3 hours during the night. This was also accompanied by my feeble and extremely stressful attempt to breastfeed McKenna. She was visibly (and audibly) hungry, I was visibly falling apart at the seams. I valiantly spent roughly 20 minutes trying to get her to latch unsuccessfully, then pumped, then fed her from the bottle. By the time this process was complete, I had anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour before the process needed to start again. As I've mentioned many times before, it doesn't matter how tired I am, it takes me a while to fall asleep. And clearly I had a lot racing through my mind. I was in a cloud of hopelessness. It is amazing how hopeless and depressed you can feel while simultaneously feeling so much happiness and love at the same time. It doesn't sound possible, but it is. An hour of hysterical crying would be ended by peaceful gazing in wonderment at my beautiful newborn. They warn you of these emotions but nothing can prepare you for them.
McKenna's attached frenulum was confirmed by our pediatrician. Having learned that both Kevin and his older sister had needed their frenulums clipped as infants, we had already made the decision to move forward with it. With our pediatricians referral and consent, we were directly on our way to have the procedure done immediately following our otherwise healthy first well-checkup.
A frenulum clip is considered a simple procedure, however we were warned that the baby could have an upsetting reaction to it. With my questionable emotional state, Kevin did not give me a choice whether I would be present for it so I was sent out of the room. With the first part of the procedure finished (and what they say is usually the most upsetting to Baby), Kevin sent for me to come back in because our Baby Girl is a badass. She let out a couple seconds of crying and then was fine for the rest of the procedure. So I ended up actually being present for the clip, not that we could even see anything.
This is how affected McKenna was by the procedure:
Less than 5 minutes after the procedure, still in the Doc's office, Cool as a Cucumber.
I had unfortunately read that some babies could have instantaneous success at breastfeeding immediately after the procedure. I wish I hadn't read that because it wasn't the case for us. But it was a necessary step in the right direction.
The difference pre- and post- procedure was pretty significant. Before the clip, when she cried you could see her tongue almost looked like it was stuck to the bottom of he mouth. You could see where it was attached. Afterward, it was so wonderful to see her moving her tongue around like it was a new experience for her. You'd never think of sticking your tongue out as a novel experience, but Kevin and I got so much joy out of seeing her tongue move freely!
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