Injured Nipple! - Nursing My Fierce Girl

I was dozing off while nursing my little girl when she suddenly got frustrated and gave me a vicious bite!

I have never had such a bad bite from nursing Kieran! She literally bit down and pulled! I screamed in pain while she cried in fright, and thereafter, I stopped nursing her on the injured breast. In fact I developed such a fear of latching her!

The nipple hurts terribly and I stopped latching her on that side, only latching her on the other, and hand expressing the injured breast when it got too engorged. At night, once, I latched her on the injured side as I did not want the supply to go down too badly, and that latch was excruciatingly painful! I took care to unlatch whenever I felt baby was fussy, or when I felt her teeth. Caitlin was definitely teething and very often, she would attempt to bite me.

I got so demoralised that I contemplated stop breastfeeding her altogether. Caitlin refused bottles since she was four or five months old, but I refused to nurse her and gave her a bottle, and she actually drank 30ml of breastmilk from it.

Later, I realised that Caitlin was not only teething but developing a fever. That explained her crankiness and her likeliness to bite while nursing.

Now, it is two weeks since she recovered from her high fever and roseola (fake measles) and she has resumed her lovely, nice, non-biting self, albeit a little fierce when she's refused the things she wants. Oh yes, she bites you when you snatch her toys. It's almost like a reflex action from her. She instinctively lunge forward and bite your arm if you snatch her toys. She reminds me of a puppy! Haha! But she has stopped biting me when she nurses. Thank goodness!

Attention demanding baby

As my baby gets older, he gets more and more attention demanding.

He is seriously draining me of my energy every single day! Oh well, there are joys and pains to every job and this is one of the pains of my job as a full time mummy. Haha. Oh but just looking at his alert eyes and his cute smile makes my heart flutter with happiness and pride.

Sippy Cup/ Training Cup experiment

I bought a soft spout Tommy Tippee sippy cup for baby. I also bought a hard spout First Years sippy cup. Both for him to experiment, play with and enjoy drinking from.

Today I put some warm water into the Tommy Tippee cup and let him sip. He got some water into his mouth and his expression was priceless! He had never tasted water before as he had always been on breast milk. He looked as if he had tasted something very weird! Haha. But he still took it anyway. I'm thinking of putting some breast milk in the sippy cup and let him drink it from there once he's good at sucking the sippy. I'm skipping bottles totally since bottle training a baby who's latched on all the time is such a big hassle, and babies have to learn to use a sippy cup or training cup by the time they take solids anyway. So I got cups for 6 months old and let my baby play with it first. I'm looking forward to feeding him solids. In a month's time, I'll be able to make delicious pureed banana, apple, sweet potato and other nice food for him. I'll capture his expressions when he first taste food!

Rid Wind

Baby has wind in tummy these few days and he often spit out milk after nursing because of the wind. I use rid wind once a day, starting from yesterday morning, and he's so much better. But the spitting is a laundry problem... imagine me and baby having to change clothes twice before we leave the house because he spits right after we are dressed up! Milk spits smell so badly when they dry up.

Demanding... demanding...

Because he is so demanding of my attention, I shall bring him to the baby fair and see if I can get some new toys to interest him. I was hoping he'll like the jumperoo. If I could let him jump until he is tired and fall asleep, wouldn't it be good! Nowadays, he'll open his eyes and look around curiously, refusing to sleep even if he's tired, and when he's overtired, he'll be very cranky and difficult to soothe to sleep. I saw my friend's baby girl who is about the same age as Yun Xuan fall asleep within 15 min of yawning, and she doesn't need much coaxing! Oh gosh... I pity myself... I had to either rock and sing song, hold and pat his buttocks, rock in sarong cradle and sing song, nurse him with side lying position, or nurse him with cradle hold and rock him... and I try all of these methods above every time he wants to be soothed to sleep. Most of the time, he's screaming or crying at the top of his lungs. The best is he sometimes dozed off for 30min and he's wide awake and cooing for attention again! I don't know whether this is a boy and girl difference or just a difference of character, or (hopefully) is just a passing phase. He's teething now and keeps drooling, putting his lips together to make a Mmm look (super cute when he does that) and keeps wanting to bite everything. So I hope the recent crankiness is related to his teething. Its cute because my husband's and my fingers are now his favorite teethers. His fingers are S size teethers, mine are M size and my husband's are L size ones. Haha.