Finally, SUCCESS!!!

So, as you may or may not know, I am breastfeeding Kiya. Now, I have been known to pump occasionally, so I can store some milk for when I have to inevitably go back to work. Because of this, I have been her ONLY link to food and that wonderfully feeling of a comfortable full belly. This also means that I cannot be without her for a period longer than 2 hours, and that I get up at all hours of the night to feed her. In addition, I rarely get a warm or hot meal as she has an uncanny ability to know when I am about to eat and wake up SCREAMING. It is well known in my house that when I sit down to grab a bite to eat, before that spoon or fork hits my mouth and fills it with yummy goodness, the wails of my newly born daughter deter me.

Hmm, you might think that this is the answer to my prayers, right? Without the ability to eat a hot meal I will lose interest and not eat as much. That extra baby weight will just drop off without me having to even try? Unfortunately, this is not the case. This just means that I either eat the meal cold, or I shove some completely unhealthy and wonderfully delicious morsel of something into my mouth just because I can eat it quickly and with one hand.

This also means that Dave has not had the opportunity to revel in the cute wide mouthed smiles that Kiya tends to give me after she is satiated after a meal. This may or may not have also lead to Dave's feeling that Kiya "hates" him. I doubt that is true, but he firmly believes this. Whenever he holds her, even if only for a moment she screams bloody murder. He says, "She knows when she is with me, and hates me". I think there are other reasons, which I won't go into, of why Kiya may or may not scream when she is with Dave, but I don't want him feeling like this.
This screaming and Dave's feeling that his youngest child has ill feelings towards him made me feel sad, so I thought that we would give bottle feeding a try. My logic: if Kiya begins to associate Dave with her happy feelings of fullness and food, maybe she would not be so inclined to scream when he held her. Also, this would allow Dave to hold her without her body rigid with frustration. I went to the store and bought a few different kinds of bottles (because I couldn't find the ones that we had packed away from when Caiden was younger) and thawed out some frozen breast milk and handed her over to Dave.

WOW!! This DID NOT go well. You'd think that we were torturing her. We even alternated between me feeding her (breastfeeding) until she was calm and in that euphoric food feeling and then handing her over to Dave who would try and bottle feed her. NOTHING worked. He was sad, I was frustrated, and Kiya was screaming bloody murder.

Finally, I fed her myself and put her to bed. Then, I tore apart our garage, unpacking the kitchen items that I had not unpacked for the 2 years we have lived in this house. I found things I didn't even know that I had - like a fondue kit...who knew? Anyway, I searched until about 2am and finally resigned myself to go to bed. This morning, I gave it one last go ahead and FINALLY found the box of bottles that we had store. I sterilized them and gave them to Dave. We tried again...no success. Still tears, but not as loudly as yesterday. She seemed more tired than hungry, so Dave put her down to sleep. When she woke up, I warmed some breast milk up, and gave it to Dave and.....SUCCESS!!!! She ate!! She ate the whole thing!!!!! She protested a bit, but not NEARLY as much as before.

So on our third set of bottles, Kiya has found the one she likes. The Playtex Nurser. It has a soft nipple, unlike the Nuk, Playtex Ventaire, Munchkin, and Parent's Choice bottles that we have. Interestingly enough, it is the same bottle style that Caiden preferred. Maybe it is truly most like breastfeeding. I mean, many of the bottles touted their style as "most like the breast", but they had hard, plastic nipples that Kiya and Caiden did not like AT ALL.

So as I am writing this, I breath a sigh of relief. Finally, we have found a bottle that she will take. I know it was only this once, but I am hopeful that she will take it going forward as well. I am also hopeful that Dave's ability to feed her every once and a while will dispel his fears that his daughter hates him. After a nice feeding, she will be smiling those big gummy smiles at him too. :)