One piece of baby-related paperwork involved the following checkbox:
[X] I plan to breastfeed the baby.
I marked the “X” and moved on.
Ethan required gavage-feeding (fed via tube inserted through nose and esophagus) his first few days. It doesn’t sound pleasant, but is necessary and typical for premature infants that have not yet developed the ability to suck and swallow food on their own.
The Intensive Care Nursery nurses tested him every day for a suck/swallow reflex until they decided he was able to bottle feed. At that point, the tube came out, and I was allowed to bottle-feed him.
Gavage
When Patrika recovered a little, we saw a lactation consultant for some advice. Later that day, we saw that Ethan had had a tube inserted again. It appeared our feeding preferences had been changed from:
- Breast (first choice)
- Bottle (if mother unavailable)
- Gavage (if unable to feed from bottle)
to:
- Breast (first choice)
- Gavage (if mother unavailable)
- Bottle (if unable to Gavage; never the case)
No tubes
Some extremely zealous lactation consultants (less-politely referred to by others as “breastfeeding Nazis”) would rather see a baby have a feeding tube than see them suffer the confusion of a bottle.
It is a point of view people are entitled to have, but the transformation of our preference from “we plan to breastfeed” to “we do not want a bottle at all costs” was not communicated clearly to us. We got this cleared up, and the tube removed again.