It sure IS painful, extremely painful, when one twin has had latch issues for five weeks and the other twin spontaneously develops an 'Epstein Pearl' on the front outer part of her lower gum! It's just been one painful challenge after another.
Liam is starting his second week of bottles. :(
The frenotomy went well. The doc only snipped the thinnest part of Liam's frenulum. It released some of his tongue-tie, but, in my opinion, not all of it. The doc didn't want to do too much cutting so that it wouldn't be too painful (they do not numb the area for this procedure! 😳😢. Poor baby --but the doc says the skin is still super thin, at this age, and doesn't cause much pain at all). Liam slept through the procedure. He only woke to cry when the doc stuck his fingers in his mouth to lift the tongue. As soon as the doc took his fingers out, I mean immediately, Liam would doze off again! I was so shocked; but prayers were definitely answered! 💕 Liam wasn't bothered by it one bit. (Thank you, everyone, for all the prayers for Liam!)
However, getting him to nurse/latch on is still excruciatingly painful for me and is not successful. I'm so scared to keep trying because every time we "try" (I work and work and work to get him to latch on and when he finally, painfully, latches on, I try my best to deal with the pain to give Liam a chance to "get the hang of" it: open mouth, latch on, suckle, "I get milk!". Not sure what else to do at this point. I end up injured and it makes it difficult to then nurse Elly, who latches on just fine.
I'm in a tough place. I want to nurse Liam; but I don't want to go through the excruciating pain I experienced for three straight weeks (it got worse and worse over those weeks). But at the same time, I'm heart-broken to have to bottle feed Liam while Elly gets to breastfeed. And then I'm worried that I'm going to eventually run out of milk from my "NICU supply" (pictured below) and not be able to keep up with nursing Elly and pumping enough to keep up with Liam's bottle feedings.
Any and all suggestions are welcome. I've searched and searched for any info and suggestions, online; but I have found nothing about this exact situation. I know I'm not the only one... But I just haven't found a solution that works -yet.
God willing, either Liam will get the hang of nursing properly, or I'll find a way to have peace about bottle feeding one baby and nursing the other :(. (But then there's always the huge concern about supplying enough breastmilk for Liam's bottles.)
Help!
