Bree Forgot How to Nurse?

During the two days where I was either prepping for or undergoing the colonoscopy, I was unable to nurse Bree. Instead, we were giving her formula in a bottle while I pumped and threw away my milk. I was glad when I finally felt it was safe to breastfeed Bree again yesterday. But we had an unexpected setback: after almost a year of breastfeeding 2-4 times a day (and only occasional bottles), it appeared that Bree had forgotten how to latch on after the two day break. She was treating me more like she does her bottle, which she has never seemed to master even though she gets one semi-regularly when Greg is giving me a break.

Since our first attempt was at bedtime and we were late getting her to bed because we’d gone out to look at Christmas lights, I attributed it to her simply being overtired even though we’d never had this issue before. But it happened again in the middle of night so I was forced to just rock her back to sleep. When it happened again tonight at bedtime, I was very upset. Bree was frustrated and crying and I was crying too. Bree has always been such a nursing champ and a momma’s girl. I know she is just days shy of turning a year so we’ve had a good run and if we had to quit it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but this was so unexpected and I didn’t get any time to mentally prepare for it.

Thankfully, after several tries (and a very painful bite) tonight she finally got the hang of it again. I hope the middle of the night feeding goes smoothly.

UPDATE: She is slowly getting back into the routine. This mama is so glad, as I was not ready to wean my little baby. I am still having a hard time comprehending that she is going to be a year old tomorrow.