Baby Birdie

Ryan and I hardly got any sleep in the hospital. We were up all night each night trying to comfort Madison who had her days and nights mixed up. To make matters worse, she was incredibly hungry. We were having a lot of trouble getting her to eat which was emotionally draining. The lactation consultants finally made us supplement with formula because she wasn't latching at all and was losing weight. We tried feeding her formula with an eyedropper first. Next we finger fed her by running a tube into her mouth and rewarding her with formula when she sucked properly on our fingers. By the time we went home from the hospital, we were training her to latch by feeding her every few hours using a syringe and feeding tube which ran under a plastic breast shield. It was a crazy process and reminded me of trying to feed a baby bird so I started calling her Birdie. After a week, we finally got the process down and she's been doing great ever since.