I can’t describe what it feels like to read those words written on a piece of paper about your child.  The guilt, sadness, feeling of powerlessness takes over everything.

In mid-January, Juliet was scheduled to go to the doctor for her flu booster shot. While I was there I requested a weight check as I have always been a little bit worried about her small size, some of the feeding issues we had in the past, along with her low percentage on the growth charts. After placing her on the scale, the numbers 11.0 flashed on the scale. How could that be right?  Juliet was 7 lbs 14 ozs at birth and here at 7 months of age, she was barely 4lbs heavier than she was at birth.


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The nurse immediately looked at me and said, “Can I make this a sick visit so the doctor can come check her out?” Of course I agreed. In my mind I was going through all the things I could think of — she was sick this month, maybe I needed to nurse her more, maybe I needed to nurse her longer, but I’d been counting and she had the appropriate amount of wet diapers…

When the doctor came in, I was happy to see it was our regular doctor (we belong to a practice so we sometimes don’t always get the same doctor, but I try to make appointments with this specific doctor as I like her the most). The previous month at Juliet’s 6 month appointment we had seen another doctor in the practice who was a bit older, and I felt somewhat more old fashioned in his approach. He had mentioned that Juliet’s weight seemed to be down (to date the most Juliet has ever weighed was 11 lbs 11 oz when she was 5 months old). At her 6 month check up she was 11 lbs 6 ozs, but she was fighting a small cold at the time so he attributed it more to that and didn’t seem to stress about it too much even when I asked about supplementing or giving her more food, so I assumed things were alright.

Just like when Drake was younger, for weeks I would wonder about Juliet’s weight, constantly standing on the scale holding her and stepping off without her trying to frantically figure out had she gained or lost. When I sat down with the doctor and she told me that Juliet was starting to slide off her growth chart (she was at 3% for the last few months) and there was concern about the slow loss of weight, it took everything inside of me not to break down and cry. The doctor wanted to order blood work for Juliet to make sure we weren’t missing anything major, but in my heart as soon as I saw that scale’s numbers flash up I knew the problem was my milk.

In the meantime the doctor said it would probably be best to start supplementing 2-3 bottles a day for Juliet as well as giving her more fatty foods in her diet like we had been doing with the solids.  She did a quick examination of Juliet and said that the good news was she seemed to be a fine, happy, little 7 month old girl. She was alert, attentive, and responsive to me and was hitting most of her milestones perfectly, so hopefully with a little more food and some blood tests to rule out anything, she would be back on her way up the charts soon. The doctor asked us to come back in 2 weeks’ time to check on the progress as well as get the blood test results back.

Once I got home and was alone with Juliet (Drake was watching a TV show I put on for him), I held her in my arms and let it all go. In so many ways I felt like I was right back to when Drake was born — the memories of the endless crying, watching Drake’s numbers fall farther and farther down the scale and the growth charts, and the guilt that somehow this had happened again even though I thought I was better prepared this time. The difference this time was that I was actually able to successfully nurse Juliet, and several times when she dropped in weight I was able to change that. She gained close to a pound one time after her weight had dropped, and when it happened again I was once again able to nurse her back up. So to hear now that she had dropped down for the past 2 months, as well as halted growth in both height and head circumference was simply heartbreaking for me to hear. While the doctor and Mr. Chocolate were both concerned that perhaps something more serious could be causing the issues (hence the bloodwork), I knew in my own heart it was simply my milk and my own failure.

I have never been a fan of breastfeeding and I sometimes feel like I don’t even truly understand fully how to do it properly. I always heard babies should be fed on demand so I used to feed Juliet at every cry or whimper. When she got a little older I wanted to start stretching her feedings a little longer, but every time I went to the doctor her weight would drop or be in question and I would worry that she wasn’t eating enough, so I would continue feeding her every 2-3 hours around the clock. As the sleepless nights wore on me I wanted to drop a feeding, but once again seeing her weight in peril at a doctor’s appointment would racket up my anxiety and around the clock we would go again.

At 7 months of age I was still feeding Juliet a minimum of 6 times a day, and upwards of 9 times on some days like she was newborn. Because of this, I think Juliet never seemed to nurse longer than 10 minutes on average. Usually she would pull off on her own and I would pop a pacifier in her mouth, and if she was content that would end the feeding. Unlike Drake there were never hunger cries so I always felt she was getting enough. I could never get myself to drop a feeding or make her stretch out her feedings too much out of fear it would cause her to slide even more in weight, but now as I look back I wonder if this caused some of the issue. I had told the doctor about her feeding habits and she mentioned perhaps the problem was because Juliet took all these small feedings around the clock she never had enough time to ever get enough hindmilk and was filling up on the foremilk each time (resulting in the necessary wet diapers I was counting).

Looking back at this I struggle with so much guilt now. Should I have tried to insist she feed longer than 10 minutes each time? Should I have tried stretching her feedings out so she would be hungrier and thus eat more instead of constantly taking these small meals? Was there anything I could have done to make my milk heartier for her? Should I have tried to increase my supply? I have no idea what the right answer is, and I still feel like I have no idea how to properly breastfeed. I still feed Juliet every few hours, though she has started to sleep longer and longer throughout the night, especially with the supplementation bottles at her last feeding.

I took Juliet to get her blood work done and so far the tests that have come back — anemia, iron levels, thyroid — have all come back normal. We are still waiting on more test result because the first time I took Juliet to get her blood drawn, she was too small to remove enough blood for all the tests. We also go back to the doctor next week to see if she was able to gain weight now that she is getting 2-3 bottles of formula a day on top of her regular feedings and solids.

Through this entire process I have struggled with immense guilt about all the choices I made or should have made that got us to this point. It feels like de ja vu in some ways as I remember our struggles with Drake. Mr. Chocolate has been supportive in maintaining there is and was nothing wrong with my milk or the way I fed her, and that I should be happy and proud of how long I was able to breastfeed this time considering I never really got the hang of it with Drake.

There has never been any love between me and breastfeeding. I always joked to Mr. Chocolate that the day Juliet turned 12 months old, I would close up shop and be done; I had no interest in nursing one moment past the one year mark. Now as I look back at the seven and a half months I exclusively breastfed Juliet, part of me feels like a failure in not making it to one year (I’m still nursing but not exclusively), and part of me wonders if perhaps this would be a good time to stop nursing. Juliet is now getting most of her caloric needs from formula, as she nurses less and less during the day and gets so excited when she sees me making her bottle. The only time I really nurse Juliet and when she really seems to eat is during those night feedings when she is barely awake, and we sit and rock in the rocking chair in her room.

Last night as we rocked together in her room, I felt her settle in to nurse. I put down my phone, which I normally use to kill time while nursing, and stroked her hair and marveled at her tiny features in the moonlight for the first time in weeks. I thought that just maybe nursing might be more than just food or scales and numbers.  Maybe even if I couldn’t give Juliet all her calories, I was still giving her something she needed… something that was just as important and necessary for her to thrive.