You would think that, if anything were instinctive, breast feeding would be. Apparently not, however. We went for another check-up for Mayuki yesterday, and she doesn’t seem to be getting enough to drink. The main problem seems to be that she has been sleeping through times when she should be fed, and hasn’t been attaching herself to the nipple properly. So Yuriko got a few instructions on how to encourage her to do it properly, and now we have to wake her up to make her eat, whether she thinks she’s hungry or not. We’re going back for another check-up in a couple of days, to see is Mayuki’s weight gain is back on course. If not, we may have to go with supplementary bottles for a little while.
The natural question is “how did people get on before there were clinics to give advice?”, and the answer is “the infant mortality rate was about 1 in 4”, so I think I’ll stick with the modern system and clinics, and follow the advice. As things stand, there is no significant risk that Mayuki will die in the next twenty years, and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you.
On the bright side, she’s started making new noises. In addition to burps, hiccups, and sneezes, and the extensively-practised cry, she’s started saying “ah” and such from time to time. Not very consistently yet, but I suspect this is the first step towards baby babbling, and thus the very first step towards talking. She’s got quite a long way to go yet, though.
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