We started bottle-feeding Sierra every two hours, meanwhile, I was still pumping every two hours trying to get my milk supply to increase.  There was a lot of crying on my part over the next couple days because every time I would look at this tiny little person who was depending on me for her needs, I would be overcome with guilt and sadness that my body wasn't giving her what she needed.  I desperately wanted to be breastfeeding, but it just wasn't happening.  Still, she was finally eating.  We were giving her whatever breast milk I was able to pump, plus supplementing with formula. 

Monday, we went in for a weight check and were overjoyed that she was back up to 6lbs 8oz.  Doc said he thought we were doing a lot better and were to come in the following week.  I also called my midwife to tell her what was going on.  She wasn't in the office, but called me back on Tuesday and told me to come in that afternoon.  She stayed late to spend an hour with me and give me another lactation consult.  Mary Jo told us to stop bottle-feeding because it would make it too hard to get Sierra to go back to the breast.  Instead, we started finger feeding, still every two hours.  This involves putting a finger in baby's mouth and when she sucks on the finger, rewarding her by squirting milk into her mouth from a syringe. 

We kept this up for several days and Thursday the 19^th of June, I added another method suggested by a friend whose baby had a similar problem when he was born.  This involved a silicone cover called a nipple shield that goes over the nipple and helps stimulate the suck reflex because it goes a little farther back in baby's mouth.  I was thrilled the first time I used it because even though Sierra wasn't breastfeeding, she was sucking at the breast.  It felt like we were moving in the right direction.  The next day Mary Jo called to see how things were going and told me that to wean Sierra from the nipple shield to the breast, after a few days, I should little by little cut off the top of the nipple shield.  I never got that far. 

Very early in the morning on Monday, June 23^rd, I tried breastfeeding and it worked!  Sierra nursed for almost an hour and a half, switching from one breast to the other.  She wasn't consistently breastfeeding but she would suck and rest.  It was definite progress, but we weren't out of the woods yet.  She would still only occasionally take the breast.  Other times, she simply refused and still others, she would try to latch on and couldn't do it efficiently so she would get frustrated and cry and essentially get in her own way.  At this point, I was attempting to breastfeed every feeding, but if it didn't work within the first 15 minutes or so, we would switch and finger feed her.  We wanted feeding to stay a positive experience.  It paid off when her weight was up to 7lbs 2oz at her appointment Tuesday. 

Over the next several days, Sierra got better and better at breastfeeding and she would more consistently latch on and suck.  We had to finger feed less and less often.  Finally, at around 10am on Thursday, June 26^th, we finger fed her for the last time.  Since then, she has been exclusively breastfed.  It makes me so happy to see her doing what should be such a natural bond between mama and baby and what took us more than two weeks to figure out.  I still have to squeeze my boob during her feedings to remind her to keep sucking and sometimes it takes several tries for her to latch on correctly, but I am beyond pleased that she has finally gotten the hang of something as simple as eating the way she is supposed to!

I must say, I am proud of myself to have been so determined to keep working not give up on breastfeeding my baby even though it would have been so much easier just to give up and give her a bottle.  And it felt good that both my midwife and our lactation consultant told me the same thing.