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Kay's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 7/25/01 -------------------- 4/20/01 3/6/01 2/25/01 2/6/01 1/22/01 11/30/00 10/27/00 9/29/00 8/30/00 8/14/00 8/3/00 7/25/00 7/17/00 7/7/00 6/21/00 6/12/00 6/3/00 5/22/00 4/11/00 3/20/00 -------------------- Kay's Introduction

March 20, 2000

Monday, March 13, 2000 Haley and I arrived home to Oregon to meet our other children Melissa, 17, Jordan, 15, and Allison, 12. Russell had flown home three days earlier, while I stayed in Nebraska to wait for the Interstate Compact approval to take the baby home.

I stayed in the home of a wonderful woman I met on-line. Her family had also adopted. In her home, Haley and I got to know each other and got used to our nursing relationship.

She is a great nurser -- super latch. She likes to nurse a long time and switch sides often. A typical feeding involves four 10-minute sessions. Then she will take a couple ounces of formula in a bottle or the Lact-aid supplementer. She nurses often. She is a good baby. I am absolutely in love. I used the sling a lot in their home so I could nurse more discretely around her husband and 11-year-old son. Haley seems to really like the sling. She sleeps very well in it.

Melissa, Jordan and Allison could not wait to each hold her. They will be wonderful big brother and sisters. Melissa had no college that week and had taken the week off work to be home and help me. I home-school Jordan and Allison, so they are home, too. It is a sweet time with our new family member.

The nursing continues to go well. I am using a Munchkin Slow Flow nipple on a Playtex bottle to do her supplement feeds. I found the Avent and the Heathflow nipples too fast for her. My milk supply is not as fast a flow or as much as she needs since I did not give birth to her. They figure I am giving her 30-40 percent breastmilk. I am using the bottles more and the supplementer less for supplementing. She nurses so well and so long that I am getting plenty of breast stimulation. She has had no nipple confusion with the slow flow nipples. The supplementer is more difficult for me to do discretely.

She uses nursing to comfort herself and to put herself to sleep. She is sleeping five to six hours at night. She usually starts out nursing in bed with me and then I scoot her into her bassinet on the floor after she is asleep. During the day she is in the sling quite a bit. It seems to comfort her and makes nursing easy.

By two weeks old she was back to her birth weight. The pediatrician is very pleased with how the nursing is going. She figures Haley is getting 50 percent breastmilk now.