Struggling with my 6 week old
How do I know that it's time to give up on trying to get my baby to nurse?
I am a FTM to a beautiful little girl who had to be induced at 37 weeks because of gestational hypertension, and she had also been measuring small my whole pregnancy. This may or may not be related to my autoimmune disease (Crohn's). The end result was a 5 lb 10 oz baby who has honestly just such a small mouth and also a weak mouth. She is also a very sleepy/lethargic baby. Not a lot of eyes open time for us.
I really, really want to be able to nurse. Part of this for me is that I do a lot of backpacking and outdoor adventuring and the logistics of that with nursing are feasible and the logistics of that with pumping are much harder. Also part of that is that so far I hate pumping. I have D-MER and I think that's a big part of it. I also just hate that she hasn't figured out nursing and that I can't get her to nurse. She gets frustrated and cries and it makes me so, so sad. I've seen three different LCs, taken her to feeding and swallowing- she just can't nurse and I don't want advice on how to get her to nurse. She can't.
I also really want to be able to provider her with breastmilk for 6 months- this is because there could be a lower chance of her also getting Crohn's.
It's been a very rough time for me mental health wise. I had post partum mania that was very scary and ended up with a new diagnosis of Bipolar I that I am trying to wrap my head around.
So I have been basically EP for the last 6 weeks and she is basically only eating from bottles except that like once or twice a day I force us to do what I can only describe as breast torture. Where I try to make her latch and she tries to eat and she cries and I cry. I want to stop the breast torture. I want to know that it's okay to stop trying to get her to nurse. But I also don't want to just give up now if it turns out that she's just like one day away from magically figuring out nursing, and if I had only tried harder or for one more day then maybe I'd have a baby who could nurse.
How did you know it was time to stop the breast torture? Did you stop for a while and then take a break but then in the future tried again and it worked?