When my son was born, things were a little hazy. I had been in labor for 24 hours and things had been rough with a fourth-degree vaginal tear. When I tried to breastfeed him, he was not latching on right. I was a new mother so I wasn’t sure how easy these things were supposed to be, but then things got more strange.

A Mother’s Intuition: Always Listen to It!

They told me my son was refusing to eat. He was happy and born healthy from what we could tell, but he did not want to eat. He was not hungry. How strange for a tiny new baby! After many hours of work and some amazing nurses, they worked with my son to start eating. First, with a tiny dropper, then with preemie bottles.

We kept trying to breastfeed and even had a consultant come and help me, but still, we were having problems. I would cry in pain and I just knew something wasn’t right; my mother’s intuition was telling me something was wrong. When we got discharged from the hospital, his paperwork said “failure to get hungry.” He was eating more at this point, but still drinking from the preemie bottles. We used those preemie bottles for about a week or two and worked on getting him to learn how to eat and suck on a bottle.

When we finally were able to switch him to regular bottles, he had a hard time with them. His tongue seemed to get in the way and he didn’t seem to know how to suck on them. When we went for one of his first check-ups I talked about it with his pediatrician. I had done some research trying to figure out what was going on and asked the doctor if he could be tongue-tied. The doctor told me with all certainty that there was nothing wrong and I felt silly for even asking. But in the back of my head through my mother’s intuition, I knew there was something wrong. I had babysat kids all my life and I had never had this much trouble feeding a baby!

This is a guest post for Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life. To read the rest, click here:

A Mother’s Intuition