after sixteen weeks of pumping 8-10 times a day and producing a huge inventory of milk, i’m happy to report that little odin seems to finally be getting the hang of nursing!

right up until a few days ago, it didn’t look like he was going to be a great nurser. getting milk from a bottle is a whole lot easier than getting it directly from The Source and while he’d nurse every now and then, many, many times he’d pitch a fit until kris relented and gave him a bottle.

but in the past few days, kris has been working with him and learned that she needed to start nursing well before he started obvious signs of getting hungry to prevent him from being hungry and frustrated, which inevitably would lead to a world class tantrum.

and while the issue has raised a minor brouhaha in the past, i should probably disclose that little odin’s tantruns showed all the classic sings of nipple confusion, including opening his mouth but not latching on shaking his head from side to side, rearing back, looking for the nipple and appearing puzzled and quite agitated.

but thanks to a little more work on kris’ part over the past few days he’s begun to almost exclusively nurse and is only occasionally taking a bottle, which is really great news. many micropreemie moms find that their milk supply will “dry up” after months of pumping if the baby hasn’t begun nursing in earnest, which is not only a tough thing for the mom to go through, but formula can be quite expensive.

it’s really quite amazing that kris pumped so often for so many months and it really looks like all her hard work is going to finally pay off.

update: holy crap! i can’t believe i forgot to note that day 112 was odin’s 16 week birthday and his 4th full moon birthday!