Collectively, my kids have always been great nursers. From the get go, every time I would kangaroo Jace in the hospital, he would root and try to get into a nursing position even when he wasn't supposed to be eating. He got so worked up that finally the nurse said "Just let him try...we'll see what happens."
What happened is that he went to town, turned a corner, and ended up going home sooner than we expected because he nursed much better than he took a bottle. Seth was the same way. We struggled to get him to take a bottle in the hospital but he nursed happily, and in fact not long after he got home he began to boycott the bottle entirely, as some of you may remember.
Ava was a great nurser even though I, at the time, was an insane first time mom who literally burst into tears every time she was hungry because nursing was so painful. Who knows what we were doing wrong, but we soldiered through and I cowboyed up and it was all good.
Evany has been taking a bottle since the day after she was born, with miniscule amounts of first formula and, once I recovered from my spinal headache and caught up, now breast milk. She did have a feeding tube in foe any milk she didn't drink by mouth, but she decided she didn't want that in her nose today, so she took it out and no one bothered to replace it. Everyone keeps oohing and ahhing over how well she is doing on the bottle, and I've been pumping like mad to prepare for when her volume goes up. (Right now it's at 12 mLs a feeding)
You can imagine my surprise last night when I walked in and my friend Michelle, who is Evany's nurse, said "Hey! The doctor said you can nurse once a day. Want to try it?!" I had not even begun to THINK about being able to nurse Vivi yet, for several reasons. But there was no way I was going to turn down the chance!
As we got her situated, Michelle said "This is just to check things out. She probably won't latch on, and she might just mess around and fall asleep. That's fine. She's still really little to be nursing and....wow, look at that!"
We both sat there in shock as Evany latched right on and started nursing like she'd been doing it all her life. It was crazy. She nursed consistently for over ten solid minutes, which is huge.. She was sucking and swallowing in a coordinated fashion. She was nursing about ten times better than she takes a bottle.
It was so cool. And she's definitely a McCall baby, because apparently nursing is their thing.
Then we cuddled. It was nice. And of course, by nice I mean "Awesome."
