Green poo, the importance of a good latch and other musings

We've been very lucky with Baby Badger. After our early difficulties with feeding in the first few weeks, she's been a good little feeder: hungry (although thankfully not constantly so), hardly ever sick and nothing beyond the expected amount of trapped wind. We completely escaped the colic that two of my NCT friends were plagued with for months. That was until we went on holiday.

Here I divert slightly... Other than spending a week travelling round the north of England to visit relatives, my grand plan for our week away was to wean myself off co-sleeping. Baby Badger was 5 months old and soon to outgrow her crib so she would need to move into her own room: if I couldn't get her out of our bed how on earth would I get her out of our room? I decided the best time to try this was while we were away: I wouldn't want to co-sleep in a strange bed, and Father Badger would be able to help me with the night shift as he wouldn't have to work the following day.

The first night was mainly spent treading the boards with a screaming baby. The second night was much the same. The third and fourth nights were better but still not much sleep was had. And so the week went. Unsurprisingly, we thought it was down to the change in sleeping arrangements. Then came the raging farts and consistently green poo!

We arrived home from our holiday rather tired, and Father Badger went back to work. A couple of days later I was at the local Children's Centre and mentioned the wind issues and green poo to the breast feeding advisor. She watched while I was feeding Baby Badger and said immediately: "she's grown out of that latch position". I had been sitting Baby Badger on my knee and leaning her over to the opposite breast - it meant that I didn't have to support her entire weight on my arms. It had worked for a couple of months, but she was absolutely right: Baby Badger's head was no longer tipping back and she was taking in air because the latch was bad.

It simply hadn't occurred to me that a good latch could become a bad latch.

A week later and we're back to good again. The wind has gone, as has the green poo (after a spell of being spectacularly green, in fact the greenest my health visitor had ever seen!), and Baby Badger is even spending the majority of the night in her own bed. Hurrah!

Image: nuttakit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net