I’ve had many people ask, “So, are you able to do Babywise with Sarge?”

The short answer is “yes”.

People automatically assume that if you do Babywise you must let your baby cry for long periods of time. While there is a place and time for cry-it-out, that isn’t what Babywise is all about! In fact, there are parents out there who do Babywise successfully and don’t let their babies cry-it-out! Who knew? Well, now you know!

But cry-it-out isn’t the topic of my post today. (Some of you are breathing a sigh of relief because cry-it-out is such a touchy subject.)

What I want to talk about today is how to do Babywise with a baby affected by drug exposure in the womb. All three of my children are adopted and all three were exposed to drugs in the womb. All three have been affected by the drugs (different drugs for each child) in different ways. All three have greatly benefited from Parent Directed Feedings.

Parent Directed Feedings means the parent pays attention to the clock to know when feedings should happen and the baby’s hunger cues! Sounds like common sense, right? It pretty much is.

What it also does is bring stability to a newborn baby’s life. Every newborn needs stability, but a drug baby especially needs stability.

The womb for my babies was not a safe place. It was toxic and my babies were born under tremendous stress, especially little Sarge. I knew one of the first ways I was going to be able to bring stability to his little life was to start feeding him every 2-3 hours. The hospital wanted me to feed him basically on demand. I, however, knew that was not what his little body needed. After I explained to the doctor that I wanted to feed him every 2-3 hours (which is basically when a newborn will demand to feed anyway) because it was one way I could provide him stability, the doctor listened to me and totally agreed with my reasoning. She put in orders that he was to be fed every 2-3 hours. This was the same doctor that told me the day we left with Sarge that it was because of me Sarge was doing so well and able to go home.

Sarge’s severe digestive issues began right around the time of his due date, as the developmentalist had told us they would. Literally after every single feeding Sarge would writhe in pain. It would take him at least an hour and sometimes an hour and a half to drink his bottles. During the feedings, he would be in pain as the formula would creep back up and burn. Even though all he wanted to do was sleep, he was in so much pain sound sleep was hard to get to. He literally required constant care around the clock and my mom basically moved in with us for the first month because we needed help to be able to adequately care for all three of our children. Sweet Pea’s story is very similar although her pain wasn’t as severe as Sarge’s pain.

Here is what I’ve learned about feeding a baby exposed to drugs:

1. Start Parent Directed Feeding as soon as possible.

In the hospital, I started with the basics of Parent Directed Feeding. I would feed Sarge every 2-3 hours and typically he would go the three hours between feedings. This was around the clock, but it was the first little step in bringing stability to his life.

2. Be lenient on the wake after 3 hours Babywise rule.

Before a baby is sleeping through the night, you are to wake baby to eat at the 3 hour mark because this encourages night time sleep. There are times I wake Sarge at 3 hours. There are also times after he has been in so much pain and had finally fallen asleep 30 minutes before it was time to eat again that I let him sleep an extra half hour before waking him to eat.

3. Trust that baby knows how much he needs to eat.

These babies tend to need to eat less more frequently. That was how Sweet Pea was. It wasn’t long after we arrived home from the hospital and Sarge was wanting to eat more than 3 ounces during some feedings. That scared me because that was a lot of formula for a little guy! However, when we would try to stop him at 3 ounces to encourage him to eat less more frequently, he would not have it when he was wanting more!

Babies know how much to eat. It is easy to overfeed a formula fed baby because you tend to want to feed them the entire bottle. It is very obvious when Sarge is done eating (he purses his lips and puts his mouth on lock down – it is rather cute!) and when he is done, he is done, and we don’t force him to eat more. Forcing a baby to eat in this condition is the worst thing you can do. It most likely will come back up!

4. Work on establishing the Eat-Play-Sleep cycle.

It’s been very hard to establish a predictable sleep pattern with Sarge because of his pain but I still work daily on establishing the Eat-Play-Sleep cycle. At the beginning there was no “play”. It was instead Eat-Pain-Sleep through pain maybe cycle. Now, if he is having a good day (which are happening more and more!) he follows the Eat-Play-Sleep cycle in a much more predictable pattern. We have a ways to go still before his overall sleep stabalizes but I know one day it will just click and become more predictable because we have been attempting the Eat-Play-Sleep cycle as much as we can.

5. Know feedings are going to be rough the first few months, but things WILL improve. When we brought Sarge home from the hospital it was taking him multiple times per feed to latch properly to the bottle and then it would take him 60-90 minutes to drink his 3 ounces bottle. It was a full-time job just feeding Sarge his 8 feeds per 24 hours! And feeding him was no easy task. It required your full attention and you could be doing nothing else while feeding him!

At 15 weeks old (11 weeks adjusted), Sarge’s eating has completely stabilized and I totally credit this to Parent Directed Feeding. His first feeding is at 7:30am and he eats every 3 to 3.5 hours after that. His feedings have been stable since a few weeks after we arrived home from the hospital and I was really able to stick to the every 2-3 hour feeding schedule. We all needed that stability! The time it takes him to eat (4 ounces) has drastically decreased. Today, for the first time ever, he drank his bottle in 20 minutes! That is a life-changer for me. His pain associated with eating is not fully gone but he is gradually having more times of peace and comfort than times of continuous pain.

Parent Directed Feedings just make sense. Why not bring stability to your baby as soon as possible? All babies need stability and many of the points above could apply to a baby not exposed to drugs. I am thankful Babywise has given me the tools I need to help bring stability to my baby’s very chaotic start to life.

- Elaine