Age: 5 days
This blog was conceived during a 4:30 in the morning feeding, so if it seems a little wonky, that explains a lot, in our humble opinion. It's a sign that we're definitely settling into things a little that we were able to think of anything at 4:30 in the morning.
We've got a lot to share, and hopefully we'll get back to the first four days, but let's tackle a (hopefully) microrecap about yesterday to get it down before sweet Wisebaby wipes our memory.
It was our roughest day yet. It started inauspiciously at 2:30 in the morning when I changed the game plan on Jeff and insisted on pumping in the middle of the night. Jeff blew out a light bulb in my lamp, which made it sound like the light socket was killed. Things went really rough, and an hour and fifteen minutes later we laid him down to sleep, only to have him fuss for another feeding after ten minutes. Since Wisebaby doesn't fuss unless he really means it, we couldn't just pretend like it wasn't time to start all over.
The next morning we managed to get dressed, fed, and out of the house on time to our appointment with the lactation consultant at the hospital. Victory!!
The lactation consultant was the one from my stay at the hospital who called Wisebaby "Princess" and was a little militant. We weren't excited when we realized this, but she was a lot better in the office than at the bedside. She figured out that Wisebaby was pretending to latch well, but wasn't actually drawing anything much into his tummy by weighing him before and after the feeding. We came up with some interventions (a nipple shield and pumping) and created a plan with schedule, and we felt armed to face the next 48 hours until our follow-up.
We remembered to return my library books! Victory!!
Wisebaby drove through Taco Delite for the second time in his life.
When we got home, we had to learn how long it takes to follow said schedule. An hour. Sigh. That means we have 1 hour on, 1 hour off during the day, and 1 hour on and 2 off at night. Sigh.
More later. Back to sleep!
Hang in there. Nursing gets SO much easier after a few weeks. It pays off in spades. I remember sitting with Eli when he was about four weeks old... I hadn't worn a shirt in days because really, what was the point... and a friend of mine called and encouraged me. Within just a couple more weeks it was so much less work to latch him on (and eventually no work at all), and he got a lot more efficient at getting milk out. Don't forget it helps to talk to other nursing families... that helped me most, even though it was a lot of effort to get to that first meeting.
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Maren