First 2 Weeks

We drove our tiny baby home around midnight. It seemed so surreal to be sitting next to a baby, our baby, in the back of the car. I just watched him flutter his tiny eyelids as the orange glow from the lamp posts flickered past.

Sleep Or The Lack Thereof

For the first week to say I was exhausted was an understatement. I have never been more tired in my life! Since I went into labour at 10pm I didn't get to sleep that night and then afterwards there is no way you can choose sleep when you've waited almost a year to meet this marvel you've made. I didn't want to miss a second! Unfortunately that means you're pretty much running on 3 hours of sleep a day. Sooner or later it catches up to you and you start operating more like a zombie than a human being.

You've probably heard that babies sleep a lot. Yes they do but it's not in one session. It's split up in 12 sessions so you need to get up every 2 hours and feed and change diapers. When the baby falls asleep here is when you need to fit in sleep for yourself, food, pain meds, sitz baths, and in a blue moon, a shower. There is no time to cook so having pre-made meals is essential. We were so fortunate to have a meal train for the second week from our church group. It was an amazing blessing and if you know new parents this is probably the best way to help (bring fruits with the meal!).

Olly slept in the bassinet in the beginning. No one recommends cosleeping since it increases the chance for SIDS. However, every parent I've talked to cosleep or at least do so in the early weeks. Soon I began to realize the utter exhaustion of running on a 2 hour cycle and getting the baby out and back in was just impractical. It wasn't long before I just put him next to me and dozed off while he fed. 

Breastfeeding

The baby was latching on well although I had more trouble on the left side than the right. I would randomly get shooting pains not during breastfeeding and thought I had thrush. Also, I would all of a sudden start shivering like I just came out of a glacial lake. My teeth would chatter and you'd find me curled up under the covers while I waited for it to pass. There were a lot of tears during the first few days as you deal with the crying baby and your emotions. All of this is apparently normal since your hormones are going haywire while your milk is coming in.

Olly had jaundice up to his chest on the first midwife visit. However he was waking himself up every 3 hours so I was not worried. By the third day he started dozing off while feeding and it was harder and harder to actively feed for at least 10 mins on each breast. I was probably doing 5 or less.

Marijke came for the second midwife visit. His jaundice has crept down to his navel now. She weighed him and determined he has lost 11% of his body weight since birth. 6-10% is normal but 11% is worrisome. He was not getting enough food. The problem with jaundice is that it makes babies tired. Tired baby results in less food since the sucking is what stimulates milk production. Less food results in a weak baby and the jaundice gets worse. This makes baby more tired and the vicious cycle continues. My milk was not coming in fast enough so that was not helping either. We were immediately put on a plan.

I started to cry as she talked about how David needs to go out and rent a hospital-grade double breast pump. I felt this was all my fault, that I have failed my child in the first week of life! Maybe if I didn't doze off while he was feeding we would not be in this predicament. It was hard enough working on a 3 hours schedule with just feeding, now we have to do so many more steps. I had to hand express milk and pump after trying to feed and David needed to feed that extra milk from the previous session to Olly through a syringe. It was imperative that we wake the baby up if he's sleeping and use methods like a cold cloth or ice if he's unresponsive.

Syringe feeding

We were following this for a while but Olly's sleepiness was not getting any better. On our worst night he would hardly even respond to ice. It took more than 1.5 hours to coax him into actively feeding for 5 mins. Looking at the schedule there would be no time for sleep if we tried to get him to feed for 5 more. David made the executive decision to stop trying and just do the top up. I reluctantly gave in. In the wee hours in the morning we noticed the baby's arms turning blue, like blueberry blue. I called Patricia on emergency page. I know we're not supposed to call unless it's a real emergency but I was so scared. She said as long as he wasn't blue on his chest or on his lips it should be ok. She asked us to give him some formula top up. Thank goodness for the free liquid formula Nestle sent us! She also gave me permission to not have to finish 10 mins of feeding on each breast. Do what you can for an hour and start pumping she said. This allowed us to get some more sleep although not much. 

From then on the routine added syringe feeding of formula as well. Anything that touches formula like bottles and syringes need to be boiled for 10 mins before use. Did I mention this was the hottest summer ever and our apartment was already 31 degrees without boiling anything? Anyway the formula really saved the day. I know breast is best but formula does save lives when breast milk is not available.

Eventually my milk came in around day 8. We weaned off the formula, then the pumping and Olly gained back his weight by the second week. He's been growing non stop ever since!