Week One: Challenges

Man, what a challenge. A good challenge, but still a challenge. It’s been a week since I officially became a mom. It’s been an awesome and trying experience. And this is all the beginning!! Most of the trying times have been at home trying to find our routine, but it all started with false hopes given in the hospital.

Breastfeeding: We took a class to prepare ourselves. I don’t think the amount of classes can prepare you for the actual process. I took the limited information that I knew and tried as soon as I could in the hospital. During the night when we were woken up for a feeding, one of the nurses commented how Avery was an “advanced feeder” and I had perfect breastfeeding ‘parts’. I was thinking, awesome! This is going to be easy! Ha ha ha. No. My daughter is a screamer! By day 2 we discovered this high pitched scream that only dogs should hear. Luckily God blessed me with a deaf left ear. I stick her on my left shoulder, but seriously, this scream went straight to my tear ducts. It was the scream of “Mom! You’re not feeding me enough!”, “Mom! You’re not doing it right!!!”, “Mom!! Make me feel better”. Of course that just made me bawl. But at that point most anything made me bawl.

So without going into too much graphic detail, we were not a made in heaven match when it came to that department. We had two lactation consultations, one which I fell asleep during (she gave me permission). I felt like we were given enough tips to get us started at home. We discharged on Monday and came home to…life. We couldn’t have Avery go to the nursery to get a few hours of sleep, we had no nurses to scream “HELP!” to, and my nurses wouldn’t be there to dole out my medication.

I don’t even know how much sleep we got the first night. I knew it was to be expected. The problem was I wasn’t producing enough to satisfy her, so she was just MAD all the time. It was so frustrating and exhausting.

We went to the doctor the next day and she was down 12% from her birthweight. The doctor was concerned since the day before she was down 10%, it was a loss of 3 oz. She had us to a pre and post feeding weight in which she gained 1 oz. She advised that we supplement w/ the pump, and then come in the next day for a reweigh. So Jason and I got all situated at home, sterilized all pump materials, got it all set up…nothing. Drops. Again come the tears. I really didn’t want to supplement with formula, but when I saw that and realized that I really wasn’t able to provide for Avery at that time, we conceded to formula. I was so disappointed.

We got the formula and she was knocked out as soon as we gave it to her. I think she needed the rest and the full belly. She got so much more sleep the second night. We were faithful in waking her up every 2-3 hours. We were determined to get her weight up! The next day she gained 3 oz and was back up to the 10% down. We did a pre/post feeding weight again to see if I was producing more. This time she gained nothing! More disappointed. However, I was so excited about getting sleep and not having a screaming child at 3 am that it was ok. We did the same thing and went back the next day for a reweigh and got her up to 7lbs!

Avery’s doctor, who is wonderful and has called me everyday this week to see if we were doing ok, recommended some herbal supplements for me to speed things along. I’ve been doing so and she’s been a lot happier using both me and the bottle.

Overall we’re adjusting. We’re learning her cues, her cries, what calms her down, etc. A work in process.