cindy's world

I don’t know if I jinxed everything by writing that previous post, or if, like Flip Flop Girl said on text in the early hours of the morning to me when I was having a breakdown and she stayed with me (via cellphone texting) through it, I just happened to hit on a growth spurt… but last night broke me.

Things were going well and I was optimistic, until about 9:30p after a feeding when I asked Mr. W if he could help me put Allie (dozing in my arms) to bed, and I was tired so I was just going to stay up there with her. We all went upstairs, and she started crying hysterically. After a few minutes of this, she managed a couple of “leh”s in her crying so I figured, she drank very little from one of my breasts, so I’ll put her back on that one. She probably wasn’t done before she fell asleep. So I did that, and she had her nightcap, and dozed. Then when she was transferred from my arms to bed, she woke up screaming and crying. She cried from 9:40p straight through to 11pm and we tried EVERYTHING — swaddling, shushing, pacifier (she rejected it repeatedly), gripe water, rocking her in the rocker she sleeps in on Mr. W’s side, putting her in the cosleeper on her back on my side, and at 10:40p, because she was crying “leh” repeatedly altho I’d just fed her, I heated up some previously pumped breastmilk and bottlefed her. She drank 55 ml (nearly 2 ounces!) and refused the last 5 ml, but resumed crying “leh.” I couldn’t believe it. How could she take so much milk, refuse to eat more, yet not be full, and still cry for more? What was going on? I was totally freaked as she cried “leh” continuously in between screams.

It was a battle of wills — Mr. W was determined to get her to sleep in either her co-sleeper or rocker bed, she was determined to stay up and scream. He rocked and rocked and shook and shook the beds — both of them. She’d doze fairly often, then moments later, a small whimper and then the usual wail again. It was so discouraging. Knowing he was trying to get her to sleep on her own, I didn’t pick her up, but I was so torn and stressed, and seeing how stressed Mr. W was and upset and frustrated just made everything so much worse. The guilt came back and I found myself apologizing to him again and he told me to stop being sorry, he wasn’t mad at me.

Finally at 11pm, by rocking the cosleeper (which isn’t designed to rock) and having on both the vibration and music attachment, she was quiet for about an hour. Then at midnight, she started all over again. I was curled at the end of the bed sobbing at this point, not knowing what to do, and Mr. W came running up in a flurry and shook the cosleeper again. That didn’t work this time. He changed her diaper despite her not really needing it because he didn’t know what else to do, shushed her as he carried her around rocking her on her side, she didn’t stop. She went for almost an hour more.

This morning I was awakened at 6am by sounds of her restlessly moving around and sucking, but she wasn’t crying. Mr. W mumbled that she was up doing that since 4am. But I know I hadn’t fed her since 10:40 pm’s bottle, and I felt like I needed to feed her, but I also knew Mr. W was trying to sleep in this lack of crying and if I picked her up and fed her, the cry cycle may start all over again, and I couldn’t handle that frustration and tiredness from him again. So I laid there, crying to myself, until I got up and stole downstairs to leave a message for the lactation clinic, begging for an appointment. Then I texted Flip Flop Girl and she consoled me, said it was a growth spurt, that everything was normal and fine, and to just feed her on demand. I took Allie out of our bedroom, locked myself with her in the nursery (which is rarely used), and fed her around 7am as I cried. Later I spoke to my cousin Jennifer, who said the same thing. The lactation nurse called back and said the same thing with a tiny caveat that hopefully she didn’t have an ear infection which would affect her ability to suckle from my breasts, especially if she had a stuffy nose to go with it (Allie was sounding stuffy a few days ago and these days, some of her wails have the sound of phlegm vibrating in the back of her throat). The lactation nurse gave me their earliest open appointment next Wednesday; meanwhile I’ve been crying from stress all morning. Every time Allie wakes up I nearly have a panic attack.

We took Allie for a short walk so I could get to my ATM and we stopped at a local bagel place for breakfast. I was so relieved to see Mr. W handling Allie lovingly as normal. I keep having a fear that because he was so tired and her crying was so problematic, that he wouldn’t like her or want to interact with her anymore. But that hasn’t happened. He comforted me and told me to stop listening to him and to do what I want, pick her up or not; he said he was like me in not knowing how to handle this baby because every baby is different, and that I’m probably better prepared than he is because I have maternal instincts. Allie was good and peaceful through most of the time out, only crying on our way home from the bagel place. We walked thru an isolated neighborhood and she fell asleep in the stroller after some minutes anyway.

Thank God my mom came over around noon. She held Allie the entire time as I tearfully relayed the recent events to her (minus the outing). She said Allie’s an angel, and that she and my dad will always be available to help, I need only call her. She offered to babysit Allie so Mr. W and I could go for dinner for New Year’s, but I don’t think we’re gonna do it. No reservations could be made at with this late notice, I’d imagine. Then my mom told me stories about her early mothering experiences at age 24. She also told me it WILL get better, and I was dubious, until I realized I’m an only child so she was talking about ME, and I am not currently a crying infant. I was glad my mom was holding Allie and she was mainly sleeping — but every time Allie opened her eyes I felt my anxiety level rise, like I was going to have a panic attack. I was next to tears, had a headache and felt nauseated the entire time and still feel that way now. I think I’m seriously traumatized.

I might be counting my chickens before they’re hatched, but today, IT GOT BETTER! (College roommie Diana’s baby experience seems to be following ours at 2 weeks behind, so she’s been hoping to see a “it got better” post somewhere to give herself something to look forward to.)

My friend Lily had an extra copy of “What to Expect in the First Year,” so she sent it to me. In it last nite, I found a chart that deciphers baby’s crying. I already know Allie’s “I’m hungry” cry with her “le le leh”s. The rest sound the same to me, only differing in severity. The chart described the “I’m uncomfortable” cry as whiny, nasal, continuous, building in intensity, often accompanied by squirmy, kicky legs. She did that this morning, I changed her diaper, and found a poopy! YAY! An hour later, I used another chart description: an “I’m bored” cry starts off as cooing to try to engage the parents, then proceeds to fussing to get more attention, then bursts of indignant crying when she gets upset she’s being ignored alternating with whimpers. I also read that at this month-old stage, she’s got a wakeful time when she’s learning and gets bored with the same scenery after half an hour or so, so this morning, as she was in her swing, I heard her start the cooing sounds. I went to her and imitated her, which is supposed to encourage their language skills. It soon became fussing. I picked her up and took her to a different environment, talking to her, and altho it looked like she had a wrinkled brow as if she was about to cry, she suddenly stopped and it didn’t proceed to crying. YES! She soon started her straining squeals like she was pushing, so I gave her a belly massage and she was happy and smiley through it. I also took her cues of sucking on her fist, tested her cheek and lips with the backs of my fingers and watched her root around, so I fed her and she ate hungrily, BEFORE SHE HAD TO DO HER LEH LEH LEH CRY! And THEN…while I was feeding, she had a GIANT POOPY! I felt so rewarded. This ends her 3-day most recent poopy dry spell.

It was a busy day we had planned; I strapped her into her car seat carrier as Mr. W supervised and gave instructions (it wasn’t as hard as I thought), then practiced clicking the carrier into the car seat base in my car, took it out, and clicked it into the car seat base in Mr. W’s car. Then we went to our local Registrar-Recorder’s office and obtained a few certified copies of her birth certificate (prices go up January 1st! they’re $19 each now, will be $21) for putting her on our insurance and for other legal agencies. We had a healthy vegetarian lunch at Mother’s Market Cafe where she did fuss a little, but she was overheated in her carrier and fell asleep when Mr. W held her and gave her a pacifier. It make mealtime harder for him to eat and it made me nervous as I wolfed my food, but she didn’t have a meltdown or anything. She did have a meltdown in the car on the way to my rental property because it was a long drive and she was “leh”ing and I couldn’t do anything about it. As soon as we pulled into the garage I fed her from one side and she was fine, but I also understood why she was SO upset in the car — she was overheated and her entire back, neck and back of head were sweaty. After we met up with the next tenant, we went a nearby Costco and in the car she demanded loudly for the second half of her meal, so I fed her from the other side in the parking lot as Mr. W did the Costco run, and she fell asleep afterwards, sleeping all the way home.

Back at home, I watched her sucking her fist again, so I tested her, she rooted, and I fed her before she cried. Then as she fell asleep, Mr. W placed her in the carrier and she’d been sleeping there for at least a good half hour.

By the way, the “I’m in pain” cry starts out as a sudden shriek and is loud, high-pitched, and each scream is long (2-3 seconds), the baby having to pause to take in air in between the shrieks. For those babies that don’t use “leh,” the “I’m hungry” cry is short rhythmic cries, low-pitched, with a pleading quality to it. I’m hoping that as I get better at reading her and can prevent the crying, she’ll learn she can cry less and only use crying as a last resort. I did ask her as I fed her this morning, per Flip Flop Girl’s suggestion, to cry less and reassured her that she is priority and we will try to meet her needs without her having to bellow as she had in the past.

I had my first bad-mom thought yesterday evening. I had read in various places, and learned in various babycare/birthing classes, that it’s normal to have an awful thought relating to the baby when you’re exhausted and your nerves are frazzled, and it doesn’t mean you’re a bad mother or that you’re going through post-partum depression or post-partum psychosis — like the moms who drown their babies or the one who microwaved her newborn (*vomit*) — unless you find yourself acting it out. Apparently a lot of moms imagine throwing their screaming infants out the window or something. That wasn’t my thought.

I was holding the most innocent-looking, peacefully-sitting sleeping infant in my arms after feeding her. She’d fallen asleep and I was sitting her upright, snuggled between my body and the inside curve of the Boppy pillow, and she was sitting with her feet neatly touching together, her hands obediently together on her lap. Her face was smooth and untroubled. She looked like she was kissing butt, how perfectly she was sitting there, breathing evenly in her sleep.

I took a photo of her beautiful form, and noted that the camera distorts the image, makes her head look way bigger than her body, and doesn’t do her form justice. And I thought, “This past month in its surrealness…if I were to wake up suddenly and realize it was all just a dream and I wasn’t pregnant, and this whole past year’s experiences just dissolve, I’m not sure I would choose to get pregnant.” The implications were so horrible I wouldn’t let myself explore much beyond it. I got to, “I’m not so attached to Allie right now that I would cry at her disappearance if I were to wake up and find that she never existed?” and stopped the thinking. I feel like the most rotten person for thinking I may take up an opportunity to change things if I were given a guiltless freebie. Rotten person, horrid mother.

I love Allie; it’s just so much harder than anyone had warned me it would be. And the ridiculous part is — I don’t actually think anything’s WRONG. I’m just submerged in a new game in which I’m unfamiliar with any of the rules, and the rules keep changing when I figure some of them out, and I’m not used to feeling SO lost and SO insecure about something so important. I constantly have dreams that I’m back in college and find myself suddenly on the eve of finals and realizing I’m completely unprepared and had done none of the required assignments or studying.

I never thought I’d be one of those moms who’d cry about this feeling, either. I really thought my optimism would just barrel me through. Now I’m instantly worried something’s terribly wrong when Mr. W merely shakes his head and rolls his eyes that I’m feeding her again after I’d just fed her a little over an hour previously, despite the fact that he has told me to stop taking cues from him. My cousin Jennifer said her 3-month-old had gone through a growth spurt and feeding frenzy every 2-3 weeks and that this is normal, and I’d read as much, but I still have these ridiculous fears like, “What if my baby is an anomaly and doesn’t actually know when to stop eating?”

Because of my insecurity causing me to take to heart every negative inflection from Mr. W, I almost feel better about his going back to work next week. Then I wouldn’t feel guilty about her crying upsetting him, or about holding her and letting her sleep in my arms after a feeding (he says I can’t hold her all day and he’s right, and I hope I’m not “training” her to only be able to sleep when held, but the fact is that she wakes up in 15 mins or less when we put her down somewhere after she’s fallen asleep, whereas she’ll sleep on me for 2-3 hours, and THAT’S got me concerned, too). But more than that possible tiny bit of relief, I mostly feel scared. 12 hours is a long time to be alone with the baby when I’ve been so dependent on Mr. W to take over things. I won’t have those long morning showers when Mr. W is playing with Allie after I’d just fed her; there won’t be another parent to soothe her crying or change a diaper if I can’t get there fast enough; I can’t leave her to get online or clean up or throw the changed diaper away immediately. I can’t make food for myself and then eat it uninterrupted. Worst of all, I can’t leave the house with her if I need to. I still have some days left. I’m going to train myself to use the baby carrier so I can free up my hands at home, and to use the car seat/carrier/stroller.

Thank God my cousin Jennifer lives a few cities over and has offered many times to come by with her baby to help if I need it, and has told me to go over whenever I liked until she’s back to work after maternity leave.

My little girl turned a month old today! I can’t call her “little” anymore, though. Mr. W slapped a tape measure on her today, and she’s 23 inches long (that’s a two-inch gain in a month since her birth!) and her head measured 14.5 inches. I noticed when I looked at her around the 3 week mark that her hands looked double in size, because one tiny hand used to wrap around the upper half of my thumb, and now it wraps around my entire thumb. Last night, she stretched from crown to toes nearly end-to-end in her playard co-sleeper. Looking down at her today, I was almost startled at how big she looked in my arms. No, we didn’t take a photo today, but we have some from our Christmas photo shoot(s).

From December 8, 15 days ago, I tried to get some shots that I could use on Allie’s birth announcement card. (As always, rest mouse pointer over photos for captions.) These are outtakes:

From December 13, 10 days ago… Mr. W’s son came over and we tried to get a family shot so that I could make a Christmas photocard. It was NOT easy to get 4 adults AND a baby looking decent, looking at the camera, and all at the same time. Observe:

So apparently, only Allie was ready in this shot.

Allie already had enough of posing, and Son is losing focus fast. Daughter obviously was ready to go. =P

After many mediocre or less fruitful attempts, the stepdaughter predicted that “this next shot is it!” …and then Allie sneezed. “NOOOOOOOOO!” Stepdaughter cried.

We *almost* got the shot we wanted in the following one, but we weren’t sure if Allie gazing adoringly at her mommy would satiate people’s desire to see what Allie’s face actually looks like.

We decided to turn the camera so we could get a tighter shot on the group, and Allie actually looked at the camera at the right time, but Mr. W didn’t account for how tall he is when he set up the shot.

Finally, this is the shot we went with:

By the way, Allie’s fancy dress is an adorable onesie with a tutu attached, and it says “Santa Baby” on the shirt, not that anyone could tell cuz Allie keeps clasping her hands in front of her chest like an opera singer. And of course we learn after closer examination that I should’ve been sitting on the higher chair, but whatever. We were done with all the effort.

I wrote an email to Allie’s pediatrician yesterday morning explaining about her gassiness and lack of poopy. She was on her 5th day of being a pea-shu. At Rebecca’s suggestion, I’d started drinking half a cup of prune juice a day (and it’s done stuff for ME, but hadn’t yet done anything for Allie); at lots of people’s suggestions, I’d cut out gassy foods from my diet, such as onions, beans, cabbage, dairy. Allie’s gas issue seems better — she fusses still, but has her hysterical fits much less, and now settles down more easily and it doesn’t take 2+ hours of comforting her anymore to get her to stop crying. She still wakes from sleep fussing here and there, though. The pediatrician’s nurse wrote me back late afternoon saying that the doctor is out of the office that day, but that after the 3rd week of life, a breastfed infant can go 5-7 days without pooping, and it’s okay as long as the baby doesn’t appear to be in pain. Previous nurses and doctors were all unconcerned at Allie’s prior poopilessness because her stomach wasn’t distended or hard and she was tooting, which means no blockage. They say she’s just using up all the nutrients and her body isn’t wasting anything to expel, and she’s peeing plenty so she’s not dehydrated. But that was when she skipped 1-3 days. The nurse went on in her email to tell me that if I’m concerned and the problem continues, I can get some infant glycerin suppositories and put half a pill in Allie.

Today makes 6 days of unpoopiness, so I went out this evening in search of the said suppositories. CVS drugstore had individually-packed liquid glycerin doses, but specified it was for children 2-5 years of age. I considered using half a dose, but how do you half-dose liquid? And what if there’s a specific reason this is not labeled for babies, such as the concentration was stronger?
I walked from there to Ralphs grocery store. They didn’t have anything useful. “Little Tummys” stomach medication; “Little Noses” sniffles medication; “Little Colds” cold medication…where was “Little Anuses?”
I drove to Walgreens Pharmacy. They had the same “Little” collection and liquid glycerine for 2-5 year olds. I was about to leave, but then asked to be directed to a pharmacist so that I could at least ask before I gave up. I had to wait behind 2 idiots who took up nearly 15 minutes each with their stupid issues (one picked up her prescription, then asked to check on a prescription for her mom, which the pharmacist confirmed was in the system and filled but was ordered at a different branch, so the lady wanted to transfer it to this branch, but didn’t want to wait 15 minutes for it, then decided she wanted it anyway, then asked for a demonstration on how to use it even tho it was her mom’s; the other lady had issues with her insurance not letting her get 2 refills’ worth of meds at the same time and made the pharmacy call her insurance and doctor). Too bad they didn’t turn around to read my Happy Bunny shirt, which read “Make the stupid people shut up!” I finally got to explain my dilemma to the pharmacist, asking if I could just squeeze half a bulb’s worth of meds into Allie. The pharmacist took me to a whole different section of the store where they were apparently hiding the infant glycerin suppositories, and instructed me on how to cut one in half and insert it, warning me sympathetically not to overuse the product because we don’t want Allie dependent on it for bowel movements. Because of this warning, I decided to buy the product but wait until after the 7th day of poopilessness before administering it. (On the 7th day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…)

“Okay, Allie, you have one day to poopy on your own before I stick something up your butt,” I told her when I got home.
She poopied less than an hour later. I keep kicking myself for not simply ASKING her to do something earlier, like when I kept complaining she wasn’t coming out into the world but the day Mr. W simply ASKED her to come out, she started my contractions that night.

I am now convinced that Allie has colic. Mr. W’s solution to that is to ban me from Wikipedia, but that doesn’t change the fact that Allie has well over 3 hours daily of inexplicable fits of crying — in fact, she could cry 2.5 hours straight at a time immediately after a feeding. She’ll pull off me to cry. Her diaper’s changed, she’s burped and fed, swaddled and cuddled, but she’s angry about something we can’t fix. We finally just let her cry, unresolved, after 2 hours of unsuccessfully trying to calm her down in the wee hours last nite (altho after she did, she slept solidly and went 7 hours between nighttime feedings). The pacifier works intermittently, but within seconds she’d spit it out and wail. If she’s not asleep or eating, she’s screaming and crying. I feel bad for always trying to get her to sleep, but that’s the only time anything could be done when she’s not clawing and scratching the heck out of my chest and deafening me with her red-faced rageful wails. Supposedly colic self-resolves in 3-4 months. That seems like a lifetime away.

P.S. I told a friend today that “I’m doing okay. I’m convinced Allie has colic, and depending on how much rest I’ve had, it sometimes threatens to break my spirit. It probably karmically balances out the extraordinarily easy time I had with pregnancy and labor. Well, I don’t want to ‘owe the universe one,’ anyway. It might decide to take it in the form of a teenage Allie misadventure.”

Allie has started sleeping longer and longer during nighttime. Between midnight and 9am, she was at about 4 hours between feedings in her 2nd week, then in her 3rd week, she went to 5.5 hours one night, 6.5 the next. We were elated. The 3rd night was last nite. She finished a feeding at about 12:30am, and didn’t have her next one until about 7:15am; another nice long stretch…except this feeding was odd.

I had noticed a couple of days ago that often, instead of latching on right away, she’d smack around and have trouble getting suction started. It almost seemed like she didn’t really want to feed, but I don’t feed her unless she’s crying and showing signs of rooting, so I know she was hungry. What was this, nipple confusion? We’d been using the pacifier a lot since being told we could and should. So last nite, she had a harder time latching on, then things went normally for a few minutes, and she pulled off herself in frustration and cried, hard. It was an angry hungry cry, as if I were depriving her of feeding but I wasn’t. We switched sides, and she went awhile, and the same thing happened. Mr. W suggested maybe I wasn’t producing enough milk anymore. Just to see, after she was off and having her fit, I left her with Mr. W (where she cried and was unable to sleep until 2:30 am) and pumped. I got something like 5mL out from both sides collectively, which is ridiculous. What happened to the days when I was producing 2.5+ oz per side? (30mL = 1 oz) I thought about what I’d been doing differently.

When I pumped behind my feedings, my milk supply increased so much that I was engorged and leaked often, and Allie couldn’t drink enough to relieve me all the way. I stopped pumping and made her go 5 minutes on each side to relieve both sides somewhat, hoping my body would realize I was overproducing and cut back. The last couple of days, she was going up to 8-9 minutes each side, which was odd as usually 5 minutes were sufficient to get her in a food coma. After not feeding for over 6 hours overnight (the equivalent of missing 1-2 feedings in the day), I woke up engorged, a rare feeling these days. She latched and fed just fine, went 8 minutes on one side, then after I switched her, she went only a few minutes on the other before dropping off in the old comatose pattern. I got up and pumped out the rest, and got 18mL from the one she spent little time on, 5mL from the side she started on. Wow. I know she didn’t drink 2.5 oz (75mL) in the time she spent, so my production is WAY down.

I guess I’m going to have to find a happy medium. Pumping too much = too engorged within a couple of days. Cessation of pumping = insufficient milk supply within a few days. Oops. I’m going to try pumping daily, but just in the morning, and see if that helps. If nothing else, I can slowly build up enough pumped milk to supplement again if need be. 🙁

Her other problem: pooping. She only poops once a day or so (instead of the guideline of up to 6 a day), and often skips days. She pooped once yesterday, but skipped the 3 days before that. I’d jokingly called her a “pea-shu,” the mythical Chinese creature with the head of a dragon and the body of a lion, depicted in statuettes with its mouth open and used for luck in bringing in money, as it eats but has no butthole to poop out what it takes in (yeah, you read me right). The doctors and nurses are unconcerned as her abdomen is soft and she’s passing gas, so that means she doesn’t have a blockage problem; they assume she’s just using up all the nutrition she gets and creates little waste product. But she strains and sometimes cries from pain or frustration trying to push out gas, so Mr. W is thinking she doesn’t know how to poop. The doctor said to help her feel her anal muscles by bicycling her legs and then raising her knees to her chest for a few seconds in cycles as she lays on her back, but doing this often makes her spit up. When she’s empty enough for us to do this, of course she’s hungry and crying to be fed. So now I have a baby who has forgotten how to latch, and hasn’t learned how to poop. What the heck.

Today was a dash through the rain so Allie could meet her personal pediatrician for the first time. He was impressed with how well her belly button’s healed, how much weight she’d gained (she’s at 9lbs 7oz now, well past her 8lb 2oz birth weight), how well her sleeping/feeding patterns have been established. Allie goes 4-4.5 hours between feedings between 12am and 9am, and only yesterday started shortening her daytime feedings to every 2-3 hours. The doctor said this is setting her up to have longer nighttime naps and more active day, which is exactly the ideal. He said some babies are flip-flopped and are more active at night, and the parents have to switch the baby’s clock. I said Allie’s pretty much doing this herself, and he said there are likely subtle things we do to help her along, such as
* keeping nighttime feedings boring and unstimulating: yes, we keep the lights low, we don’t play with her, it’s pretty much change diaper, feed, burp, swaddle, put her back down to sleep. He said some parents sing to their kids and entertain them at night feedings, and the baby will get used to and wake up just for that, even if it’s not that hungry.
* not co-sleeping with her: she’s right next to us, either in the separate cosleeper unit on her playard by me, or in her rocker cradle next to Mr. W, and we only pick her up if she starts crying. If she coos or makes other noises, we wait to see if she’ll go back to sleep first, and most of the time, she does. The doctor said co-sleeping tends to make the babies wake up more often, and keep the parent more interactive, either as a pacifier or as entertainment.
* not letting her stay latched when she’s not actively feeding: I’ve been following the lactation nurse’s advice and breaking the latch as soon as she goes into half-asleep light sucking mode. According to the doctor, this teaches her that I’m not a pacifier available for comfort at all hours of the night. If she still wants to suckle, she’s given a pacifier in her co-sleeper or cradle, or she’s rocked to sleep in my/Mr. W’s arms with a pacifier and then placed in bed.
* keeping it lit, noisy, busy in the day: the TV’s on, a light’s on, the tree’s on, her lullaby music’s on. She sleeps through it all, and as she’s increasingly interactive, Mr. W has been laying her on a play gym to look at all the colorful noise-making animals. We’ve taken her on occasional short walks in the stroller just around the block or up to the next shopping center, and the doctor said babies love that, the change in the looks and feel of the environment, and they knock out quickly from the new experience. (My mom would kill me if she knew.)
* letting her feed on demand every 2-3 hours in the day: according to the doctor, if we were to stretch out the time in between her feedings in the day, she’d still make sure she gets the correct number of calories she needs so she’ll just be up more often at night to demand it. Making sure she’s able to eat when she’s hungry in the day, even if it were every 2 hours like it was yesterday, keeps her on her 4-hour sleeping track through the night. He said we could coax her to eat semi-regularly but not to stretch it out unnecessarily at this age. Later on toward a year old when we are establishing specific feeding times, she could be kept on a schedule, such as eating at 2pm daily. He looked at our feeding chart on the iPad app and said that it’s great that these patterns (sleeping long at night, eating more often in the day, feedings dropping down to 10-12 mins each) are emerging early, and the way things are going, we’re quickly approaching the eating every 5 hours at night mark. YAY!

I had some concerns, and the doctor alleviated them all.
Q: Her growth has been rapid, should I be concerned how much milk she’s taking in and maybe control that a little?
A: No, babies (especially breastfed babies because bottles dispense much faster than babies’ sensory mechanisms can register fullness) don’t typically overeat their first year of life. They’ll know when to stop, and they’ll pull off or stop drinking. Her growth is great — she gained weight but her height and head circumference also grew proportionately to her weight so she’s fine. [I think she only gained 1/2 inch in height, though, and I don’t remember what her head circumference is; the nurse forgot to bring us the printout with the information.]
Q: She’s REALLY gassy; how much is TOO gassy?
A: [laughs] There’s a really wide range of normal gassiness in newborns. Allie’s stomach feels soft and not hard and distended, so that’s a good sign. She’ll learn to swallow less air with her feedings as she learns to be a more efficient feeder around the 6-week point. Although, because she’s early in reaching her developmental goals, maybe she’ll get there in one month. Plus right now, she’s not used to how her gas feels so she’ll fuss. As babies get older, we think they’re less gassy but it’s often because they’re used to the feel of it and so they don’t fuss and you don’t know about the gas. Remember, all these sensations of digestion are still new to her.
Q: She still has inexplicable crying after feedings especially at night, but we’ve changed her, burped her, swaddled her, given her a pacifier, what else could be wrong?
A: To babies this young, because they’re not used to the feelings of digestion, being full feels like how it feels to us when we’ve overeaten — sort of uncomfortable and “ugh.” But it’s normal because her stomach’s supposed to be filled, she’s just not used to the sensation. As she gets older, she’ll be used to it and stop fussing. Meanwhile, you can distract her from focusing on her stomach if she’s fussing too much. Sing to her, show her toys, something to get her mind off her fullness. [This explains why she fusses more at night; nothing to distract her from overfocusing on her stomach.]
Q: She’s also started spitting up more in the last few days, especially if she has to be on her back after a feeding so we can swaddle or change her; is that all right?
A: Perfectly normal; her stomach’s not strong enough yet to hold in all the food. As she grows and the stomach strengthens, it won’t happen as much. And it’s NOT a sign of overeating. [He read my mind.]

So basically, she’s doing great and she’ll just outgrow a lot of this stuff. He checked her and said she’s doing well, taught us how to bicycle-leg her while she’s on her back and then bring up her knees so she learns to feel and use her bowel muscles instead of her ab muscles when working on pooping. He said babies often get all red-faced and strain with their hands tucked in trying to work out a fart or poopie, and he demonstrated EXACTLY what she looks like sometimes as she does this straining; it was hilarious. It’ll get better once she realizes how to use the right muscles. She laid there good-naturedly waving her arms around and bringing her legs in and out watching us and the doctor talk, and the doctor said this is a healthy awake state; if she’s lethargic during awake times we should bring her in because it means she’s sick. I said she’s in that active mode for an hour or more at a time now in the day between feedings and he said, “Really? Already?” I had him approve of the all-natural Gripe Water to alleviate gas symptoms (basically sugar water with ginger and fennel seed extract) and the multi-vitamin drops, he said the Gripe Water only works sometimes but it’s totally safe and harmless, and to dispense 1oz of the vitamins once a day but not before a feeding because babies don’t tend to like the taste and they may refuse to feed afterwards, and we were on our way.

Two Weeks Down
A friend/coworker Katie reminded me on Wednesday that Allie was 2 weeks old and I happened to have her sleeping on my lap, so I snapped this shot to commemorate.

Things are progressing fast. The feedings have indeed become 10 minutes long (I let her nurse approximately 5 minutes on each breast so one doesn’t get too painfully engorged from being ignored through a feeding) and she is now sleeping 3.5-4.5 hours most stretches before waking in hunger. She’s also up longer in the day; she’ll sit around in her swing and observe things and smile on occasion, or hang out in our arms and watch us carefully. We still have inexplicable crying spells after she’s nursed sometimes and this frustrates her dad, who’ll sigh, “I don’t know…” after he’s tried burping, diaper-changing, and swaddling to her screams. I’ve found that I can usually take her over at times like this and if I could calm her by holding her tightly, she’d doze, but she wants to doze being cuddled, sometimes with a pacifier in place. It’s still the most difficult between 11p-2a, but tonight, Mr. W took her upstairs without me to bed and for the first time in the past 15 nights, I did not hear screaming and crying coming from upstairs that I have to run up for. Note that this is currently her most difficult time slot of 11p-2a. So I get to blog, yay!

Generation Gaps
My mom’s been on me about posting photos of Allie, but not in the way you’d expect. The other day it was, “Stop putting up photos of her naked — she’s a girl!” And then yesterday, she emailed me that she was able to right-click and save photos of Allie on the social networking site, which means that others can do it, too, so I must stop posting photos of her immediately. Ironically, she ended her email the way she ends all her emails these days, by asking for current photos of Allie. I have my social circle and privacy settings on the networking site limited so people who have access to those photos are very controlled. (Good thing she doesn’t know about this blog.) But to avoid further aggravation for my mother, I did what any caring Asian child would do — I removed my mother and anyone who has access to my mother from being able to see all future photos I post. Hey, the demand for Allie’s photos are high and people enjoy seeing my first baby, especially since so few people have seen her in person so far. I’m being a paranoid mom and following the pediatrician’s advice, limiting visits to people who are vaccinated against pertussis and flu (I made my parents get shots) until Allie’s immune system is up and she gets her own vaccinations at 2 months. I don’t care if this makes me anti-social; sick babies land in NICU.

Cousin Jennifer’s Visit and The Great Poopie Incident of 2011
Luckily for us, one such person who’s vaccinated is my cousin Jennifer, who just had her own first baby about 3 months ago. She’s exactly on the same page as I am about infant health. She had offered before Allie was born to give us her leftover newborn-size diapers, as her little girl Alexandra had outgrown that size already. I’d accepted, and now that we’re two weeks into diapering, we’re down to our last few diapers at each of our changing stations. I was considering going to the store, but called her instead yesterday. She happened to be out having lunch with a friend, so she said she’d come over with the diapers. I had last seen her baby Alexandra when she was the same age as Allie is now, but when I saw her yesterday, she had grown! Huge eyes blinked their long cartoon-like lashes at me. They DO grow fast! Jennifer cooed at Allie, “Oh my gosh, she’s so tiny!” What? My nearly 9-pounder? We put the cousins side-by-side and Jennifer thought they’re nearly the same length. I give Mr. W credit for the length; if it were only my genetics, my babies would be nubs.

Aside from rescuing me by bringing a TON of diapers, both newborn and size 1s, my cousin Jennifer also saved me from a potential panic attack. It started with this photo she took for me:

I posted the above photo on the social networking site with the caption: “This was taken moments before The Great Poopie Incident of 2011. Mass panic & scrambling ensued from 4-5p. This photo should be named ‘Joy of Naivete.’ Doing laundry now. =P ” My blog sponsor Mike, father of a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old, must’ve spoken from experience when he commented, “ah, how naive you are to think that THAT was the Great Poopie Incident of 2011. Wait until the Greater Poopie Incident of an hour from now…every hour of every day for the rest of your life.”
Let me explain why I think this IS “the” Great Poopie Incident of 2011.
I was still looking at the photo Jennifer had just taken when Allie let out some long wet-sounding toots. I figured she may be pooping, which she does only slightly more frequently than she used to at 0-2 poopies a day, so I kinda ignored it. Suddenly, Jennifer said, “Oh! Oh! She’s pooping out of her diaper!” Neither Mr. W nor I had ever heard the phrase “pooping out of a diaper” until that day, when Jennifer explained earlier that you know it’s time to go a size up on diapers when the baby “poops out of her current diaper.” And now Allie was demonstrating the term. I watched a wet stain appear in the middle of Allie’s waistline (good thing her umbilical cord came off last week!) and quickly spread until it came out her side and dripped onto my shirt and seeped through that to my jeans. This happened in probably 3 seconds. I grabbed Allie, stood, and went downstairs to Mr. W, calling for him to come help. I’ve never seen the inside of a diaper so saturated with stuff. I was still wiping when suddenly, she went again, oozing yellow mustard-like poop until it overflowed. Of course this was when Mr. W’s daughter came home and she wanted to stand over us and exclaim over how gross it was while gabbing nonstop about her day. Mr. W was trying to keep Allie’s waving hands and feet from dipping into her mess and yelling that I was wiping too slowly, and I was soon running around like a madwoman trying to get another diaper, more wipes, dispose of the dirty diaper and wipes before more stuff oozed out, and finally deciding it was hopeless, I ran around and grabbed her baby tub to give her a second bath this week. I filled it with my hand in the water which must’ve gotten used to the temperature, because when Mr. W dipped his finger in, he exclaimed it was too hot. I cooled it as quickly as I could and as Mr. W placed Allie in the tub, I ran around like a crazy woman again up and down the stairs getting her hooded towels and washcloths, and then she pooped mustard again in the bathtub! My baby was liquifying into poop. Jennifer was upstairs feeding her peaceful little girl, and when I ran back up I would ask her advice on what to do. She said to rinse out the poopy clothes immediately, use a little soap to keep from staining, and then I could wash them with Allie’s regular clothes. I did that while hubby dried and clothed Allie, still in hurried panic mode. She soon left, giving me a sideways hug to avoid the poop stains still on my clothes.
I then did Allie’s laundry and my own, and when I was done, I texted Jennifer, thanking her for the diapers, the visit, and the advice. (She assured me the poop[ies] was normal, wasn’t diarrhea, and was likely a freak incident and not a sign that Allie was growing out of her newborn diapers already.) I realized when things were calmer that if she hadn’t been here when that happened, I may have thought that my baby’s stomach exploded or something. The stuff came out at her waistline, didn’t stop for awhile, and seeped through her diaper, her undershirt, overshirt, my shirt, and my jeans! Given that it’s almost mid-December, I don’t think there’s going to be another 4-pooper incident to beat this as The Great Poopie Incident of 2011.

Baby Steps
I noticed that Allie’s been filling out. Her cheeks are rounder, her jawline is curved with a little baby fat under the chin instead of looking chiseled, her tummy is rounded and her torso teardrop-shaped above the diaper instead of the previous elongated lean shape. This morning during nursing, I held her little fingers and thought, “Her nails are larger. Her hands are larger.”

Progress at the Lactation Clinic
Sure enough, at her second lactation clinic consultation today, the same nurse weighed her and said, “Oh my — she’s gained A POUND in the last week!” The average weight gain for a newborn is approximately 5 oz per week. She caught up and flew ahead. The nurse made sure to say she’s not fat, just doing really well and has noticeably grown healthy and “robust.” There was another baby there who was smaller than Allie, Mr. W noted how “tiny” she was. I found out that other baby is ELEVEN weeks old, but the mom is having major problems with breastfeeding so her baby’s growth is a little undernourished.
When asked how Allie’s been doing since we were last there a week ago, I responded that Allie’s developed a new problem; for the past few days, she has been spending very little time on my breast and would actually push herself away from it after 8 minutes or so. I’d try to get her to relatch, but she’d refuse it and cry. Then she’d root around as if she were hungry, but won’t latch for more than a few seconds before she’d push away and cry again. It drove Mr. W crazy last nite when Allie wouldn’t go to sleep around midnight and screamed bloody murder again until 1am and we’d fed her, supplemented, burped her, changed her diaper, so we had no idea what else was wrong. This morning, she made a giant poopy so we were hoping it was just her discomfort working on that.

“It’s About to Get So Much Easier”
We put Allie on my right breast and just like at home, in under 10 minutes she pushed herself off. The nurse weighed her and made repeated joking exclamations. “Oh my goodness. OH my GOODness. Goodness!” She grabbed the calculator and started tapping in numbers. “She just took in almost TWO and a HALF ounces!”
“Whoa, in like 8 minutes? On just one side?”
“You are really, really lucky; this is about to get so much easier,” the nurse said. So here’s what’s been going on. Since my milk came in a week ago, the supply has increased. My muscles around the mammary glands that pump out the milk are highly efficient, so the baby is getting a good supply in very little time. She pulls off in about 8 minutes because she’s DONE in that time, without even touching the other breast. But she roots around like she’s still hungry because she wants to snuggle with the comfort of suckling, and yet can’t take any more milk, so she suckles a bit and spits it out, saying “I want to suckle without milk!” The solution to that is the pacifier.
“You’re giving me permission to use a pacifier? Would there be nipple confusion issues?”
“There’s no chance of that,” the nurse said. Because of the efficiency of my milk let-down, and the particular shape of my nursing body parts, “there’s no way she would prefer a bottle or a pacifier to your breast,” the lactation nurse explained. “And your breastfeeding is already well-established.” The nurse unwrapped an orange newborn Gumdrop pacifier and popped it in Allie’s mouth, who took to it immediately. The other lactation nurse there exclaimed over how well Allie was holding it in on her own.
So I have no need to supplement anymore (not that I’ve been doing it much), no need to pump anymore (unless it’s uncomfortable and I really want to, but I pretty much only do it once every few days now to not overincrease the supply, and the nurse said I’m doing exactly the right things). “And you’re so lucky, the feedings are soon going to be just 3-4 minutes long!” Wow. She also said that occasionally Allie takes in 3-4 ounces between the two sides, and that after that, she has her long naps.
So the spit-up the last few days is normal, it comes from laying Allie flat on her back (to change, to swaddle, to sleep) too soon after she’s eaten so much. I’ve noticed that a good way to quiet her into sleep is to co-sleep with her so that her head is elevated on my arm. She sleeps long and well like that, and I’m a little propped so I don’t roll. Then after a few hours and she’s up for her next feeding, she sleeps better and can be placed in her co-sleeper next to our bed. She’s really only getting 2 feedings between midnight and 9am, so it’s not THAT bad, it just feels bad cuz Mr. W is so miserable getting his sleep interrupted. She gets about 7 feedings per 24-hour period, so she’s already lower-maintenance than other babies who demand hourly feedings.

Growing Up Fast
Allie’s also been awake and alert for longer and longer periods of time, and smiles frequently. She has a lopsided Elvis smile, and a full-on dimpled smile that turns her eyes into adorable little half-moons. Developmentally she appears to be ahead. The nurses also observed how well her eyes track the toy butterflies hanging on the handle of her carrier. And, her umbilical cord fell off last week, when she was around a week old. We were told not to expect that until the 2-week mark. (The cord loss was announced to me as Mr. W changed her diaper, saying, “Uh-oh…where did her umbilical cord go?” Later he found it and tried to show it to me. I was so grossed out.) That means we could submerge her in water and give her her first home-bath, which we did this past weekend.

I guess she’s making up for lost time, considering I wanted her out a week or two before she actually came out to greet us.

Breastfeeding Tidbits
Interesting FAQs I learned today in the lactation clinic:
* Eating sushi is fine; that doesn’t go into the milk supply.
* Having a glass of wine is fine for breastfeeding also; the alcohol content gets recirculated out of the breastmilk. It’s best to drink at least 2 hours before breastfeeding to allow the body time to filter out the alcohol, but generally, if mom’s not feeling a buzz, baby isn’t going to feel a buzz. But if mom has more than 1 drink, or drinks on an empty stomach, or is feeling buzzed, it’s best to pump and dump.
* Mom can have up to 3 servings of caffeine (such as that in 3 cups of coffee) per day, spread out thru the day, without it affecting the baby, altho caffeine DOES go into the milk supply and stay there. But up to 3 servings/day is pretty harmless to the baby.
* Breastmilk pumped on different days can be stored together in the same container in the fridge/freezer, but can’t be poured together unless they’re the same temperature. So to add newly pumped milk to refrigerated milk, refrigerate new milk, then when that’s cold, pour new milk into old milk container.

“You Worry Because You Love Her”
I asked the lactation nurse to check on Allie’s frenulum, just in case a short/tight frenulum is why latching had been difficult; I asked her to see if the white coating on Allie’s tongue is thrush. I asked her why Allie’s breathing gets gaspy and sounds like sleep apnea as she falls asleep. The nurse’s response to all of those paranoia things were, “Nope, totally normal. She’s perfect.” And apparently, babies have really tiny airways and they make noise and snort and stuff, especially if the heater is on at night. As for sleep apnea, she assured me I have no risk factors; Mr. W and I aren’t obese, the baby isn’t obese, no one smokes around Allie, Allie’s super-healthy.

The nurse left me with this:
“You’ve only known each other for 13 days. You’re still getting to know each other. Soon you’ll learn what each of her cries mean and you’ll know immediately if she’s angry or needs to be changed or burped or fed. Right now they all sound the same, and that’s okay. You’re doing REALLY well and you’re one of those lucky women who could probably have twins and feed them well. Look at all the progress you’ve made. You’re a great mother for putting in all this effort now, and it’ll pay off. By 90 days, it’ll all be SO MUCH EASIER, and easier than formula-feeding. Studies have shown that babies breastfed for a year have up to 8 points higher on their IQ, so if you already have a smart kid, this could put them in the genius category.”

Ying Yang
The nurse walked me out with the baby to give her assessment to Mr. W. He was so relieved nothing’s wrong with Allie, that her super-short fussy feedings are because she’s FULL, not because she’s STARVING, that he started laughing, and then we went to Mimi’s Cafe to celebrate. Allie slept the whole time in her carrier, although the booth we were first seated, the framed oil painting of all things fell off the wall onto Mr. W, who reflexively brought his arm up and held it back against the wall to keep it from knocking into Allie on the head. The Mimi’s staff was horrified, reseated us with abundant apologies, the manager came out to apologize and check on us, and the waitress insisted, based on her manager’s orders, on giving us free dessert.

The Hospital
I didn’t have much expectations of motherhood, but so far it’s been surprisingly harder than I’d expected. The first two days in the hospital were a little tough because everything was new, I was learning how to cope with breastfeeding and interpreting a baby’s screams (at all hours), but the nurses tended to me and helped me with everything from latching to caring for my nether regions, and I didn’t have to find my own food or leave the room. Medical supplies and freebies were ample. Mr. W was always by my side, helping care for Allie. It wasn’t easy, but it was like new parenting with training wheels.

On Our Own
After we came home, I still didn’t quite have the hang of how to get her to latch right, and I already had painful cracking and blisters on both sides. The nurses and lactation consultants at the hospital said that based on the amount of diapers Allie was going through, I was doing just fine, I had “plenty of milk (colostrum, thick pre-runny-milk nutrition for a baby with a tiny stomach),” that sore nipples are normal, and it would be no problem for Allie to breastfeed despite those cracks and sores, so I kept at it, hoping things would improve on their own. They got worse. Allie cried through the night, I was in a lot of pain every time I nursed her, and it took forever to finish a feeding because she would constantly fall sleep and only suckle periodically. The second day we were home, we logged a total of 11 hours and 4 minutes spent breastfeeding, done over 12 feedings. (Mr. W has a great iPad app he keeps these records on.) She still cried for food often, was seemingly endlessly rooting even after she had just come off the breast minutes prior. I was grateful for our system that Mr. W automatically started — when she cried, Mr. W would pick her up from our cosleeper in our bedroom, check her diaper, change it if necessary as I prepared the Boppy or Brest Friend and myself for nursing, then hand her to me to nurse. After Allie finishes with one side, he’d take and burp her, then return her to me for the other side. After that, he’d take and burp her, swaddle her, and (try to) put her back to bed. We figured out that when she screamed bloody murder, it was because she needed changing, had gas, or was hungry. The problem is that she is ALWAYS hungry and rooting (mouth opening and closing in the air, head turning when she feels contact with a person to look for a breast, stuffing her fists in her mouth), and screaming. This is especially hard between 11pm and 2am when we are exhausted from being up all day and are not allowed to sleep, even after we’d just fed her. I had been fairly well-adjusted and optimistic, but Mr. W was troubled by Allie’s unproductive feeding, I picked it up, and suddenly got the baby blues over the weekend. I actually wondered whether I’d made a mistake and was incapable of being a good mother; I couldn’t even feed my child right.

Scary News, New Instructions
Our 2nd day home, thankfully, was also Allie’s first out-of-hospital pediatrician appointment. We were sent to an out-of-town doctor because that was the only place open on weekends (it was Sunday). Our major concern is that altho she was wetting and poopying on as many diapers as she should in the hospital — more than, even — as soon as she came home, she stopped. Day 3 of life means 3 wet, 3 poopy diapers. She had 1 each. Day 4 of life means 4 wet, 4 poopy diapers. She had 1 wet, no poopy. Day 5 was the appointment. She had 3 wet diapers that day but still no poopy since she left the hospital. That female doctor was a God-sent. Mr. W was at first lamenting the long drive to Garden Grove to see her when the pediatrician we’d selected is conveniently in our own town, but we left Garden Grove knowing we’d been given a blessing.
Allie weighed in that day at a shocking 7 lbs 5 oz. She’d lost 9.5% of her birthweight (normal is 7% weight loss, 10% means a serious problem), and was very dehydrated. She wasn’t pooping because her body had entered survival mode and was withholding every calorie, refusing to waste anything by expelling it. The constant screaming for food was because, the pediatrician explained, Allie was starving and wasting away, and her survival instinct was to fight it by demanding food constantly.
Given the dire situation, the doctor immediately brought a 2-oz disposable bottle of prepared baby formula, and had Mr. W feed it to her. She recommended no more than an ounce as supplement, but said this time to let Allie have as much as she wanted to get her back on track. Allie sucked up 2/3 of the bottle in less than 2 minutes. I was then put on the “10-10-10” feeding plan. Clearly my 11 hours per day feedings were unproductive; she was largely using me as a pacifier, wearing down my body but getting insufficient nutrition, so instead of marathon feedings, I was instructed to feed every 3 hours by putting her 10 minutes on one side, burp, 10 minutes on the other side, burp, then supplement with 10mL of baby formula. The doctor actually told me to spend the next 2 days giving Allie 1 oz of baby formula supplementation because her weight was so low, and hopefully that would catch her up for the first week of her life. I was to pump my breastmilk after each feeding to tell my body I need more supply, and I was to always breastfeed first so she doesn’t get too used to the ease of the bottle and start rejecting my breasts. What I pumped out would be used to supplement (by bottle) in lieu of the formula until my pumped supply is good enough that I could wean her off formula. What? I get to bottle feed in addition to breastfeed, breastfeed so many fewer hours, AND I got permission to use formula? This was going to fix my baby? For the first time, I cried. I didn’t know why I was crying, maybe relief, maybe because I was just tired and stressed for so long without a rest, but my crying made the pediatrician cry a little, too. That’s the mark of a great doctor, cuz by this time in my career, there’s likely no one who could walk into court and give me a sob story so great that it’d make ME give a crap about their case. We were sent home with a 6-pack of premixed 2-oz baby formula bottles, instructions, and best of all, hope for improvement.
The rest of that day (till midnight), Allie pooped 3 times and had 4 more wet diapers. I’d never celebrated poo before. There’s a first time for everything.

Improvement?
After that the graphs on Mr. W’s iPad app showing my feeding schedule looked much more normal. The feedings were at regular intervals, the durations much shorter. I’d spend an average of 3 hours per day nursing (in addition to Mr. W’s supplementing) instead of 11 hours. My husband has been amazing. I thought I’d be doing the nighttime stuff on my own since he’s more an early riser and needs his sleep, but instead, I was never, never alone. As frustrated as he was to not be able to sleep due to a screaming baby wanting to nurse every couple of hours, then refusing to go down to sleep for inexplicable reasons, he kept at it. Daily, around 10pm, 1am, 4am, 7am, 11am, 2pm, 4pm, 7pm, he’d stop what he was doing (including sleeping), change the screaming baby’s diaper, bring her to me to nurse, burp her in between sides, prepare 15-20 mL (30 mLs is 1 ounce) of previously pumped breastmilk, bottle-feed her as I pump, then sit with her comforting her until I was done pumping, help me with the pump (taking it apart, storing the milk), swaddle and put Allie to bed. And then we’d lay there in the dark freaking out with every gurgle and squeak, terrified it’d turn into screams of bloody murder as she refused to be put to sleep despite the fact that she was so comatose during the ends of feedings that I’d have to keep tickling and annoying her to keep her awake so that she could get enough milk in her system (apparently normal in newborns). We decided to switch the order we did things to see if we could take advantage of her food comas. Instead of changing and swaddling her after the feedings, which would seem to wake her up, we did all those things before she switched to the second breast so that once she dropped off, we could put her to bed immediately. Sometimes that helped, but only sometimes.
I cried a couple of times at our usual most difficult stretch of 11:30pm to 2am, when she would just stay awake and scream and cry despite the feeding she’d just had. Mr. W comforted me, told me to stop apologizing to him, that we were in this together. I just felt like I brought such a difficulty and nuisance into his lifestyle with this baby whom I can’t handle on my own. The number of diapers he’d changed vs. the number I’d changed was at a ratio of something like 20 to 1. Maybe 25 to 1. And he was so tired and aggravated, especially during that stretch. Despite that, he kept getting up, every time, telling me to take care of myself, to rest a few minutes and ready the breastfeeding pillows. And then he’d bring me water with a bendy straw as I nursed, and Allie would gulp as I gulped.
Allie was wetting regularly now, 8 or more diapers a day, but still no poopy since the ones after the formula bottle feed of Sunday’s pediatrician appointment.

Lactation Clinic to the Rescue
Allie’s 7th day of life, I had an appointment at the lactation clinic at the hospital I birthed Allie. Mr. W came with me and was allowed to stay in there as long as no other women came in for their consultation, since we breastfeed in there. The lactation nurse weighed Allie naked and there was already a huge improvement. Allie had gained 8 ounces in the past 2 days since the pediatrician appointment, a bigger improvement than the nurse, already familiar with Allie’s medical chart, had hoped for. She was now 7 lbs 13 oz. The nurse then instructed me to breastfeed from one side. She cringed when she saw my nipples and said I was a trooper, most people would’ve given up before they looked like this. She noted I wasn’t complaining. Complain? Because I couldn’t seem to do the basic thing needed for my child’s survival? That just made me more diligent, to force my body to do what I need it to. Who has time to complain? The nurse took Allie and weighed her during that feed, announced
Allie had taken in half an ounce. She returned Allie to me, taught me to fix my latch on the same breast and to nurse properly. Apparently I’m not aggressive enough with the baby, causing her to latch too shallowly (painful). I ended up putting an ounce of milk from each breast into Allie, and Allie was fat, dumb and happy after that. She slept the entire way home. The nurse said by the looks of things, my transition milk (more volume, less thick) had come in just that day, and I can stop using the formula to supplement now. She said to pump only when necessary or just once in awhile to give my nipples a break while Allie’s bottle-fed with pumped milk, and said I can now supplement with my own milk exclusively.
I asked her about the screaming bloody murder and refusing to sleep thing, despite falling asleep all the time during nursing, and the nurse said Allie’s a survivor who fights hard to let us know that she’s not done with her feeding yet, she didn’t get her 2 oz of food, and to not give up on feeding her. That’s all the screaming. As far as the rooting right after she eats, that’s just her looking for a little topper to soothe her into sleep; if I give it to her it should be minutes before she drifts off into the food coma again. And the nurse revealed another reason for her cries: in addition to needing diaper changes, food, and to be burped or relieved of gas discomforts, sometimes the cries are just for a little cuddle after she eats. So if I don’t see a dirty diaper, she’s not rooting or she just ate, and I couldn’t figure out what’s wrong, just holding and rocking her calms her pretty quickly if she just wants a cuddle. Swaddling also helps. Mr. W is now an expert swaddler.
The problem left is that altho I now know I can produce 2 oz of formula total, the amount the lactation nurse said a baby this age needs to drink at each feeding, I don’t know how much I’m putting in her because I don’t have a baby scale at home. So how do I know I’m supplementing enough? How long do I keep her at each breast?

The Turn
I had been pumping 8-15 mL of milk after my feedings since I started pumping 4 days ago, but I decided last night to skip the 10:30pm session of breastfeeding and pump exclusively as Mr. W bottle-fed Allie 2 oz of formula (which we thought would knock her out like it did at the pediatrician appointment). That would get us sleep through the usual difficult period until her next feeding at 1:30a or 2a, it would give my breasts a break as they were finally starting to heal, and I would find out how much milk I’m producing and better estimate how much she’s taking in from me directly. If I produced 1 oz on each side (as proven I could at the lactation clinic), and I could still pump out 15 mL (1/2 oz) after she’s done feeding, I’d know she’d only gotten 1.5 oz from me directly, and that the correct supplementation is half an ounce. Plus we’d now have a little stockpile of breastmilk to supp with in our fridge.
Several things were surprising last night. One, Allie drained about 1.5 oz of formula (Mr. W accidentally spilled some from the 2-oz bottle) in record time, he added half an ounce more of breastmilk to supplement for 2 oz total, and she still rooted and screamed and cried afterwards, refusing to go to sleep. Maybe she she got more from nursing than just the physical milk. They sat with me as I pumped, and the rhythmic machine sounds soothed her and she eventually dozed off. Two, I pumped out 55 mL from one side and 45 mL from the other for a total of 100 mL; that’s close to 4 ounces. That’s an incredible amount of milk for someone’s first baby, nursing for just a week. (Happy 1 Week birthday, little baby! Here’s 4 oz of breastmilk as your gift.)
Also surprising, it was still a miserable time slot in the first part of the night, and so miserable that I even nursed her after pumping. She dozed as usual, but we’d put her down, she’d start breathing funny, I’d internally panic and wake up every time I heard anything from her, and sure enough, she was up and screaming bloody murder in seconds, rooting again. How could she be rooting? She just drank an enormous amount of formula, way thicker and longer-lasting than breastmilk. Mr. W would sigh, get up, rub his sore back, unswaddle her, check her diaper, change and/or reswaddle her, try to rock her, as she wailed her head off. I found myself guilt-ridden again, apologetic, and told him I don’t mind doing feedings 2 hours apart instead of 3 hours because maybe this is her body’s way of getting her over the starvation hump. I offered to take her and rock her, but he told me to try to sleep and give my breasts a break as he took care of it. I finally convinced him 2 hour increment feedings are as normal as 3 hour increment feedings if a baby is to be fed between 8-12 times a day, and that I didn’t mind doing it. He relented, because at least during the feedings, he gets 15-20 minutes per side to snooze. He still took over the burping in between sides and the logging of the information into his iPad. I thank him for being here, I apologize for being so dependent on him for help; he says he feels bad he can’t feed her in addition to all that he already does to give me more of a break.
I finally realized while studying Allie in the wee hours that last night, she seemed to make throaty sleep apnea sounds and wake up crying so often because she was using a Boppy Noggin Nest head support thing that we’d just gotten yesterday. When we followed the recommended guideline of sleeping on her back on a firm mattress, no head support, she would turn and watch us as she got drowsy, then turn away from us toward the dark wall as she slept. With the Noggin Nest, she couldn’t turn her head and it seemed to affect her breathing. As she screamed, I picked her up and cradled her to me, rocked her to sleep easily enough, and looked curiously at the tags on the Boppy Noggin Nest. It said to never use for playard, crib, bed; only use when the baby is in a recline position, such as in a swing or a rocker. I removed the Noggin Nest and the rest of the night, she slept more soundly. Mr. W called me a genius.
This morning, Allie made her first poop since Sunday, and it was a double-sized load or more. Hopefully this means her body was just cluster-feeding to push her over the starvation mode she had been in, and now she could sleep longer knowing she was going to get adequate milk.

Grandma & Grandpa’s Support
My parents or at least my mom has been coming by most of this week with freshly cooked food prepared in accordance with a Chinese model of proper postnatal nutrition. Things were made in the proper order with proper organic ingredients to do things like replenish my blood, cleanse my body, shrink my uterus, get my milk supply to come in, in that order. Daily during the Thanksgiving break and weekend, she’d cook in the morning and bring different dishes for me and Mr. W in tupperware containers to make sure we didn’t have to cook, then she and my dad would spend a little time with their granddaughter while Mr. W and I ate. Now she refers to herself as “grandma” when talking to Allie (usually misleadingly asleep) and she seems happy with that title. Mom revealed that my dad had said that he misses Allie when he’s not with her. While they were here the first time, my dad came excitedly into the dining room where Mr. W and I were eating, to report that Allie turns her head in her sleep. Then my mom followed later to report that she smiled in her sleep and that it was so cute. They are gonna be one of those people who have boring grandparent stories to tell their friends, but they’ll tell them very enthusiastically.
Sure my mom nags me about having a window open or Mr. W taking Allie into the backyard for a few moments because drafts are deadly to babies and to postnatal women, and she got on me for not wearing slippers in our house and walking on cool travertine tile floors (which I ignored), but at least she’s easily distracted now by even a small gas expression on a baby. We’re very grateful for their help, eating fresh homemade food prepared daily.

Crossing Fingers
Oh, and Allie’s umbilical cord fell off this afternoon, revealing a round little white belly button. We were told to expect that in 2 weeks, not 1. I’m gonna cross my fingers that this is a good sign of her progressing development, and that tonight will go better without the crying bloody murder thing between 11pm and 2am.