Things continue to go well for our little family but it is a very strange time. Night and day are beginning to blur. When Drew woke up from a nap today he looked at the clock which said 5:29. For a least 30 seconds, he was convinced it was in the morning when it was actually at night!
If we look at how we spend the hours of the day it roughly breaks up as follows:
15% - Sleep
5% - Eating
.001% - Doing all the things we used to do before the baby came
80% - Breastfeeding (including burbing, diaper changes, soothing, etc)
If we didn’t breast feed, I am not sure what we would do with all the extra time! They tell you that when your baby is first born, they will need to feed about every 2 hours. That doesn’t sounds so bad until you realize a few things. One, it is 2 hours from the start of the last feeding not the end. Two, when you add in all the things involved in a feeding including setup, getting a good latch, burbing, keeping her awake with diaper changes, etc. it can take 1 ½+ hours to nurse. That doesn’t leave much time in between especially when you consider it takes another 5-10 minutes to get Gia to go to sleep after a feeding. On one particularly bad night we had 3 back-to-back feedings. Amy was exhausted and no one got much sleep. Feedings are getting much easier as we all learn to feed more effectively (especially little Gia) and Amy’s regular milk has come in (new mothers produce something called colostrum for the first several days which doesn’t provide as many calories or volume than regular milk).
Yesterday was an emotional day. We had our first pediatrician appointment (outside of the hospital) and they noticed that Gia has lost 12.5% of her birth weight (it is normal to lose 7.5%-10%). As a result, we were all worried that she wasn’t getting enough to eat. This was especially hard on Amy. We tried to feed her has much as possible before her follow up appointment today but it was difficult. She was often upset when feeding and only seemed to like one of Amy’s breasts. Things seemed to turn a corner early this morning with a few really good feedings. We were delighted and relieved when we discovered that she has gained 2 oz which was double what the doctor had hoped for. He told us we had nothing to worry about and we didn’t need to see him for several weeks.
Life is chaotic but very rich. It is sometimes hard to remember what life was like without Gia. Sometimes when we nap for a long time, we wake up missing her. Mother nature sure knew what she was doing…
Love,
Amy & Drew
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