It's hard to believe Eric is two weeks old today. On the one hand, it has gone very quickly. On the other hand, we already can hardly remember what it was like before he was here. Somehow the transition to having a baby in the house has not been as dramatic as I expected. It's just like, here he is, and this is my life now.
The last couple of days my life has revolved around pumping and feeding. Eric hit the two-week growth spurt on Friday morning and started eating every two hours. He also at that time caught up with my milk production, so I started pumping every two hours as well, to increase the supply. Since he's a dawdly eater, taking about 45 minutes for most meals, and pumping takes half an hour, you can imagine my schedule. I've actually been able to do a surprising amount in addition to feeding-related activities, though yesterday I did too darn much: I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the dining room, cooked dinner for the third night in a row (it was the first real cooking though--the first night was spaghetti from a jar and the second night was a frozen entree. Still, it's been a nice break from take-out). Then in the evening I melted down. Today has been designated an official Day of Minimal Productivity and Maximal Napping. David is going to help enforce the rest.
It was getting pretty obvious I was tired. When the chicken was ready, I noticed that the rice wasn't, but was just soaking in its water. I told Scott and David that the rice cooker was broken, and David ran to a nearby Chinese take-out for a quart. While he was gone, I discovered that the rice cooker wasn't plugged in. Oops. And shortly after that, I noticed that I had written a wrong time in the log for Eric's most recent feeding--not being able to tell time is one of my major symptoms of sleep depro.
I'm off to a good start for my day of rest, though. I went to bed at about 10 last night. David fed Eric a little after 11, while I slept. Eric woke at 3 to eat, and again at 7 this morning. Ah! In general, Eric stretches out his feedings at night. Even Friday night, in the midst of the feeding frenzy, he went two and a half hours at a stretch. During the day he had actually sometimes been eating as often as every hour and fifteen minutes. But last night was the first night he got up only once.
Eric had his first real bath this week, after his cord dropped off on Day 9. He took it very well, just fussing a little toward the end of the rinse cycle. He also had his first walk around the neighborhood. I'm not sure he noticed it. He is beginning to be awake and alert more of the time, and enjoys looking at faces and at developmentally appropriate black and white drawings (David printed a bunch out and laminated them, so Eric has a whole collection). He also enjoys sucking and sleeping. These are his major hobbies.
The cord was interesting. I didn't know you'd be able to see the three individual blood vessels in the stump, or that it would be flat instead of round--it looked kind of like one of those flat computer cables with the parallel wires running through it.
I have gotten so used to the pumping and finger-feeding routine that I forget sometimes that breastfeeding is the goal, that this isn't just the way you feed a baby. I told David, I need to be visualizing us breastfeeding. Even when I picture us in the future, like at a picnic we might go to next weekend, I see us fingerfeeding. My hypnotherapist sent me a relaxation to use, general physical and mental health, but I don't like it much. So I wrote my own script on baby care and breastfeeding, and David and I are going to burn it onto a CD today (I hope), sandwiched between the get-relaxed and wake-up parts from the therapist's CD.
I'm so into the feeding routine that Friday morning, when Eric got hungry right after I pumped, I was this close to putting the freshly pumped milk into the fridge, getting out some of the older milk and warming it up for him. Fortunately it occurred to me that he could just go ahead and eat the fresh squeezed.
Pumping isn't bad, except that I can't double pump (do both sides at once) because the way I have to hold the doohickeys wrecks my wrists. So I have gone to single pumping, which lets me hold the doohickey with my wrist and forearm in the neutral position. This doubles the time it takes me to pump from 10-15 minutes to 20-30, but since it frees up one hand and therefore allows me to do something while pumping (I've been reading), I find the trade-off more than acceptable. In fact, I've read four books this week, mostly while pumping, including a history of the footnote (!) and the memoir of a 17th-Century Quaker minister. Now I'm re-reading Walden, but it's hard going--Thoreau puts me in mind of how far I fall short of living according to my own notions of simplicity, and it gets me agitated. I hope to send David to the library today to get me something trashy by way of a novel.
Old Quaker memoirs are frustrating. They always traveled in the ministry, and their accounts tend to say where they went but not what happened there, so you get pages and pages of "And then on the 17th of Fourth Month we were at Rahway and the meeting there was very gathered. The next day at Princeton had a very unsatisfactory meeting. But the next First Day our worship at Plainfield was silent but truly covered with the sprit of the lord." They did this for five months at a time. And it always ends with: "Returned to Wilmington to find my family well." I would make a sharp comment about leaving wives and children except that Quaker women traveled in the ministry as well.
I continue to be optimistic about figuring out breastfeeding. Eric has been enthusiastic about trying the last few days, but he can't sustain a suck. One of the lactation consultants thought he had a high palate (I have one, so maybe he inherited it), and this can make it hard for the baby to get the nipple up onto the roof of his mouth so he can milk it right. One of my books says babies with high palates often need a period of weeks before they are big enough to suck successfully. I suppose it doesn't help that my nipples started out inverted, though they are coming along nicely. It may be that Eric was also born early enough (2 1/2 weeks before his due date) to interfere with breastfeeding; sources differ on that account. But he is approaching his due date and growing well, so presumably his day will come.
One of the nurses at the hospital told me about a woman she knew (another nurse on the unit) who finger-fed for six weeks and then suddenly her baby got it, refused the fingermilk (as I call it), nursed, and nursed from then on. The next day, a lactation consultant told me about a woman she knew whose baby finger-fed for six weeks and then figured out nursing. Our pediatrician then told us about a woman who--get this--finger-fed for six weeks, but then everything was fine. The very next day, the visiting nurse said, "I know a woman who finger-fed for six weeks...." I can't figure out if they all know the same woman, if six weeks is some magical time, or if this is some story they've all been told to tell ("and tell it like you know the woman personally") to keep women's spirits up during what can be a frustrating process.
Truth be told, I haven't been very frustrated, though. Once in awhile I worry a little (I worried a little when Eric caught up with my production, but I think I'm pulling ahead of him again now), but mostly I am mellow. What we're doing isn't difficult at all; it's just enormously time-consuming. I am encouraged repeatedly by little bits of progress we make: by my nipples getting more elastic, by Eric beginning to root, by his improvement at opening wide (shark mouth, I call it) and grabbing on. Sometimes he likes to just sit for a few minutes holding my breast in his mouth, and he enjoys falling asleep sort of half-underneath it. These are all Positive Oral Experiences at the Breast, which we are supposed to be encouraging.
Eric often eats in even increments of 10 ccs. He'll finish a feeding at 30, say, instead of 28 or 32. I'm trying to figure out whether I'm unconsciously cueing him to stop at round numbers. Like Clever Hans, the horse that could add, but it turned out that it was actually responding to physical cues its handler didn't even know he was giving, such as relaxing when Clever Hans reached the correct sum.
David has turned out to be completely untrustworthy when sent to the store. He always comes back with some little thing for Eric: a cute outfit or a toy (Mr. Crinkly Alligator) as well as whatever he went for. Except diapers; the other day, Meijer had no newborn diapers except Huggies, which don't fit Eric well, and when David went to Target (we like the Target brand) there was only one package on the shelf. David came home and said, "Do you suppose there was some anomalous number of newborns this week?"
The other night I asked David, "Do you think our baby really is especially pretty, or do we just think so because we're his parents?"
David said, "We'll never know." He cracks me up.
Eric goes into Milk Coma, like every baby. He often finishes a meal by just slipping off my finger and falling asleep with his mouth still in a little "O," like those baby dolls that come with their own bottles to drink. You can put your finger in, take it out, put it in, take it out.
Another way he ends feedings is that he keeps sucking but stops swallowing, so that when I take my finger out, a mouthful of milk pours out. Messy but cute.
When I last talked to the lactation consultant, she assured me that Eric is behaving exactly like a healthy breastfed newborn, in how and how often he eats, how and how often he poops (often!), his sleep/wake pattern. Exactly like a healthy breastfed newborn--except the breastfeeding! That one pesky detail.
So, I am always a little anxious when new people come to the house (and sometimes even old people, as well), because when a visitor comes, the house gets a little chaotic for awhile. The dogs bark, Stevie calls, KittyHawk gives the alarm, and so on. Our house is actually a very quiet place, but I think many of our visitors get a different impression. I anticipate judgment, that people will say, "This is no environment for a baby." But it's been just the opposite with the visiting nurses. The last one came in, Stevie yelled, and she said, "That's terrific. He'll be a good sound sleeper." Which he is; I think I've already mentioned he doesn't respond to animal noises at all, and yesterday he not only didn't mind the vacuum cleaner, I think the sound of it put him back to sleep when he had been thinking of waking up.
My "time to pump" alarm just went off; this is one of those awkward times because Eric is going to be ready to eat soon, too--he's waking up now. When he needs to eat at the same time I'm pumping, it gets pretty tricky if I'm here alone.
Posted by Su Penn at June 10, 2003 02:50 PM | TrackBack