Saturday, December 2, 2017

Benjamin, Month 1

Milestones this Month: What a month to be born!  Ben started his life with so much excitement; Thanksgiving, celebrating Great Grandpa Ed's 90th Birthday, prep for Christmas, and so many visitors.  He's a very loved baby

Things he appears to really like: pacifiers, bath time, necks (like having his face snuggled up into it), being held tight, patted on his bottom (pretty hard at that), his swing

Things he appears not to like: being hungry, cold wipes, being bothered by brother when he's almost asleep

Sleeping: Ben has been a pretty consistent sleeper since the first week home from the hospital.  We had out first 5 hour stretch at night as a two week old (then we were instructed to wake him every 2 hours to eat so he could gain wait, we did that for a very long week) and it's pretty consistent every night.  His typical night sleep a 5-hour stretch, eat, and then sleep a 3 hour stretch before being up for the day.  During the day, he eats, is alert for about 30-45 minutes and then sleeps if you help him.  In order to sleep well, he needs to be swaddled just like big brother.

We're working on making that 5-hour stretch start when we're going to bed (instead of 6 pm which has happened a few time) and to make that "eat" in the middle of the night a bit quicker because being awake over a full hour is exhausting despite the fact that he's sleeping a pretty long stretch.

Eating/Breastfeeding:  The breastfeeding with Benjamin has been much easier than with Andrew because I knew what to expect; that said, it hasn't been "easy."  I was prepared for it not to work, but I has some intense hope that it would; I am not as devastated this time and just happy for the success that we are having right now.  That said, I still wish that I could be that mom that just whips out her boob in public to calm a screaming child (there is something unproductive of whipping out of the boob, the nipple shield, the SNS, the formula container, and tape to set it all up to nurse).

I still have a severe under supply and despite having and doing everything possible, it isn't increasing enough to feed him exclusive breast milk.  He is getting about 20-25% of his daily intake of breast milk and the rest formula via the SNS (supplementary nursing system, aka a little tube in his mouth that runs from a bottle).  I hate the pump with a passion which probably has to do with the fact that it confirms how little BM there is (like 0.5 oz from both boobs) but I still do it 3-4 times a day and he gets 2-3 oz of pumped BM in one of his SNS bottles of the day.

I didn't want to introduce the bottle because of the experience with Andrew so we waited until week four.  He still only has a bottle once, maybe twice a day.  So far it hasn't caused any problems with the BF latch or rejection as I feared.

Diapers: We ran out of newborn diapers so we've moved onto size 1 (which are HUGE on him, but not leaking).

Clothing: He is wearing newborn clothes and they fit perfectly with the exception of sleepers.  Most of the sleepers are already too short and pull at his neck. The 0-3 are huge, but he's in them.

How's Mommy? Great! A scheduled c-section was the way to go! The first week was brutal (but still better than Andrew's delivery) and I took Norco and Motrin pain meds around the clock.  I weaned off the Norco during week two and just used Motrin; by week three, I was off everything.  I love that I can go to the bathroom without pain, stand up, sit down, etc.  The only real limitation I seem to have is bending over which feels super tight on the incision. I have overdone it a few times, but nothing major.  I'm exhausted, but hey, that's normal.