the perfect bottle

Some of you may think I'm crazy, but I am SO excited to have found a bottle that Hadley likes! It's called the Breastflow bottle. With other bottles, it would take FOREVER to get her to finish just 1 oz. of fluid, but with this new bottle, she can down 2-3oz. in 15 minutes! Also, with this bottle, she doesn't dribble the milk down her chin so I don't have to put a bib on her anymore. We have found a new formula that has helped her to spit up less, too! In case you're wondering, it's Enfamil AP. This has definitely made feedings less difficult and anything to help feed her is a good thing!

As great as all that is, I think maybe she ate a little too much this afternoon. I was trying to give her a bottle and she let loose a massive poo. I had her in my lap, and a couple minutes after I heard her poop, my lap felt really warm. Uh oh...not good. So I went to change her, and it had gone all up her back! Ugh. After I finally got her cleaned up (which took several baby wipes and a complete change of clothes), I assessed my warm lap. I had a big wet spot which I'm not sure if it was poo or pee but I knew I needed to change asap. I ran upstairs, Hadley in tow, and shoved her in Rey's arms so he could put her clean outfit on while I cleaned myself up and changed pants. It was quite an ordeal. The icing on the cake is that this all happened just hours after we had given her a bath. She's probably going to kill me for telling this story when she's older, but oh, well...I needed to share my misery!

Medical mayhem

I don't know what's going on, but there must be something bad in the water or something. My family has had two health crisises in the last few days. First, my dad had to have emergency surgery this weekend because he found out he had a blood clot in his femoral artery and several smaller clots that had broken off into his lungs. It was pretty scary for awhile there. Had one of those clots gotten to his heart or his brain, he could have died. I have to admit that as soon as I heard "blood clot" I was really concerned. Thankfully, he got to the hospital just in time to get it under control.

The day after Dad's surgery, Rey woke up with a red, stinging eye. It got progressively worse through the day and the next day (Monday) he couldn't even open it because it hurt so much. He went to the eye doctor and found out that he had bruised his cornea. The doctor put a clear bandage on the surface of his eye (which I didn't even know they could do!) to help it heal but on Tuesday, Rey was in agonizing pain. His bad eye hurt even WORSE and was even redder and it hurt to even close his eye which made sleeping practically impossible. At this point, he couldn't even open his GOOD eye because it made the other one hurt more. By now he had been basically blind for 3 days. He went back to the doctor this morning and they took off the bandage because apparently, Rey's eye hadn't taken well to it and it had gotten infected. Now he is taking antibiotic drops every hour and he has to go back to the doctor again in the morning.

It's been a pretty awful last few days. Poor Rey has been in tons of pain and unable to do anything...he can't sleep, watch tv, read, use the computer...nothing. I have been really stressed out b/c I'm having to take care of everything (including the baby) until he gets better. I'm definitely ready for Rey to recover...here's hoping that this weekend is much better than the last one!

Feeding frustrations

Hadley's one month doctor visit was on Tuesday and I was SO hoping for a good weigh-in. However, I ended up frustrated and disappointed when she still weighed the same as she had a week and 1/2 earlier. She's still right at 9lbs. - not even up to her birth weight yet. For her weight, length and head circumference she is between the 45-47th percentile. Right in the middle. The doctor says she's healthy right now, but she needs to start gaining weight asap because as she gains length, if she isn't gaining ounces, she will start to get too skinny.

I am back to supplementing her feedings with formula and I'm also working with a lactation consultant to get her suggestions. She thinks that what might be the problem is that Hadley is breastfeeding, but just not feeding effectively enough to increase my milk production. She says that once I get some weight on her (through the formula supplements) that she should start wanting more breastmilk. Until then, whenever I give her a bottle, I'm supposed to pump. So I'm breastfeeding, giving a bottle, then pumping several times a day. Each time I do this, it takes about an hour so I'm hoping this phase won't last too long...it's exhausting! But mainly I'm just hoping it works b/c I want my baby to be healthy and I want to be able to give her breastmilk as long as I'm able to.

Baby update

At Hadley's last weight check, she had gained 3oz. so I was really happy to know that her weight was moving in the right direction. We go back again for her 1-month checkup next week so I'm hoping that she'll be over 10lbs. by then. She seems to be very healthy and is having plenty of dirty diapers each day so I think she's doing well.

She is also a good sleeper. Almost TOO good. When she's out, there is no waking her. I can pick her up, talk to her, move her arms and legs around and she won't even open an eyelid. However, she does sometimes have trouble getting to sleep and when that happens, she gets very fussy. She's still in the process of learning to soothe herself, so when we know that she's tired and we put her down to sleep, she often makes little noises for awhile and flails her arms in the air until she falls asleep. Rey and I often joke that she's "conducting her orchestra" when she does that.

Hadley's First Bath

As I expected, Hadley did not enjoy her first bath very much. She screamed through most of it but we got her clean!

This is at the beginning of the bath...she's not too sure about this...


She's decided that she definitely doesn't like it...


And now she's expressing her feelings to me in a lovely, non-verbal way...

And no, we did not pose her like this! Rey just happened to catch this on camera.

Eat, eat, eat!

We took Hadley to the doctor's office on Monday and she had lost about 6 oz. from her birth weight so they told us to just keep doing what we were doing and bring her back on Thursday for another weight check. She was eating all the time and had plenty of dirty diapers so I thought surely she would have gained some weight at her Thursday check-up, but somehow she managed to lose another 1/2 ounce. The doctor didn't seem all that concerned and he told us to bring her back on Monday for another weigh-in but I told him how often she had been breastfeeding and that I felt maybe she needed to be supplemented with a little bit of formula.

I then talked to one of the nurses there and this is what she told me to do:
-Breastfeed every 2 hours and try to get her to do about 15 minutes on each side (no more than 30 minutes total)
-Give a 1 or 1-1/2 oz. bottle of formula after breastfeeding
-Use the breastpump after each feeding to encourage milk production

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous that all sounds. Breastfeeding every 2 hours for 30 minutes each time would mean she would be at the breast practically all day long and I would barely get a break. Not to mention the fact that she just will not eat that often. After she eats, she usually gets sleepy and once she gets to sleep, you cannot force her to eat. So this makes giving her a bottle supplement a real challenge as well. She typically will only take a bottle supplement a couple times a day but I keep offering it to her. And I'm sorry, but there is no way that after feeding Hadley for 30 minutes, I am going to go and pump after that. It is just too much. I tried it yesterday afternoon and I barely got anymore milk anyway so it seemed like such a waste of time.

I feed her whenever she's hungry and I often wake her to feed her, too but I still worry she won't have put on weight when I take her back to the doctor on Monday. I just don't know what else to do. If she's not hungry, she won't take more food. Guess we'll see how it goes on Monday...

Hadley's coming home!

After she was born, Hadley's pediatrician decided it would be best for her to go the NICU to get checked out for a few issues she was having. She had a different (incompatible) blood type to mine so that put her at risk for jaundice so they put her on the blue light photo therapy for 2 or 3 days - more as a preventative measure than anything else. Her biliruben number was always pretty low, which is a good thing, but they said if they didn't have her under the light therapy, it was likely that she would become jaundiced in her first couple days of life.

Since she was a big baby, they checked her blood sugar because bigger or smaller than average babies tend to have trouble regulating their blood sugars right after they're born. Her blood sugar was low and my breastmilk wasn't enough to keep it up at first so they had to supplement with formula. After about 3 days, she was able to skip the formula supplements. When I've gone to visit her lately, I've been able to breastfeed her and as long as she's hungry, she does pretty well. I also have been pumping every 3 hours when I'm at home and I bring the frozen milk to the NICU when I go so that the nurses can give it to her when I can't be there.

The other issue she had at birth was a little bit of fluid in her lungs. The neonatologist thought it was a sign of infection so he put her on antibiotics and she had to eat through a little tube in her throat for a couple of days until her breathing slowed down. They had been worried that due to her quicker breathing, she might aspirate if she ate on her own.

Those first 2-3 days, our poor little girl was hooked up to all sorts of things and it was tough to see her like that. Thankfully, she recovered very quickly, and for the last couple of days, she's been completely fine. She was off the feeding tube, the breathing tube and IV a few days ago...we're just waiting on her to finish her 7 day round of antibiotics so we can take her home.

We're so excited to bring her home! She'll be released Saturday morning so we've only got one more day. Of course, we are a little nervous, too but I know we'll figure it out. I'm just so glad that's she's healthy.