Three weeks old!

I can't believe how time is just flying since we have been home. It is just too damn fast. I feel bad because there are days when we are just trying to make it through. The ones when you didn't get any sleep, you can't seem to brush your teeth enough, and you just want the baby to go to sleep so you can get something - anything done. Most days aren't like that though. Most days I just feel like a milk machine for a hungry boy!


This was Jake just a couple of hours before they took him away to the NICU. That was so horrible.







We didn't take any pictures of him while he was at his worst. Hopefully that image will fade in my mind because right now it feels like it is burned into my heart. He was the only baby in the NICU that was in a warmer. The rest were all in bassinets like this one that he got to move into. Thank God there weren't any in isolets while we were there. While he was in the warmer they would hardly let me touch him (or so it felt). I couldn't pick him up unless his respiratory rate was less than 80 which was a difficult for him for a bit. Because he was breathing so fast he wasn't allowed to nipple anything. Everything had to be gavaged so he didn't aspirate. Then when he finally did start nippling it just exhausted him and he would only take a little and then the rest would be gavaged. The doctor said he needed to have 70 ml of formula every 3 hours. At his best he would only take 35 by nipple and then he felt full and stopped, that was after his breathing became easier. So then they kept putting it in the tube. Well, this is why we thought we were never going to get to come home. In the mean time I am trying to establish a milk supply when I have yet to have my son nurse. We tried before he went to the NICU, but it never worked. The lactation specialist was gone because she had taken time off around the holiday and I was failing terribly. When they took Jake away from me they brought me a pump kit and said "here, start pumping every three hours." So that is what I did. Come to find out there was a long list of instructions that could have helped me a lot that I did get from the lactation lady the following Tuesday when she came back.

Anyway with a ton of work and lot of help we finally got nursing. But then we had to still supplement with formula by gavage. See these chubby cheeks and double chin? My son that was born at 9lbs 9.7oz topped out in the NICU at 10lbs 7.6oz!! That is crazy. I know there was one day where I was nursing him and then he was getting formula that he gained 3 ounces in 24 hours. I am frustrated with the Dr and the lactation lady really helped me out. Obviously this was crazy since it is normal for a baby to weigh their birth weight at 2 weeks! Mine had gained almost a pound in LESS than one week! So she chewed on the NICU nurses and chewed on the doctor as well. It took a couple of days, but they finally agreed to let him eat when he wanted. Then in the night the nurses were still tube feeding him! I was so frustrated. I thought we were never going to get out. So finally he was nursing or getting mostly breast milk while I was gone and he started dropping weight. Duh! That is normal, and still we had to argue with the doctor.













They finally let us move to step down where we had to take care of Jake in a hospital room all on our own. (I was so pissed because the only reason we had to do that was because it was our first child). The doctor said he wanted us to do two nights! I had a melt down. Mind you, this doctor always manages to come talk to me while I have a child latched on to my breast! He also waited until Mike left the room for this discussion because by this time, Mike truly looked like he was going to kill the doctor. The doctor wasn't stupid. Anyway, we discussed that we would only have to stay one night if his weight was stable. Of course Jake lost just a few grams that night, but it was terrible. We were doing everything we could to stuff milk in this kid before that last weigh in. We felt like we were being held hostage.

Then to finally come home we had to agree to breastfeed and then give him a bottle after every feeding. We had to have home health come to weigh him every other day or we had to go into the doctor. It still felt like we were being held hostage, just at least we finally had comfortable chairs.

The formula they gave us was making him terribly gassy when he was getting both formula and breast milk. We had a really miserable night one night and I cried with him. The home health nurse was awesome. She also thought the doctor is a bit excessive with Jake's weight gain and was supportive of me when I decided that I wasn't going to give him one more damned formula bottle. So for a week he has only gotten pumped breast milk in his bottles. The doctor did give us different formula to try and he did get two or three bottles of that and he did have less gas, but Jake seems to like the taste of the breast milk better. So then when we went to the doctor on Friday I never lied I just was very careful about how I answered the doctor's questions. It was then that he said we could just give Jake an extra bottle when he wanted one and we could just give him breast milk, because after all breast milk is best. Holy crap! So many of us were trying to get this across and finally the last time I saw the doctor he says this! He wanted us to come back to see him in two weeks, but I asked if we could start seeing our regular doctor now. His feelings seemed to be hurt a little, but he said yes. So we were released from him on Friday and then we were released from home health on Monday. We are free at last!!!!!!