Monday, January 23, 2012

"WWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!... Oh. Milk."

Okay, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping little man stays asleep long enough for me to post...


There he is... been down for a whole hour!!!

Nipple confusion, over-supply, under-supply, bottle preference, colic, reflux, all these and more have been bandied about between my husband and I over the last few weeks.  Somewhere around 3 weeks old, little JJ went from the most laid-back baby I've ever seen in all my born days to screeching banshee child.  Every waking moment, if he wasn't inhaling his milk, he was screaming.

We tried everything.   For a solid month.  All the doctors could say was "It's colic, he's fine, he'll grow out of it."   ARGH!!  Not what a mother wants to hear!  My baby was in pain, and the only thing I could do about it was try desperately to get him to either eat or sleep, neither of which he had any interest in doing.  

I've never been so stressed out & miserable.  

About two weeks ago, we discovered that the child who had been fighting and sometimes flat out refusing the breast for two weeks would take his milk just fine from a bottle.  In fact he did better with the bottle than at the breast... didn't swallow nearly as much air, burped easier, and slept better too.

Fantastic.  I'll pump.  I can do that.

Except I couldn't.  My little Medela Harmony is a wonderful tool, as is its heftier cousin, the Medela In Style Advanced.  Neither of them allowed me to express enough milk to keep JJ fed long term.  I kept up with him for the last two weeks, but just barely, and he was steadily gaining ground on me.  My production was coming up, but not fast enough, and the dreaded Formula was looming on the horizon... we even bought a box of Gerber Gentle as backup in case I couldn't get production up far enough.

I felt like the world's worst mother EVER.  

Then suddenly, three days ago, JJ decided he wanted to nurse again.  No warning.  I just woke up Saturday morning to find the little sucker (pun intended) firmly latched onto the milk bar, sound asleep.  I must have helped him, he's not even two months old, but I don't remember doing it, so yay for sleep-nursing!  Since then, all he's wanted to do was nurse.  Nurse nurse nurse nurse nurse.  To the point where he was literally sleeping at the breast.  I spent Saturday and Sunday sitting on our bed watching the first season of Ghost Whisperer (yes, I know it's cheesy, sue me, it's entertaining), and just swapping sides every time I started a new episode.   He's still a bit gassy, but the all-afternoon-&-evening attacks of the screeching banshee child have not yet resumed.  *crosses fingers*

He was bidding fair to do the same today, but finally went down about an hour ago and seems to be taking a decent nap.  If I get two hours of sleep out of him, I'll dance a jig in the living room, I swear.

The title of today's post?  No matter how loud the kid was screaming, if he tasted milk and that's what he was after, he would instantly lock onto whatever was in his mouth, be it tit or bottle, and go to town.  It's amazing how fast silence can descend in a house with a newborn.


Hmm... there has been cute stuff lately I've been meaning to post about....

Oh, right!  

All parents know about baby firsts.  Baby's first smile, birthday, cold, snowfall, etc.  Well, around six weeks we got baby's first "conversation".  He has been cooing and gurgling more and more lately, discovering new sounds almost by the day it seems, and one day when he cooed and I cooed... he cooed BACK!!!  He actually responded!  We went back and forth for almost three minutes that first time, and believe you me I squealed like a school-girl when he was done.  I picked him up and danced his little behind all around the living room.  His daddy thought I had lost my ever-loving mind.

Until last week when he did it for John too.  Then I got to stand there and grin while my husband did goofy things and made silly faces trying to get the baby to "talk" with him some more.

I don't expect I'll be letting John live that down any time soon.

Folks, I tried really hard to get it on video for y'all, truly I have, but little man sees that camera come out and he just stops whatever he's doing.  I did finally get him to smile on camera for me though... 




Whattaya think?  How handsome is my little dude!

2 comments:

  1. Boy do I remember those days, like they were yesterday. My daughter, Esther, slept for the first three weeks of her life, then woke up mad as a hornet. Though her fussiness was mostly in the late afternoon evening, it went on and on, inconsolable until midnight. She did manage to feed through it, but it didn't stop the crying. I called it the witching hour. I can't imagine 24/7 witching hour. Glad you got through it.

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    1. We've had a brief nightly run-in with the screeching banshee child the last few nights, 30 minutes or so of meltdown after a period of mild fussiness... he doesn't seem to be able to just go to sleep that last time at night, he fights it I guess.

      Gah... edit button doesn't want to cooperate. Anyway, thanks for stopping by! Little man just went down, 10 pm right on the nose. Why the 30 minutes of screeching immediately prior is necessary, I'm not sure, but nothing we do circumvents it.

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