Marathon feedings

Tuesday was an eventful day again. Sara came over for a home visit and to check on the little one. However when he got weighed in at only 7lbs this was a bit alarming. Babies always loose weight in the few days after they are born but if they go more then 10% it's a flag that he is dehydrated. In the owns words "I have only had to do this one time before but I think we need to give him a little bit of formula" Those words devastated me. She said we could chose what we wanted to buy so we got organic formula. To avoid nipple confusion Sara gave us a small tube that you insert while he is feeding beside your breast. He did not seem to mind it; however it was another story for me. I think I cried through the feeding. For those of you who have not guessed I am anti-formula; and did not want to give anything other then breast milk to baby.

Wednesday she came back to weight him in at 7lbs 2oz. You would have though these would have eased my mind about the decision to give him the formula but it did not. She also left us with the following set of instructions: feed him minimum every 3 hours and at night minimum every 4 hours - so this is when the marathon feed began. If the only issue would have been his low weight I don't think they would have worried as much but we also have 2 other symptoms to deal with some jaundice (that at this point is not yet worrisome - soon to change) and lack of bowl movements. Although he has lots of pee as he demonstrates with a wet diaper prior to each feed and a few golden showers on Geoff and the bed.

Thursday since Sara had clinic hours Christie came in the morning for a home visit. He weighed in again at 7lbs 2oz; she would have liked to see more weight gain however since he did not loose anything would have been comfortable leaving it as is other then for the fact he was a bit more yellow that she liked. We discussed getting his bilirubin levels tested and together we made the informed decision to head out to Toronto East General to have the test done. The test consist of a simple heal prick (with a kind of needle that reminds me of the ones my mom uses to check her blood glucose) they also give him a bit of sugar water to suck on while all of this happens. The results take 2 hours so we headed down to the breast feeding clinic for some pointers. The lactation consultants there were wonderful and we got a few tips that we are trying to apply.

Once the bilirubin test results were back the pediatrician on duty that day came down to talk to us; he basically explained that his levels were up more then what he liked to see but should probably go down with one more day of good feedings, but he wanted us to come back tomorrow to re-test. As directed by Christie earlier I paged her for further direction.

As it is late and I need a few minutes of sleep before I need to feed Christophe again I will continue this with a second post.