Eating to Live

A lot of my experience so far as Ian's mother has been centering around eating. Him eating, that is. It seems that there is a new set of challenges each day. The first 24 hour period was for learning how to nurse. Both Ian and I had to figure out our own part in this. It seemed like this went pretty well, with steady progress through the first day, until we pretty much had the hang of it. The first night he woke up twice, about 3.5 hours apart.

I was feeling confident starting the second day, but then we had to deal with a new problem -- Ian was too sleepy to exercise his newly acquired nursing skills. Have you ever tried to wake a baby from a deep sleep? Don't bother. As the day went on, and we still hadn't gotten his first wet diaper, our anxiety steadily increased. (The state of diapers seems to be the primary measure of health for newborns, so we were carefully monitoring). Finally in late afternoon we had one wet diaper, but from then on I couldn't get him to nurse well, and we were now also concerned that he hadn't yet had the first poopy diaper that is apparently so important. I read some advice on waking sleepy babies, and it suggested starting to wake them 1.5-2 hours after their last feeding, before they get into their deepest sleep phase. Going into the second night, I was determined to feed Ian every 2 hours and make sure he got enough liquid to produce a wet diaper. I went to sleep and set my alarm for 90 minutes later, so I could begin waking him in time for his next feeding. Thus began a night which I spent poking, prodding, undressing, and jiggling Ian to try to wake him to eat. When I finally saw those big blue eyes open and look at me, I would happily start feeding him, only to find him fast asleep again after one or two sucks. By 4:30 I was at the end of my rope. Instead of eating every 2 hours as I had planned, he had barely eaten at all. Repeated checks of his diapers showed nothing. I finally gave up and called the nurse on call at the birth center, worried that Ian was becoming terribly dehydrated (although every non-diaper based indication was that he was okay). She recommended that I bring him in first thing in the morning to be seen, and said that they would probably recommend supplementing his feeding with formula or donor milk. This was very discouraging, as I had felt we were doing so well with nursing just 24 hours before. I was convinced that his ability to nurse and my ability to produce milk were not the problem -- he was just never alert enough to eat. At 5:30 I finally gave up trying to wake him and went to sleep.

By morning, Ian was finally ready to wake up. My milk was coming in, and he had a good long nursing session at 7:30, as we were worriedly preparing to take him to the birth center. This made me feel much better -- at least it didn't seem like his death from dehydration was imminent. At the birth center, the nurse confirmed that Ian did not have any outward signs of dehydration. When she weighed him, we found that he had lost 12 ounces since birth. This wasn't quite to the 10% mark that triggers the nurses to officially worry about him and consider supplementation. As she watched, I nursed a now alert Ian again, and she confirmed that the nursing seemed to be working properly. She suggested that we try to feed him every 2 hours during the day, and not worry so much about waking him at night. She felt optimistic that Ian would be more hungry as the day went on as real milk came in that was more satisfying. So we had a new plan and permission to keep trying for a little while before needing intervention. Ian continued to be more alert and hungry the rest of the day, and we had several more good feeding. Then, at 8:10 p.m., we finally got it -- the first poopy diaper! Doug and I happily went upstairs to change Ian while Grandma and Grandpa Allen enjoyed a celebratory glass of wine in the kitchen. For the benefit of you readers, I have left the diaper itself out of the photo below!



Going into the third night, I felt happy about how things were going and was looking forward to getting some sleep, since the plan was to let Ian sleep until he woke up naturally. Of course, this was a new day, and so things were totally different than I expected. After going to bed at midnight, I was woken by Ian at 1:30. He had another messy diaper, and after I changed it, he was ready to nurse. He nursed for an hour before I laid him back in his crib. 10 minutes later, I heard him smacking his lips again, wanting to eat. Thus followed a night of nearly continuous nursing until 7am, when I flagged down Grandpa to change his diaper, which was now dirty again. Exhausted but happy, I went downstairs to have breakfast. As my mother held Ian while I ate, we could hear that his diaper was going to need to be changed again. Doug arrived in the kitchen just in time to perform this fatherly task. Since then, Ian has nursed almost continuously and produced several more dirty diapers. He gave me a much appreciated break around 1pm in which I was able to shower and change, while he was happily alert and spent some time bonding with Daddy. Then he started nursing again, finally falling asleep around 4pm, giving me time to make this first blog post since his birth.

So I can see that parenting will indeed be the adventure I anticipated, with constantly changing challenges and rewards. Despite the worries described above, I've been having a great time hanging out with my little son. He is fascinating and extremely cute. Being surrounded by help from Doug and my parents, I've been able to focus on learning with Ian how to fulfill his critical need for food, which is clearly a full-time job. In the meantime, laundry has been done, dishes have been washed, food and water appear when I need them, and someone is always available to hold or change Ian so I can get a minute to go to the bathroom or eat dinner. We will have a changing of the guard in the next few days, as my parents head back to Syracuse, and Grandma and Grandpa McVey and Aunt Julie arrive from Long Island. We eagerly look forward to introducing them to Ian in person. No doubt they will have a completely different experience with him than we've had so far, as he enters the unknown world of Life, Week 2.