Month 1 - Trials and Tribulations

IMPORTANT!

7lbs 1oz today!!!

This first month has been a little overwhelming. It's just been one thing after another. My poor baby.

• The O2 tank - apparently hospitals do what's called a "carseat challenge" for preemies which consists of making your child sit in his car set in a room for a whole hour while his O2 saturation is monitored. Poor Jaxen failed round one because he dipped below the magic number 88 a couple times. We weren't worried because he always recovered fast and strong. Because he failed it meant we had to stay at the hospital longer and the had to hook him back up to monitors for another 12 hours like they did when he first came out. Needless to say I was in tears because I knew he was ok and I just wanted to GO HOME. He passed the second round but they kept on O2 for it. On to the "open air challenge" or sitting in a room for 40 min while monitored. Pass. They ended up sending us home with enough O2 to last for months. We ended up taking it off him about 12 hours after we got home because it was royal pain in the ass and it seemed to make him sleepy and docile so much so that he wouldn't feed properly. WE NEEDED HIM TO GAIN WEIGHT! He was dropping to under 5lbs!

• Thrush - We brought him to Dr. Berger, for his first check up and he was diagnosed with thursh (a yeast infection of the mouth.) This happened because the stupid hospital had me on anti-biotics every 4 hours for three days straight and it wiped out both our good gut flora. The worst part is they gave it to me FOR NO GOOD REASON only that because I hadn't had a GBS test yet (that's at 37 weeks) which I was going to decline anyways because I knew it would come back negative. It was frustrating to have to come home with YET another thing to give him but the medication (in combination with pro-biotic drops) did its job and we are both well and breast feeding exclusively although it's not entirely gone yet.

• Excruciatingly Sore Nipples - this was in part due to the thrush but let me tell you there is nothing easy or natural about learning to breast feed. It has been a long difficult road for us but we will stick with it because it is absolutely THE BEST nutritional option. It was so bad I was in tears a few times and I even developed a bit of mastitus but that resolved within 24 hours when Melissa told me to get Jaxen off the bottle completely and to nurse through it. Finally, it is starting to subside.

• Bad Placenta News - sadly, he was born early because I had a slow placental abruption. Since I have had none of the typical risk factors for this we don't really know why it happened. Melissa guesses that maybe between work, workouts and outdoor activities that it was too much although in my defense, any time I felt like an activity was too much for me I did cut it out. The pathologist also found some sort of infection but because I had no symptoms of infection at any time, they think I just got it at the hospital since I was in labor for so long and so many different people were checking my dilation. Next time around (if...) I'll probably have to have some more ultrasounds done and perhaps a few other tests as well.

We are slowly getting used to things but every time we think we know what's going on he surprises us with something new! The past two weeks I've had him outside walking the dog with me which he seems to enjoy and is one of the things that really calms him down quickly if he gets upset. So far we've only had one real bad night where he was frenetically nursing/screaming his brains out for hours. The only good thing about that was that after we worked the issue out he slept for 4 hours straight! He's been a little fussy since then so we picked up a baby swing and watched a great video that helped us out a lot!

Click here for a video of our first bath. 

Life-saving Baby Devices:

1. Side snap shirts
2. Moby wrap

I wish someone would invent a comfortable way to breast feed. It KILLS my back and my posture is getting terrible especially because I can't quite workout yet to balance things out.There is absolutely no comfortable position for me without compromising the latch :( All tips/tricks welcome.

"Set aside predictable, regular times to give full attention without being distracted by other concerns while also creating a safe, familiar place for baby to spend time playing alone."  

~ Magda Gerber