Baby update, brief whining about breastfeeding, PICTURES of GREAT CUTENESS!
Today was Bear's two-week check-up with his pediatrician, who proclaimed herself very pleased with his weight gain (he had gained back his birth weight after only a week of life last Tuesday, and he's gained an ounce a day since then) and everything else about him. We can has healthy growing baby! In celebration of which, I come bearing a picspam! But first, some whining about breastfeeding, because I feel the need to complain. At length. (Seriously, go ahead and skip to the pictures. I'm not kidding about the "at length" part. At all.)
So, breastfeeding? Is hard. Like, babies don't just come with the nursing software all loaded and trouble-shot, apparently. I really feel that this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs because obviously I have no idea how to nurse an infant, never having done so before, and it only seems fair that at least one of us should have a clue what we are doing. But no.
It hasn't been that bad, really, we both caught on pretty quickly and the hospital's lactation experts were incredibly helpful and patient. The learning curve was a little steep at first, but he knows how to latch on now, and I have a vague idea of how to position him and help him get milk out of me. My frustrations mostly arise from the fact that my kid, who weighed a mere four pounds and thirteen ounces at birth and who is still quite tiny despite his very respectable rate of growth, does not have the strength and stamina to nurse well, at least not consistently. Fifty percent of the time when I go to nurse him, he gets frustrated at how hard he's having to work for his meal and starts screaming or just falls asleep and refuses to wake up for anything that is not a nice easy bottle.
Obviously, this won't always be a problem; he's getting bigger and fattening up every day, and once he's stronger and has more fat in his face to help him create suction, he'll be a much better nurser and I'll hopefully be able to wean him mostly off the bottles. In the mean time, though, our feeding schedule is pretty arduous: every three hours, I wake him up (unless it's nighttime, in which case he wakes me up five minutes before my alarm goes off) and we follow the steps given to us by the lactation specialist:
- change diaper (and clothes and blanket if his diaper has leaked, which it seems to do more than it really should)
- nurse (or scream/nap) at breast for 15 minutes
- bottle feed pumped breastmilk for as long as it takes for him to be satisfied, usually another 15 - 20 minutes
- pump for 15 minutes with the spiffy motorized pump thingy rented from the hospital
- change diaper again (not officially part of the program, but almost always necessary)
- store pumped breastmilk and wash all the pump components that touched it
That's about and hour's worth of work, right there. More if he's especially hungry or I'm especially sleepy and slow-moving. And it has to happen every three hours, so I'm basically reduced to living on a series of two-hour naps. Which is bothering me less than I expected, at least during the day.
Far and away my least favorite part of the process is the pumping because there's no ridiculously cute baby involved to make the task of sitting and holding a plastic funnel to a breast with each hand seem worthwhile. Also, by that point in the process, I'm usually really tired. The one redeeming virtue of pumping is that since it requires both hands and pretty much glues me to the chair for a quarter of an hour, it's a good excuse to watch lots of television on Hulu. I have a whole TV post that I need to write sometime soon covering all the new shows I've tried and all the old favorites I'm catching up on. I'd still trade it all for the luxury of not feeling like a helpless cow being milked eight times a day.
Okay, I feel better. Really, other than the tedium and frustration of breastfeeding, I'm doing remarkably well. I'm tired, of course, but I'm nowhere near as drained and exhausted as I was all during pregnancy. I finally have an honest-to-God appetite, I have my body mostly to myself again, and I'm not sick anymore!! *dances* As much trouble as he occasionally is, I like Bear much better now that he's outside the womb than I did when he was making me wretchedly ill and miserable for eight months. Plus, he's really cute, and that makes up for a lot. Speaking of which: on to the pictures!!
This was a day after we brought him home from the hospital, I think. The hat is courtesy a group of knitters who donate bunches of little hats and blankets to the hospital. It cracks me up because there's more hat than there is baby at this point, resulting in the impression that it is wearing him and not the other way around.
Soupy took this with his iPhone. Bear does Blue Steel a lot when he's hungry.
Serious baby is serious!
Yes, I am totally going to spam you with multiple angles on the same shot. My child is the most fascinating thing in the world and there cannot be too many pictures of him! Deal with it.
He's actually much more interested in sucking on his hand than on my boob. It's kind of insulting.
Especially for thothmes: piggies!!
Teaching baby to plot world domination. This is Lesson 3: Plotty Fingers.
This is my favorite picture so far. Yes, my pajama pants have frogs on them and say "Toadily cool!" What of it?
Deeleeshous haaaand.
Every time I see this picture, I bust up laughing. For the record, that's a yawn, not a scream. In testament of which, I give you the phot0 taken .35 seconds after this one:
The cuteness, it is deadly! *dies*
This shot is too different from the last one, he's looking in a slightly different direction! Shut up!
green_tea_lady was in town this weekend for a wedding. I suspect Bear wanted to be born so early so that he wouldn't miss her.
BABY WILL EAT DADDY'S HAND NOW, NOM NOM NOM!!
Okay, that's all I have at the moment. As you can see, Mr. Bill and I made some darn cute geekspawn. Thank you again for all the prayers and warm wishes, we are definitely feeling the love over here. *smooshes friendslist* I miss you guys!!
So, breastfeeding? Is hard. Like, babies don't just come with the nursing software all loaded and trouble-shot, apparently. I really feel that this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs because obviously I have no idea how to nurse an infant, never having done so before, and it only seems fair that at least one of us should have a clue what we are doing. But no.
It hasn't been that bad, really, we both caught on pretty quickly and the hospital's lactation experts were incredibly helpful and patient. The learning curve was a little steep at first, but he knows how to latch on now, and I have a vague idea of how to position him and help him get milk out of me. My frustrations mostly arise from the fact that my kid, who weighed a mere four pounds and thirteen ounces at birth and who is still quite tiny despite his very respectable rate of growth, does not have the strength and stamina to nurse well, at least not consistently. Fifty percent of the time when I go to nurse him, he gets frustrated at how hard he's having to work for his meal and starts screaming or just falls asleep and refuses to wake up for anything that is not a nice easy bottle.
Obviously, this won't always be a problem; he's getting bigger and fattening up every day, and once he's stronger and has more fat in his face to help him create suction, he'll be a much better nurser and I'll hopefully be able to wean him mostly off the bottles. In the mean time, though, our feeding schedule is pretty arduous: every three hours, I wake him up (unless it's nighttime, in which case he wakes me up five minutes before my alarm goes off) and we follow the steps given to us by the lactation specialist:
- change diaper (and clothes and blanket if his diaper has leaked, which it seems to do more than it really should)
- nurse (or scream/nap) at breast for 15 minutes
- bottle feed pumped breastmilk for as long as it takes for him to be satisfied, usually another 15 - 20 minutes
- pump for 15 minutes with the spiffy motorized pump thingy rented from the hospital
- change diaper again (not officially part of the program, but almost always necessary)
- store pumped breastmilk and wash all the pump components that touched it
That's about and hour's worth of work, right there. More if he's especially hungry or I'm especially sleepy and slow-moving. And it has to happen every three hours, so I'm basically reduced to living on a series of two-hour naps. Which is bothering me less than I expected, at least during the day.
Far and away my least favorite part of the process is the pumping because there's no ridiculously cute baby involved to make the task of sitting and holding a plastic funnel to a breast with each hand seem worthwhile. Also, by that point in the process, I'm usually really tired. The one redeeming virtue of pumping is that since it requires both hands and pretty much glues me to the chair for a quarter of an hour, it's a good excuse to watch lots of television on Hulu. I have a whole TV post that I need to write sometime soon covering all the new shows I've tried and all the old favorites I'm catching up on. I'd still trade it all for the luxury of not feeling like a helpless cow being milked eight times a day.
Okay, I feel better. Really, other than the tedium and frustration of breastfeeding, I'm doing remarkably well. I'm tired, of course, but I'm nowhere near as drained and exhausted as I was all during pregnancy. I finally have an honest-to-God appetite, I have my body mostly to myself again, and I'm not sick anymore!! *dances* As much trouble as he occasionally is, I like Bear much better now that he's outside the womb than I did when he was making me wretchedly ill and miserable for eight months. Plus, he's really cute, and that makes up for a lot. Speaking of which: on to the pictures!!
This was a day after we brought him home from the hospital, I think. The hat is courtesy a group of knitters who donate bunches of little hats and blankets to the hospital. It cracks me up because there's more hat than there is baby at this point, resulting in the impression that it is wearing him and not the other way around.
Soupy took this with his iPhone. Bear does Blue Steel a lot when he's hungry.
Serious baby is serious!
Yes, I am totally going to spam you with multiple angles on the same shot. My child is the most fascinating thing in the world and there cannot be too many pictures of him! Deal with it.
He's actually much more interested in sucking on his hand than on my boob. It's kind of insulting.
Especially for thothmes: piggies!!
Teaching baby to plot world domination. This is Lesson 3: Plotty Fingers.
This is my favorite picture so far. Yes, my pajama pants have frogs on them and say "Toadily cool!" What of it?
Deeleeshous haaaand.
Every time I see this picture, I bust up laughing. For the record, that's a yawn, not a scream. In testament of which, I give you the phot0 taken .35 seconds after this one:
The cuteness, it is deadly! *dies*
This shot is too different from the last one, he's looking in a slightly different direction! Shut up!
green_tea_lady was in town this weekend for a wedding. I suspect Bear wanted to be born so early so that he wouldn't miss her.
BABY WILL EAT DADDY'S HAND NOW, NOM NOM NOM!!
Okay, that's all I have at the moment. As you can see, Mr. Bill and I made some darn cute geekspawn. Thank you again for all the prayers and warm wishes, we are definitely feeling the love over here. *smooshes friendslist* I miss you guys!!