Factor Z

Today begins the 11th day of being home with Eli. We are actually getting some sleep! I can't believe it! Everyone kept telling me.. "oh, you'll never sleep again! Just get ready.. if you think you've been losing sleep now..." Please! I knew Eli would be the exception! Ha!

I better shut my mouth now before I jinx it.

We had had a couple of rough nights. It seemed as though little 7 pound Eli wanted to eat 7 pounds worth of breast milk each feeding - which took FOREVER! He was especially never satisfied in the middle of the night - of course. Breast feeding is SOME phenomenon! Let me just tell you, if you've never experienced breast feeding an infant before, its HARD! Well, its not that hard, but when the little bugger just will not cooperate even though he's plainly telling you he's hungry, then you want to throw his cute little butt in the garbage can !!! AGHHH!!

The first full day we were home, (Sat. Oct. 23) I had taken a couple of doses of hydrocodone (I guess thats how you spell it... thanks, kindergarten phonics) to ease a little pain I was having. Well, the next day - Saturday - little Eli was too drunk to function! He wouldn't wake up, he wouldn't eat,... so by 3pm when he STILL would not wake up to eat, I called the nurse. She said to force feed some formula down him just to keep him from getting dehydrated.

I thought - nope.. no formula for my baby! But alas, he would just not arouse to breast feed or anything, so we had to shove a bottle in his mouth and force him to eat. Turns out, the hydrocodone I was taking made him drunk! Geezz... why did they prescribe that to me? For goodness sake. So I suffered through pain so my three day old kid would not be buzzing on NARCOTICS!

Where was I going with this..?

Oh yeah, so we fed him with that bottle. It was terribly easy. AND we could make sure of how much he was actually ingesting. Hmmmm..... so with all of his little tempers he was throwing because he couldn't seemed to get "latched on" enough to breastfeed (he only did that in the middle of the night, naturally!), I thought, well, I can pump and he can just take it in a bottle.

We have done that for the last 48 hours, and my, my, my what a difference a bottle makes! I AM proud that I lasted until he was 10 days old to give him a pacifier or a bottle, but still. He breastfeeds when he wants to, and when he doesn't he has the mommy milk in his bottle. How perfect is that?? Temper-throwing does not occur in this house - baby or no baby, breast or bottle! Whew! Its completely NOT what I had planned on doing with him, but hey, you gotta do what works for you, right?

If I can sleep for 4 and 5 hours at a time, and so can Eli and Brad, hey, who's to say there's anything wrong with that? Everyone wakes up in a good mood and we all go on our merry way to have a fabulous day!

Cheers!