In the last three days we’ve had a pediatrician appt, two blood draws, and another LC appointment. Whew! We have had an appt or lab visit every single day since we’ve been home with Eleanor, and are so looking forward to a quiet weekend!
Pediatrician on Wednesday: Nora was up to 6lbs 5oz, which was a gain of 3.6 oz in the 28 hours between the first LC appt and this visit. Woo-hoo! She was perfect in all ways but one: I had been worried that she had more jaundice than she should, and the ped shared my concern. She ordered blood draws so we headed there next. Her billirubin came back at 17.7. Under 12 is considered normal, 12-18 is the “watch” zone, and above 18 calls for UV light treatment. Since she came in just barely in the watch zone this meant another blood draw the next day to see if it would go down. If it did, then she would be declared ok and no further testing would be necessary.
Blood draw Thursday, and visiting Daddy’s work: we went for the second blood draw on Thursday, and it came back at 15.2! Still high but dropping, which is what matters. Even at 15 it’s the likely culprit behind Nora’s sleepiness, so hopefully it’ll be gone soon.
We did the draw at the same health campus where my husband works, so of course we had to make the rounds! I was having a good day, pain-wise (I actually stopped taking the Percocet that day and switched to normal acetaminophen), so we wandered around for a good hour showing Nora off to all his co-workers. They were thrilled to meet her, and I’m glad we got her first round of stranger-meetings in while she still has all my immunities. I keep reading that the first few weeks are the safest time for babies to be exposed to new people, which is really counter-intuitive to me, but I guess it makes sense.
LC appt today: This appt went really well! She’s now up to 6lbs 8oz, and is on track to be up to her birth weight by ten days, which is what they like to see. My milk supply is now keeping up with her demand, so I’m not surprised she’s started putting on weight so well. Even better: we were able to get her to latch on to me using a nipple shield, and without causing me a ridiculous amount of pain! Apparently the problem is that she has a very “narrow palette”, which basically means she can’t latch on to me without causing pain, no matter how good the latch is. We’ve been doing it mostly right since day one, which was comforting to hear, though I got a few pointers today which I think will help. This will get better as she gets bigger, and then I’ll be able to wean her off the shield. I wish I didn’t have shield-weaning to look forward to as I’ve heard it can be very difficult, but at this point I am so happy to have her getting nourishment straight from me that I just don’t care!
It still hurts a little with the shield, so we’re going to do BFing on the breast in the morning/early afternoon and then just pump during the evening/night and continue with finger-feeding, since she’s more fussy and frantic later in the day. I’m also only to give her 20 minutes at the breast unless she’s nursing well, and if she’s still hungry at that point we’ll do some finger-feeding to fill her up. This is both to help me continue to heal and also to encourage her to not dawdle. She has a tendency to latch on and fall right to sleep, which would be cute if it weren’t so frustrating! We’re also supposed to keep up with the skin-to-skin, so she thinks of mommy as a safe place to be.
All in all we’re doing well! Tired and still trying to figure out her schedule – or rather, dealing with the fact that she has no schedule and there’s precious little we can do to change that at this early stage – but things are improving. I took some new pics of her last night, but haven’t had time to load them on the comp yet. Hopefully I’ll have those on the picture page in the next couple days. She’s developing a little double chin, which is a crack-up! Nice to see that milk going somewhere. : )
