Pheonyx turned 1 month old on October 9th! It’s hard to believe that time goes so fast!
Life has been pretty stressful because in the first couple of weeks Pheonyx wasn’t gaining weight as fast as he “should” have been and didn’t get up to his birth weight by two weeks old. Instead, it took him until three weeks to surpass his birth weight. He has been weighed about 10 times now. We had the health nurse coming to the house about twice a week and also had to go to the city to see the midwife many times as well to have him checked up on.
Having all of the home visits and my Midwife calling me so often and having to travel 2 hours to the city (there and back) for midwife appointments has had me really worrying about my baby and extremely exhausted. It has been very stressful for me! I felt like my breast milk wasn’t good enough for him and I was worrying I was doing something wrong all the while he never went below losing 10% of his birth weight and the lowest weight that he was was 8 lbs 6 oz. Family kept telling me not to worry, but my midwife really made it out like it was a very bad thing for him.
Last week on Tuesday the public health nurse came back again to weigh him and he was 9 pounds 10 and a half ounces and is continuing to gain weight while I exclusively breastfeed him even though the Midwife told me that I should supplement with formula and begin pumping right away (this was when he was 10 days old) which is something that I had never done before with any of my other kids.
I felt bad going against the advice of my Midwife after the appointment but I just couldn’t bear the thought of having to use formula while breastfeeding had not even really been established yet. I am glad that I listened to my instincts which told me that introducing a bottle at this time would not be such a good idea and that I kept breastfeeding him every 2 hours even though it was exhausting. Now he is doing fine and we are comfortably breastfeeding and I haven’t gone back for any appointments for a while.
Craig went back to work last Monday and I survived a week by myself with the four kids! I was stressed out about it at first and I thought it would be a lot more difficult than it was, but things went okay and the kids were really good. The worst part was (and is) just being so sleep-deprived. I’m really hoping that I can catch up on my sleep now that he’s gaining weight well and I can let him go longer stretches at night without having to wake him up to eat.
The toughest thing about having a new baby is always the mom guilt that you feel when you’re not able to do things with the other kids. At least for me anyway. I miss being able to do more with them but I know that this time will not last forever and that slowly and surely I will be able spend more time one-on-one with each of my kids and get out of the house more and do more fun things together as a family too.
Looks like our boy has red in his hair!
Right now Pheonyx is still so little and is very attached to momma. We have decided it’s best to not go anywhere for a while after all of the stress we had during the first few weeks. I just feel like I really need to recharge myself so that I don’t completely fall apart from exhaustion. I need to just focus on my baby boy. This weekend we also had family come over for Thanksgiving and to meet him, but now I feel I need to just rest.
Autumn and Kesa also started piano lessons last Thursday. This is Kesa’s first year taking lessons and she seems very eager to learn! As soon as she got home from her lesson she went straight to the piano to practice. 🙂
Yesterday, October 10th, was also Autumn’s 12th birthday! We ended up having to go to the city on Friday to sign a form at the birth center for our child tax benefit that we had missed signing and so we also ended up doing our grocery shopping (Craig shopped with the kids while I nursed in the van) and then I took Autumn to buy some clothes for her birthday even though I was totally exhausted. It was nice to take her shopping and make that memory with her. She is happy with her birthday gifts, though we still have yet to make a cake. Once we do I will post pictures of her with her cake too.
Have any other mommas experienced issues with their newborns taking longer than the textbook 2 week mark to regain weight? Or have you ever gone against medical advice to follow your intuition and natural instincts??
Live. Learn. Love. Eat. 