Our first days at home... ok, first weeks, I've written more than I planned today

The first couple days were a blur.  But I will never forget the first night home.  It was horrible.  I bit off more than I could chew.

Not only was I exhausted, in constant pain with every motion I made, doped up on pain meds almost to the point of delirium but I had invited Jay's family over because I felt bad that they weren't at the hospital as much as my family was.  Granted my mom was here first and foremost as my mom, to help me heal and adjust to being a mom, and secondly she was there as Henry's grandma.  And my sister... well, she's 'homeless' and needed a place to stay (actually she was between wildlife biology jobs up in Alaska and down in Antarctica).  Next time, there will be nobody there when we get home from the hospital (if there is a next time).  I was so overwhelmed with trying to adjust to being a mom and trying to heal that I had no patience or energy to entertain Jay's family.  I know they were (and still are) excited about Henry, but having company over really should have waited for another day.

Here's why.  I was so tired that I could barely stand up.  I was holding onto the edge of the kitchen countertop swaying trying to be a good hostess.  All the while stressing about the next feeding and how I was going to get through it without a nurse there to help me if I couldn't do it.  Literally thinking about how to get through BF'ing Henry had me in pain I was so scared.  I kept trying to go to bed so I could rest and calm down before the next feeding only to get caught up in another conversation.  Finally I make it off to bed and crashed.  I wake up to hearing Henry crying.  He was hungry.  Mom comes in to check on me and make sure I am ready to feed Henry.  I tell her to go get Jay and the baby.  tick tock.  tick tock.  A couple minutes pass, Henry is now crying bloody murder and getting worse by the minute.  I'm getting pissed.  I want my baby.  I need to feed my baby and somebody or something is keeping him from me.  The more I heard him cry the more upset I got.  I yelled out to Jay to get him in here now.  He is hungry and it isn't fair to keep him from his food.  Finally after what felt like an eternity Jay sheepishly brought Henry in.  At this point it's a lost cause.  Henry is too far gone, he was devastatingly hungry.  He is so upset that he screams even louder when I offer him my breast and arches as if he is in pain away from me.  I frantically hand expressed some collustrum into a syringe so we can finger feed him.  All the while I am giving Jay dirty looks.  I am still livid when I think back to this.  It was SO not ok to keep a crying hungry baby from it's mother, especially since we'd been struggling with BF'ing this whole time.  Jay says he's sorry, that his family kept wanting 'just one more picture' and that he regrets he let it take that long - that he should've brought him back right away and it won't happen again.  Darn tootin right.  I don't care whose family or friends it is, nobody keeps my crying baby from me, especially when I know what he needs.  This was partly my mistake.  I knew our first night at home from the hospital was going to be hard, and I let it be harder by having company over.

That night was the hardest night of my life to date.  The fact that I couldn't get him to latch after Jays family left hurt me so badly.  I felt like a rotten mother.  The fact that Jay didn't stick to our schedule and let his family stay past the timeframe we'd given them taught both of us that we need to stick to our guns about what we say we need from friends/family (at that time Henry fed like clockwork and they were to be here between feedings.  Well, Henry's feeding was half an hour late that night).  I like to think we learned from this experience.

I can't help but think that this one botched feeding set the bar for the next week.  I couldn't get Henry to latch after he got that upset.  I think he associated my breast with the pain of hunger he felt that night.  Everytime I tried to feed him after that he would scream bloody murder.  You'd think I was painfully pinching him.  All I wanted to do was feed him - didn't he know that?

The first full day home from the hospital a home health nurse dropped in to see how we were doing and to check on his weight/latch.  As we were having difficulties in the hospital the nursing staff at UW wanted them to check in on us.  Honestly, she was next to no help with getting Henry to latch.  The bad news - Henry had already lost 10% of his body weight.  Now we were going to be watched like hawks by his pediatrician.  We had so many visits that first week.  It was a week of hell for me personally.  I felt like a stinking rotten mother.  Henry rejected BF'ing for an entire week.  I was literally forced to supplement with formula (eww - it stinks by the way).  My little disclaimer - I have nothing against formula, it is there for a reason and without formula and bottles my son would be a sad statistic.  Instead he is now thriving and starting to be a chunky monkey.  Henry went from 6 lbs 2.7 oz down to 5 lbs 8 oz in 4 days.  His first week of life was my darkest week ever.

The really rotten thing though, was that during all this NOBODY thought to tell me how you pump.  All I was told was when I pump, to pump for 15 min.  No mention as to how many times a day I need to pump to keep my supply.  Needless to say I trashed my supply by not pumping nearly often enough.  I was down to just getting maybe 2-4 oz a day by week 4.  Not nearly enough for Henry.

Finally after a week of being on BF'ing strike Jay came home from work and said "I think we need to take Henry to our room and try to BF him now.  I have a really good feeling about it.  But it needs to be now."  His instincts were dead on.  Henry latched.  Angels sang.

We go on for a couple weeks of touch/go nursing and supplementing after each feeding with formula.  I'd occasionally throw in a pumping session.  We had so many meetings with so many different lactation consultants (LC's) and Henry's pediatrician.  My doula (Kate Rollins - rock star doula!!!) had thought in the hospital after his birth that Henry might have a tongue tie.  But that she can't diagnose it.  The LC's at UW were unsure if he did, but stated that if he did it was very minimal and wouldn't be affecting his ability to nurse.  Finally, a month after his birth, the LC's at UW said they really couldn't do anything to help, and referred me to a new specialist over at Children's hospital who is supposed to be some kind of Breastfeeding guru.

I arrive at Children's hopeful, I had a good couple days BF'ing and was fully prepared for the "there isn't anything I can do for you - he's doing great, good job mama!".  I couldn't of been more wrong.  I was in tears after her evaluation.  I was trying so hard to hold back the gut wrenching sobbing that I felt coming on.  Henry had a posterior (type 4) tongue tie.  This is the hardest tie to diagnose, and the hardest to treat.  Lucky for me one of the countries foremost tongue tie experts is in Seattle.  This type of tie can take a series of clippings to treat.  She said my doula deserves a pat on the back, that anyone who could see that he might have a tie has an excellent eye, that most can't even tell with a posterior tie.  Unlike traditional anterior tongue ties where the frenulum is elongated sometimes out to the teeth, a posterior tie is more like a restriction of the muscle sheaths in the back.  You have to cut deeper to treat it.

On top of this, Henry was diagnosed with hypertonia (the muscles on one side of his face/neck were overly stiff/tight) which caused his jaw to be crooked.  He also has a significantly recessed chin, which we learned in this first office visit is most likely because he was born early and because of the tie.  That the tongue tie would actually hold back his chin.  Also, he was diagnosed with a poor suck reflex, a weak/lazy suck and a disorganized suck.  Talk about a big blow.  Here I was thinking things were getting better and I couldn't be more wrong.  Henry needed treatment for these issues.  Unfortunately we couldn't get in for the tongue clipping for another month, she was booked.  This caused even more stress for me.  I didn't know if I could make it that long.  Lucky though for us we got a call about a week later with an opening.  I snatched that sucker up faster than you could say chocolate!

Thinking back on this first visit has me in tears.  I really thought that we had things under control finally, that we were on the right track.  I can't really convey just how emotionally devastated I was to be told that I was basically starving Henry with my breast.  Henry barely got half an ounce off me in 45 min of nursing.  That's not nearly enough to thrive, to grow.  And because he wasn't taking my milk, my supply was slowly diminishing, making it harder and harder for him to get my milk.  Vicious circle.  No wonder he screamed at my breast.

Well, I have typed a ton up today.  I'm feeling very emotional having 'relived' our first month of BF'ing and my little man just started crying and is probably hungry.  So I will start off where I left off another day.

My mom trying to calm Henry down during a BF'ing session

Having given up on BF'ing during that session I finger feed him.  He's probably about a week or two old here.

My scrawny little man.  He has more chunk now.  You can easily see his recessed chin even though it's not a profile shot

About a month old here, and one of my all time favorite pictures.  You can see his chin isn't as recessed as the above picture.  Recessed chins are fairly common in boys, more so when they are early.  In most cases it takes about a month to resolve, sometimes up to three months.  In our case it took three months.