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I think the best way to sum up today might be 'learning experience.'
We left off yesterday with the discovery that Sophie wasn't getting enough to eat, and that we needed to remedy this. It should be easy, you'd think. The entire world, more or less, is agreed that if you have a crying baby and it isn't too hot, cold, wet, or obviously in pain, you offer it something to eat.
Well, by the end of the day Sophie was very uncomfortable indeed with all that air and milk in her digestive system. She spent a great deal of the day crying (only sometimes was this a prologue to burps or spit-ups), in the late evening the banshee wail made its reappearance, and after her well-meaning but clueless parents tried yet another small feed of formula to no avail, we realized that she'd had anywhere from 12-25% more than the recommended max for her size and whatever the problem was, it couldn't possibly be hunger. Finally I laid in the dark in the bedroom with her on my chest, sucking madly on my little finger, until 45 minutes later three more air bubbles had come up and she was finally breathing calmly and sleeping peacefully.
(Yes, of course we burp her after feeds. The trouble is that burping her once is never enough, and we're never sure how much longer we should persist.)
Science nerds that we are, we realized that our primary error had been to change way too many variables at once. We had a hungry baby being fed (not enough) breast milk, primarily out of bottles with very low-flow nipples (meant to have her sucking at the bottle approximately as long as she'd have to suck at a breast), at roughly three-hourly intervals. So there were three variables here:
Formula, being a bit thicker than breast milk, can't be given with breastmilk-intended bottle nipples. We have some variable-flow nipples whose lowest setting is still comparatively high, and we needed to use these instead. Also, the midwife had advised us to try offering smaller feeds more often, whenever she seemed hungry. So Mike spent the morning putting all this into practice, and then it took us the rest of the day to finally figure out what was wrong.
As it happens, at least one of the low-flow nipples can handle the milk/formula ratio we are using. So tomorrow we will go back to normal-sized feeds, recognize her cries after 2-2.5 hours as the hunger cries they probably are, and give her the next bottle at that point. This leaves only the use of formula as the varied variable, and that really shouldn't be causing any problems.
It's becoming rapidly obvious to readers (and, I guess, already very well known to parents) that parents of newborns seem to have no other topic of conversation except what goes into (and comes out of) the baby. (Hey, at least I'm sparing you all the 'what comes out' part.) Don't I have anything else to talk about? Here I'll try for a random assortment.
Well, she continues to be very cute when she's not screaming. She's still young enough that even her (non-banshee) cries are cute. They vary between 'Wah' and 'La'; most of the time they are 'La'. Melodious, no?
At some point during her crying today, an actual tear was produced. Poor little thing.
I still feel a little guilty when I have her undressed on the changing table and see all those newborn proportions. Grow, little girl, grow already! She is clearly a sly little thing, playing on her mother's irrational fear, held since at least day three, that she will be newborn-sized forever. Now you all know the other reason I was so horrified at the result of yesterday's weigh-in...
She's started to make her peace (for now) with having her clothes and nappy changed. She still really dislikes having her head washed, which happened a few times today because spit-up milk kept landing in her hair and on the back of her neck.
It's a pity I can't write some sort of filter for displaying these posts, so that American readers see 'diaper' where others see 'nappy', etc. Maybe I should include a translation dictionary in a future post. Being married to a Brit and being much closer (spatially and temporally) to Britain than to the US, I have found myself giving in and using the British terms all the time. And yet I still have no idea whether I'll be Mummy, Mommy, Mama, Mami, or what. (I draw the line at Mutti, though.)
In these pre-smiling days, it's hard to believe that this little creature is ever actually happy. It is surprising how much this can wear down a parent (well, me anyway.) The best I can really get is the little stretch of time when she is awake and not crying, looking curiously at my face, and if not looking happy then at least looking peaceful. I see pictures of bubbly smiling six-month-olds, and can hardly imagine this tiny solemn creature ever being one of those, and that is kind of crushing sometimes.
We left off yesterday with the discovery that Sophie wasn't getting enough to eat, and that we needed to remedy this. It should be easy, you'd think. The entire world, more or less, is agreed that if you have a crying baby and it isn't too hot, cold, wet, or obviously in pain, you offer it something to eat.
Well, by the end of the day Sophie was very uncomfortable indeed with all that air and milk in her digestive system. She spent a great deal of the day crying (only sometimes was this a prologue to burps or spit-ups), in the late evening the banshee wail made its reappearance, and after her well-meaning but clueless parents tried yet another small feed of formula to no avail, we realized that she'd had anywhere from 12-25% more than the recommended max for her size and whatever the problem was, it couldn't possibly be hunger. Finally I laid in the dark in the bedroom with her on my chest, sucking madly on my little finger, until 45 minutes later three more air bubbles had come up and she was finally breathing calmly and sleeping peacefully.
(Yes, of course we burp her after feeds. The trouble is that burping her once is never enough, and we're never sure how much longer we should persist.)
Science nerds that we are, we realized that our primary error had been to change way too many variables at once. We had a hungry baby being fed (not enough) breast milk, primarily out of bottles with very low-flow nipples (meant to have her sucking at the bottle approximately as long as she'd have to suck at a breast), at roughly three-hourly intervals. So there were three variables here:
- timing of feeds
- content of feeds
- delivery of feeds
Formula, being a bit thicker than breast milk, can't be given with breastmilk-intended bottle nipples. We have some variable-flow nipples whose lowest setting is still comparatively high, and we needed to use these instead. Also, the midwife had advised us to try offering smaller feeds more often, whenever she seemed hungry. So Mike spent the morning putting all this into practice, and then it took us the rest of the day to finally figure out what was wrong.
As it happens, at least one of the low-flow nipples can handle the milk/formula ratio we are using. So tomorrow we will go back to normal-sized feeds, recognize her cries after 2-2.5 hours as the hunger cries they probably are, and give her the next bottle at that point. This leaves only the use of formula as the varied variable, and that really shouldn't be causing any problems.
It's becoming rapidly obvious to readers (and, I guess, already very well known to parents) that parents of newborns seem to have no other topic of conversation except what goes into (and comes out of) the baby. (Hey, at least I'm sparing you all the 'what comes out' part.) Don't I have anything else to talk about? Here I'll try for a random assortment.
Well, she continues to be very cute when she's not screaming. She's still young enough that even her (non-banshee) cries are cute. They vary between 'Wah' and 'La'; most of the time they are 'La'. Melodious, no?
At some point during her crying today, an actual tear was produced. Poor little thing.
I still feel a little guilty when I have her undressed on the changing table and see all those newborn proportions. Grow, little girl, grow already! She is clearly a sly little thing, playing on her mother's irrational fear, held since at least day three, that she will be newborn-sized forever. Now you all know the other reason I was so horrified at the result of yesterday's weigh-in...
She's started to make her peace (for now) with having her clothes and nappy changed. She still really dislikes having her head washed, which happened a few times today because spit-up milk kept landing in her hair and on the back of her neck.
It's a pity I can't write some sort of filter for displaying these posts, so that American readers see 'diaper' where others see 'nappy', etc. Maybe I should include a translation dictionary in a future post. Being married to a Brit and being much closer (spatially and temporally) to Britain than to the US, I have found myself giving in and using the British terms all the time. And yet I still have no idea whether I'll be Mummy, Mommy, Mama, Mami, or what. (I draw the line at Mutti, though.)
In these pre-smiling days, it's hard to believe that this little creature is ever actually happy. It is surprising how much this can wear down a parent (well, me anyway.) The best I can really get is the little stretch of time when she is awake and not crying, looking curiously at my face, and if not looking happy then at least looking peaceful. I see pictures of bubbly smiling six-month-olds, and can hardly imagine this tiny solemn creature ever being one of those, and that is kind of crushing sometimes.
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