The first week home

The first week is a hard one, which any of you who've had children know. Dane is only giving us around 2-6 hours of sleep each night, broken up into 2-3 hour intervals. For me these 4ish hours are poor sleep too; we moved his crib from our bedroom to the living room and are using a monitor. While Mark is a solid sleeper, I wake up at every grunt and squeak he makes. Last night, he was unusually unhappy for no reason Mark and I could figure out, and I ended up just having to hold him from 3 am until around 7 am, after only getting a couple hours in between the 8 and 12 feedings. We have discovered that the bouncer seat is helpful sometimes, giving him the more vertical position that helps his reflux. One of the reasons feedings have been taking so long is that he needs to be upright for ~20 minutes after each one so he doesn't spit up. Mark has mastered the knee-hold, while I pump and then we both change him and clean up. The first thing everyone has asked is, "Do you have help?". Unfortunately, we don't have room for my mom to stay down here, as every inch of the apartment is covered in baby stuff, but I definitely wish we were closer to family during this time. It would be so nice to have some reassurance that we'll get past this part and onto something less overwhelming. In the next two weeks, we have 6 doctors appointments; thankfully, Mark will be able to be around for them.

On a related note, if you were one of the many people who offered to bring a meal once the babe came home, we would LOVE to take you up on it now! We're trying to eat decently, but I've realized that we've had yogurt or cereal for most of the last couple meals. It's too much work right now to do anything complicated or requiring much cleanup. When we're washing bottles and pumping equipment 6 times a day, we don't want to add any more cleanup than necessary. We'd love your prayers for Dane's getting onto a regular sleep schedule, along with eating more consistently. I also have an appointment with the lactation consultants at CDH tomorrow, so I'd love prayer that we'll figure something out about how to decrease my supply and help Dane start to breastfeed. I talked to the OB about it yesterday and he said that in this case, the only remaining option may be to completely wean, which is frustrating. We really wanted to have him on breastmilk for at least 6 months. Finally, please pray that we can have peace about the huge medical bills we've been receiving. Apparently, 5 weeks in the NICU is not a cheap thing...more on that later. (But to give you an idea, the total bill for Dane and I will be more than 4 years of med school...insurance helps, but it's still a daunting amount)

As you can see in the picture, we gave the BabyBjorn and try and realized that Dane needs to grow a bit more before we can really enjoy taking him on walks with it.