Life, As We Know It.

It's been almost three weeks with Taylor. Three long, stressful, wonderful weeks. The Grammys have come and gone, forcing us to find a way to get everything done on our own, including taking care of ourselves. At this point, if I had to, I could successfully hold Taylor in one arm while cooking eggs with the other, seasoning them with the salt shaker in my mouth while petting Joey with one of my feet. I'm getting that good at this one-armed stuff.

Grammy H shows some love.

The first three weeks were far from easy on us. The minute we got home from the hospital, Taylor decided that he didn't want to breastfeed anymore. He basically went an entire 24 hours without eating much of anything (but certainly screaming enough, which is quite pleasant at 4 in the morning when you've only slept 5 hours in the past 48, believe you me) before we called on a lactation consultant friend of ours for some help. She recommended dripping formula into his mouth to coerce him into latching on. That seemed to work well for a little while, but at our first appointment with the pediatrician we discovered that he had dropped an entire pound off his birth weight. That's not too concerning when a newborn shows up weighing 10 pounds, but becomes a problem when the lost ounces dropped him into the 5 pound range. And to make things even worse, he hadn't shit in over a day and jaundice was starting to poison his body. Neither Beck or I had noticed how bad it had become, but the pediatrician was clearly concerned and immediately sent us to another facility to have some blood work done. Before we left her office, she recommended that we try nursing every two hours and then bottle feeding him an ounce of formula afterwards to ensure he was getting at least some nourishment into his little body.

Grammy E tries not to get puked on.

After everything we'd been through in birth, it was almost tragic to hear the pediatrician say that if his jaundice levels had reached a certain point, he'd have to be admitted to the hospital for observation and some time under special lights that reduce jaundice. So while Becky filled out some paperwork at the lab, I took Taylor outside for our first real Father/Son chat.

Obviously neither Becky or I wanted to subject him to the stress and potential trauma of spending a night in the hospital without us and under big bright scary lights. He'd had enough of that in his first few minutes of life outside the womb. So I did what any good parent would do: I made a promise that I probably won't be able to keep.

"I'll make you a deal" I said. "If you can stay with us tonight, and if you start trying to eat a little more while nursing so you can poop and get over this jaundice, on your 5th birthday I'll buy you the biggest, most obnoxious birthday cake you'll ever see. The type of cake that you can dive into head first. I'm talking about the type of cake that will be a trending topic on Twitter. It will break records for most 'Likes' on Facebook. And of course all of your friends will be jealous of this cake." I told him that I didn't care if it was a 15-wiper, as long as he did those things, well then he'd have something quite exciting to look forward to on his 5th birthday (not sure why I chose his 5th birthday for his reward. Probably so he and every kid at the party will remember this epic cake). "Can you do that for me?"

Damn son, looks like you just took an epic poop.

Turns out it might have worked. Blood was drawn and all we could do was wait for the phone call 2 hours later with word on his levels. In the meantime, we started supplementing with formula, and within an hour of being home, he came through with a blowout of epic proportions. I heard it happen from across the room. It had been building up inside of him for a day until he finally exploded. I'd never been so excited to see a big ole pile of shit in my entire life. It was an 11-wiper.

Since that first scare really early on, things have progressively become better and easier. A meeting with another lactation consultant resulted in a new nursing routine that we maintained for about a week and a half.

Someone's excited for a big ass birthday cake.

With the help of a nipple shield (A rubbery thing that "extends" the nipple for a better latch. A life saver, really.) Beck would nurse for about 20 minutes on each side every 3 hours (I named the right one Tyson because it always seems to knock Taylor out) and then she pumps with a hospital grade pump that I rented for about fifteen minutes and we bottle feed him whatever she gets (Both the pediatrician and lactation consultant think the cesarian and long labor may have stunted his nursing instincts a bit, so the pumping is important to make sure he's getting enough and to reduce engorgement in mama).


If you do the math, you'll quickly realize that during that period we were faced with about a 90-minute feeding session every 3 hours, which doesn't leave much time for sleep.

Trying to get some rest whenever she can.

Our lives had been reduced to a series of naps whenever we could get them in. Ultimately, the lack of sleep and Taylor's apparent disdain for nipple shields late at night, resulted in us deciding to pump and bottle feed exclusively at night. Things became a little easier after that and we were able to start sleeping in 2 hour intervals.

Fast forward to today. I'm happy to report that our little monster was back at birth weight at our last check-up, and in the eight days between then and today, gained another whopping 11 ounces on breast milk alone. He hasn't had any formula in over a week and for the first time, we're no longer chained to a rigid nursing schedule. Tonight will be the first true test of how he sleeps at night. Fingers crossed. In the past we've had to wake him up to feed so I'm confident that he'll be a good sleeper.

So I guess it just goes to show, with a little help, determination, and patience, breastfeeding will finally work. Everyone we talked to said it would be difficult, but I certainly wasn't ready for the late night screaming and squirming and plain stubbornness this guy demonstrated. But we stuck to it and we're convinced that at least one plan that we had for him will be realized. And that almost makes me forget about all the trouble we had getting to this point.

Thanks again for reading. I look forward to your comments so I'd love for more of you to leave some. In the meantime, I'm off to start researching obnoxious birthday cakes....