Adventures in Calgary

These last few weeks have been quite a roller coaster. Thankfully I've had lots of help from Noel, my mom, Noel's family, neighbours, midwives, and breastfeeding clinics.

The first week after Jake was born I was primarily concerned with my physical recovery. Who knew pushing out a 9 lb baby could be such hard work. Every part of me hurt. And I developed a bit of infection which complicated things.

Then mastitis hit - twice in the same boob in the same week. Full on fever, sick, pain, yuck. Luckily I knew what was going on so I was able to catch it early both times but it nearly put me over the edge. I don't think I've ever cried so uncontrollably as when I realized it had come back. That's when we called in my mom. Thankfully she was able to come out early to help us manage, and cook, and generally just help me get better.

This is around when we found out that Jake was down 13 oz from his birth weight. We had no idea that this was a big deal at all. The midwives told us we needed to start supplementing with formula via bottle and pumping and I was really confused. Jake was sleeping all the time - even for long 6 to 8 hour stretches at night - and I thought we'd hit the jackpot when it comes to babies. He never cried. He just ate and slept all the time. It was great.

But the ride wasn't over. Next up...cracked, infected nipple on the boob that didn't have mastitis. Yay! At this point we were approaching Jake's 3rd week and possible growth spurt (more feeding on broken nipple?!?!?) so I went to my doctor to get a referral to the Lakeview Breastfeeding clinic. This is the first time I realized the severity of Jake's weight loss. All of a sudden the Dr. was talking about Jake having "failure to thrive" or insufficient calories to produce enough energy to eat or cry or anything - hence all the sleeping. Talk about alarming. She got us to continue to supplement with formula and pump (same plan as midwives) but also got us to start beefing up the calories of the formula and all my pumped breastmilk by adding additional formula powder.

So for the last week we've been breastfeeding, then bottle feeding Jake, then I pump for the next feed. We're beefing up anything he does get in a bottle. And he seems to be coming around. He has a bit more awake time everyday. And he's starting to be able to stay awake through his feedings. And his weight is going up, up, up. So he was born at 9lbs. Then went down to 8.3 lbs at his 14 day appointment (which was really around day 17). And then back up to 8.13 at our first visit to the breastfeeding clinic. Mary (the midwife) came over on Sunday and he was 9.5. And today - 5 days later - he's 9.11!

Today we also got Jake's tongue band cut. The Dr. did the procedure at the clinic in about two seconds. It should help him get milk more efficiently from the breast. Already his latch feels different so time will tell.

Sadly the crack and infection on my other nipple were quite deep/bad so it still isn't healed...which means more days or weeks of using the annoying nipple shield/syringe combo for that side but who cares...we're getting there!!!