Well, we're in the second night without e's family in town, and it's the second night that I'm up late in the office instead of sleeping. We had this great plan before MJ came along: she'd pump so that one feeding a day I could give her a break and bond with The Boy a little. So far that plan isn't working out well. He's just had 3 days of two bottle feedings a night with Gran and Aunt J, so I know he can handle it. Must be my fault when things don't go well, at least that's what I conclude at 0254 when I really should be asleep.
Everything starts with the fact that he refuses to have anything close to a normal schedule. During the day he'll sleep like a log and go up to 7 hours between feedings. (Before you start writing nasty comments about starving our baby, remember that The Boy gained back his birth weight plus 5 ounces in 4 days.) At night, we're lucky if he goes 4 hours between feedings.
Tonight I misjudged when he'd wake up again, so the bottle had barely been out of the fridge an hour when he started crying. I was trying to calm him, heat up the bottle in the bathroom sink, and keep things quiet enough so that e actually felt like she was getting a break.
I've never fed a newborn, but in my previous experience with babies, feeding them was generally pretty easy and fun. Not so with my boy. I have to pin his arms down just to get the bottle in his mouth because he wants to knock the bottle out of the way so that the path is open for the bottle to get to his mouth. Once I make it in, he's prone to shake his head to get the nipple out and then cry because there's no nipple in his mouth. When I finally get him drinking the bottle, he stays on for about 5 minutes before either spitting it out or just stopping sucking and letting milk spill all over the both of us. It takes about 60-90 minutes to get him to drink 5 ounces of milk. It seems like most of that time is spent listening to him cry about not having milk in his mouth or crying because I've stuck the milk in his mouth. I can't seem to win here.
As I write this I realize that I'll most likely erase this whole post from existence once I'm a little more rested and rational, hopefully before any of our family reads it and calls child services on me. I know I sound angry and frustrated--I admit those emotions freely. I thought I'd be real cool about The Boy and his troubles when he came along, but it seems that I get hit real low when I'm not capable of providing him with nourishment nor giving my wife a break for one feeding a night. I forgot to mention that I screwed that last part up, too, for three reasons:
- I asked her where she wanted me to feed (ie, in or out of our room) and listened when she said stay in our room.
- I griped about MJ not taking the bottle and leaking milk all over my clothes and part of the bed where I sleep for about the entire 90 minutes.
- I got into a fight with e about the stupid bottle because last night she made it clear that I was to feed him with only 5 ounces in the bottle. Tonight when I said "you want me to pour the extra into another bottle?" she said, "nah, let's see if he'll eat 7 ounces" and I was dumb enough to take that to mean don't pour the extra 2 ounces into another bottle. So, I get about halfway through the feeding when she laments the fact that I'm going to wind up wasting the extra 2 ounces again if they aren't eaten.
- in another room;
- with only 5.00000000000000000 ounces in the bottle;
- hopefully without complaining about it the whole time.
So how about a picture?
