Jaxon eats a lot. He almost attacks me when he wants to eat. I have never seen a newborn as eager to eat as he usually is. He weighs 9 lbs 2 oz now. After a little more than a week, we're already above his birth weight. I’m nursing on demand, and right now, he nurses about every 2-3 hours, but he has at least 2 periods each day, usually in the afternoon and then again in the evening when he will nurse nonstop for several hours. I have tons of milk, so I know he’s not starving. He might just like the comfort of nursing? The evening nonstop feeding I don’t mind so much. I have noticed that when he eats like this in the evenings, he seems to sleep for several hours afterwards, so it’s almost like he’s just filling up before bedtime.
He burps a lot. That is something that I do not remember dealing with while the others were newborns. I know that they probably burped, but Jaxon seems to require several burps before we can be assured that he won't spit up. Speaking of spitting up, that's another thing I do not remember my breastfed babies doing. I know they spit up when I transitioned to formula, but I don't recall them spitting up very often when they were EBF. Jaxon also gets the hiccups a lot - he did this a lot in utero so it shouldn't surprise me, but he gets them several times a day.
He sleeps well, napping for a couple of hours at a time during the day in his bassinet. Nighttime sleeping is a little tougher – he doesn’t mind the bassinet during the day, or even during the evenings. But his bassinet is in our bedroom, and once we go to bed at night, he wakes up and wants to be in the bed with us. It’s like he has this radar that lets him know when we go to bed. And while it seems silly to say a newborn can have a preference on where he sleeps, I swear to you that he does! And he sleeps very well with us. But we’re pretty nervous when he’s in there with us, so I keep trying to get him to stay in his bassinet. Any suggestions on how to do that? I'm sure swaddling will get suggested, so let me go ahead and say that I suck at swaddling. But even if I was a pro, like the nurses at the hospital were, Jaxon is a little Houdini and got out of every swaddle they put him in. So no luck there. I'm open to other suggestions though!
Jaxon sounds a lot like my baby boy! I can especially relate to the hiccuping and spitting up... he spits up quite a bit whether I burp him quickly or not. My daughter, though, spit up SO MUCH, I was worried she wasn't keeping enough milk inside her! And she was exclusively breastfed, as is my son. :)
ReplyDeleteSometimes Isaac will want to nurse every hour, usually if he falls asleep while nursing though. I figure he didn't get enough. I guess this is part of nursing on demand, though... they demand, we give it to them! lol
You're going to hate my suggestion about the bassinet... get a swaddler. LOL And I don't mean try to swaddle with a blanket, get a swaddler that zips up like the woombie (I love mine) or kmart and walmart.com have swaddleme swaddlers with velcro that work really well. I figured out that part of Isaac's problem waking up in the middle of the night was that he'd move and his arms would hit his face and wake him up. I don't really have any other suggestions (unhelpful I know))... but I did keep Isaac in bed with me the first couple of weeks because I was just so tired. Eventually we transitioned to the bassinet and he's sleeping well in there now. After I nurse him he falls back asleep and I just stick him in the bassinet. Like I said, though, swaddling is a big part of it. And he can already escape out of all my swaddles when I use just the blanket. I'm not very good at it either! lol
Good luck with it all, the first couple weeks are tough but it gets better as you rest up and start feeling a little more energetic and not so sore. :)