Longest newborn stage ever

At least that’s what if feels like.  When I look at pictures and videos of Lorelei at this age, it is very clear that Rowan is much more like his adjusted age than his actual age.  His adjusted age is a mere three weeks.  But he’s 11.5 weeks old.

I ended up making a lactation appointment at the birth center.  It was like night and day.  I loved the LC, and she was so tremendously helpful.  His latch is good, and he has an impressively strong suck.  He just gets lazy.  He wants easy milk, which he gets from the bottle.  Basically he wants to nurse for comfort and have a bottle for food.  Her suggestion was to make the bottles “tortuously slow” and teaching him to keep sucking even when there is no milk flowing.  She also confirmed my suspicion of a tongue tie.  We’re both sort of on the fence about if it needs to be clipped or not.  It likely won’t be particularly cheap, and it may make things more difficult before it (hopefully) makes them better.  Not that it will make nursing more difficult, but it’ll just add one more thing I have to remember to do.

Yesterday I went for a follow up.  I felt like things were about the same.  But he must really want to impress the LC, because he managed to get 54mls in one sitting.  And then, for the first time ever, he skipped his bottle.  He’s skipped a bottle today, too.  It’s still a major challenge, and we’ve got a ways to go.  But for the first time in a very long time it seems like we’re maybe getting somewhere.

He is now 8 pounds!  And he has been to his first concert and his first festival… Festival for the Eno River here in Durham.  I’ve gotten a couple of the “is he sleeping through the night yet?” questions.  I just literally laugh out loud.  Lorelei was well over a year old before she slept through the night, if Rowan did I would be terrified that something was truly wrong.

Zach has been kind enough to let me sleep in the bedroom a couple of times while he sleeps on the couch and does night duty.  The first time I didn’t bother to set an alarm to pump.  Yeah.  Bad bad idea.  Because you know what is like its own special circle of hell?  Mastitis.  Imagine the flu, but with a newborn and sore boobs.  And the cure (other than abx) is to nurse nurse pump pump as much as possible.  Luckily I managed to get through it without meds, because I was having visions of Thrush dancing in my brain.

Friends who were due around the same time as me have had their babies now.  And those babies are already huge compared to little preemie dude.  At least I’ll get plenty of use out of these newborn diapers and clothes?

He still thinks his crib is made of lava.  But he likes the rock n play.  Diaper changes make him angry.  And he definitely has the typical newborn witching hour in the evening.  Overall, so far, he is an easier baby than Lorelei was.  Though I’m sure part of it is that we are more prepared as parents.  The situation is harder, of course.

He likes to be up on my shoulder and have his back patted.  Which is such a cuddly cozy way to hold him.

He thinks selfie mode on my phone is fun.  As well as ceiling fans. I’m still waiting on social smiles.  I want a real smile so badly.  But if you think in terms of adjusted age, I might have a while to wait.