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Friday, October 14, 2011

1 week check up

I can't believe that Finlay is going to be a week old tomorrow!! The last 6 days have flown by so quickly. Things have seemed so hectic and crazy. At times I think that I am dreaming and Finlay is really still in my belly kicking me in the ribs LOL. Last night he started eating 30ml's every 3 hrs. So since being born he has gone from 15ml's to 30ml's (or 1 ounce). I am very impressed with how much he has increased his feeds. Also in the beginning he was slow to take the 15 ml's and was taking so long to eat that he was wearing himself out. Weds night/ early Thurs morning he began downing the formula in 20 mins or less and is able to do so without being to sloppy. He is coming a long way in a short amount of time. Finlay is NOT on straight breast milk. He is getting both formula and breast milk and we have pretty much been mixing it 50/50. I have not yet been able to produce enough to meet his demands. I have been pumping every 3-4 hrs and have just started to be able to produce 2oz. I was trying for a 2 hr schedule but unfortunately was only producing every 4. Now that it is starting to come in more that shouldn't become a problem. I would like to be on the 2 hr schedule so that I can make sure that he is getting breast milk with each meal alongside his formula.

We took him today to the Dr for a weight check and his 1 week check up. He has gone down to 5lbs 2oz which is a 9% drop. She said that in the first week babies can lose up to 10% of their birth weight before they gain it all back. So he is in the normal parameters for a newborn. She told us that now that he is showing more interest in eating we can go ahead and let him be an on demand eater. If he wants to eat every 2 hrs we can go ahead and let him but not to let him go past 3 hrs. Monday morning when he was being assessed by the Speech Therapist and the nurse we were told not to let him eat for more than 30 minutes, to keep him on a 3 hr schedule that anything less than 3 hrs would cause him to have to burn more calories than he needs to. Now that he can be more on demand and now that he is more awake to eat he should pack on the weight quickly. So the Dr wants to have his weight checked again by Tues. We asked if I could bring him in on Thurs as I have a 2 week OB appt and her office is across the hall from the peds. It would save me a lot of time and gas to not have to make 2 separate trips. But she doesn't want to wait that long. She said that they can have a home nurse come and check his weight this weekend to see if he has put on any weight but she still wants to see him close to 2 weeks so he will be back to see her on the 19th. Overall he is doing well. She is starting him on vitamin D which is required now for ALL newborns by the government. It is over the counter drops that we can just mix in with his bottle in the mornings. Apparantly all newborns are vitamin D deficient and it can lead to problems in the bones, cause juvenile diabetes, and a few other things. Formula is fortified with vitamin D but apparently breast milk does not have it. Even if the mom is getting plenty of it her breast milk will not receive it. I find that interesting information considering that if all newborns are deficient how is it that most of us never had problems from it when we were little? Hmmmm, something for all of us to ponder.


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