Three Weeks!

Over the past couple weeks I've written a few venting posts about breatfeeding but then decided to save posting them until I felt I had a bit of perspective. Some of these unpublished posts included gems such as:

"When I was pregnant I heard that the first few weeks of breastfeeding are difficult. WOAH! I was chatting with a friend who does marathons and ironmans and she described begining breastfeeding as the most 'difficult' thing she's ever done. Ooohhhh - that kind of difficult... " and,

"No one told me about this evil vampire, bloody nipple stage!"

However, our midwives have been very supportive and for the past week we have been on a 3-hr schedule including a mix of breastfeeding, pumping and syringe feeding. The last stage of syringe feeding has been to try to get him to stop biting - thank goodness he doesn't have teeth yet! His weight has been fluctuating as just as he was begining to put some ounces back on he ripped a couple of peices off my nipple and I went to nipple sheilds, which then reduced my milk supply and sent his weight back down. Today we had a check up and he is finally back to his original birth weight. And I swear almost overnight he has out grown our current rotation of onesies and sleepers, and we are starting into our pile of 3-6 month sizes.

He has developed excellent muscle control of his neck, is very alert and observant when awake, and has started pushing quite strongly with his legs, though thankfully has yet to gain any purchase with his feet. Although he is big and strong, we are absolutely not ready to have him scooting around on his own quite yet!

Here he is at 12 days old, and another of him with Jeff just a couple of days ago (Diane, note your housewarming quilt in action!):