17 days-- Part three: A Jonas Retrospective

I am not rested but fairly recovered.  I sleep in 2-hour snatches during the night and usually get one good nap during the day.  If I shower, it is a good day.  If I don't break a dish it is a gold-star day.  I have more or less accepted this period for being what it is-- sleep-deprived and blurry, with moments of breath-taking cuteness from the boy and long, irritable hours of chores.  I know that things will work themselves into more of a schedule eventually and I am trying to enjoy the itsy-bitsy squishy baby phase as much as I can without driving myself crazy about the little stuff.

After his Christmas Eve debut, Speedy and I retired with him to our temporary home in the maternity ward at Long Island College Hospital (where the dryboard in my room announced unhelpfully, "Maternity!!!  12/__/2010.  Congratulations!!!  Your nurse is _________")  There we slept on foam mattresses of lower quality than your standard dog bed, but we were oblivious to the pain as we cracked open a contraband bottle of Bordeaux and toasted our newest family member with pink plastic hospital cups.  After the excitement of his birth and my family coming, we enjoyed the relative quiet of just the two  three of us for our first evening.

The next day was Christmas, and it went by in a blur of visitors, phone calls and text messages.  I fed Jonas every hour or whenever he would turn his head into me and bump against my chest.  I thought we were getting off to a great start.

We spent the second night crowded into one bed-- the one with the somewhat better mattress-- and I barely slept between feeding him and trying to find a comfortable position between coddling my aching back and my tender nethers.  Finally, I got up at first light and Speedy and packed as much of our things-- and as many of the hospital's things-- as we could in anticipation of our early release.

There was a major storm forecasted for that day and as it grew lighter the sky took on that ominous slate gray the foretells a big storm.  Different doctors and nurses came by to administer their advice.  Jonas was slightly jaundiced.  We were told to have his bilirubin levels checked the next day by our pediatrician. Other than that we were all clear.  We signed a paper saying we had watched the "Don't Shake Your Baby" video and carefully spelled Speedy's name for the birth certificate.  Then we awaited "transport"-- some guy earning time-and-a-half to put me in a wheelchair and escort me to the hospital doors to reduce their exposure to lawsuits, I guess.

We left just as the storm was beginning in earnest.  Snow had started coming down fast but was not yet sticking to the street.  Here we were with our precious bundle and our untested car seat, suddenly out in the world, without any protective eyes but our own to oversee what we were doing!  I didn't expect to feel so suddenly unmoored.  Now we were in charge, and I didn't quite feel ready.  Just a foot inside the hospital and I wasn't trusted to walk on my own, and now outside, I had to navigate the slippery, icy steps with my son and somehow get him home and keep him alive.  The enormity of the task ahead started sinking in. 

That afternoon, however, the first thing on our agenda was to get to my brother's apartment for a belated Christmas celebration with my family.  The snow had quickly blanketed the streets, and the city's EPIC FAIL in response was beginning to become clear.  We manage to hitch a ride with my ex in her giant SUV, and had a lovely evening evening though I watched the snow with one eye as it appeared to get heavier and heavier.  By the time we left, cars had been abandoned, apocalypse-style in the middle of avenues, buses were at a standstill-- one having skidded to block and entire street.  The sanitation trucks were plowing the main roads, but with no salt to prevent icing-- it was a catastrophe just beginning to unfold. 

The next day, as people literally died (including a newborn baby, which sickens me with its senselessness) because of the city's piss-poor response to a freaking SNOWSTORM IN DECEMBER (like that was unpredictable!!) we found that our pediatrician's office was closed, and were told to call back the next day.  By this time, I was getting worried about my milk, which had not yet come in.  Jonas nursed in four hour stretches and seemed increasingly distraught by my inability to provide a decent meal.  He was also markedly yellower than he had been.  Monday night he nursed for 13 hours and cried inconsolably whenever I tried to take him off. 

On Tuesday morning we realized that we had to get to a doctor as soon as possible, and took the first appointment we could get-- at 1 p.m.-- He was not as angry any more, and seemed disturbingly more listless, even yellower, and his scalp wrinkled like crepe paper when I stroked it.

We picked our way through snow and ice and unshovelled sidewalks to get to the doctor, where she threw a box of formula at us, scolded Speedy for touching the nipple ("It's sterile!"-- as if my nipples, which hadn't seen a shower for days, were!) and sent us on our way.

I cannot tell you what it is like to feel like you have inadvertently starved your child.  I cried more inconsolably than he did, and for two days, we would give him a bumper of formula every time he fed on the breast. 

On Thursday we returned, through sidewalks that were equally treacherous even two days later.  Jonas was declared to have gained weight and we decided to start transitioning him back to the breast asap.  Only there was just one problem:  later that day, our doula-- who had been stranded by the storm, and busy with FIVE more births that had happened since Jonas-- came and suggested we rent a medical scale to determine exactly how much breast milk Jonas was getting at every feeding.  We followed her advice and found that he was getting on average one-tenth of an ounce after a forty-five minute  nursing session.  About half a teaspoon.  No wonder the poor boy was inconsolable.  Cue more sobbing and tears of remorse and self-doubt from me & Speedy. Without knowing it, we were practically killing our child.

I immediately began an intense regimen of fenugreek and blessed thistle, and pumping with a hospital grade pump, every three hours around the clock. My supply seemed to stall and sputter, but after a long few days of meticulous record-keeping it slowly started increasing-- by now it is at about 16 oz/day from around 6. No one knows why it was so slow or low to begin with. And it is still not adequate for his needs, but it is getting closer. Most impotantly, though, our son is getting what he needs now. It has been a hard, hard couple of weeks, and I think we are all still traumatized to some extent by our rocky start, but...here we are.

Seventeen days later, we have a fat little Buddha baby who comes by his fauxhawk honestly.  It has been rough and only now do have a snatch of time to blog about it because I handed him off to Speedy for a couple of hours between pumpings and feedings.  We are on a slow ascent out of the haze of new parenthood to the growing acceptance of our rhythm-less days that are punctuated by feedings, diapers, and uproarious farts.

There is so much more to come, but my time is up here. I miss reading and commenting regularly, but in truth it is really hard to do anything over and above feeding and pumping these days. I promise I am still here, reading when I can, and commenting if I have a moment and a hand to spare. Please cut me a little slack as I still struggle to find my footing in this sometimes terrifying but always gratifying new world....