The New Normal

To say that the past few days have been wonderful would be an understatement. Lawson is such a good baby and Lacey has exceeded any expectation we may have had of her as a big sister! We’ve spent the weekend getting to know one another and snuggling, snuggling, snuggling!! Lawson is definitely a smiler! At his ‘newborn well baby’ (neither of which he is) appointment today with his regular pediatrician, she said that his social smiling and tracking faces across the midline are great milestones for him to reach at this point, considering his adjusted preemie age being a little under 1 month due to his early arrival and the surgery. He smiles, coos, nuzzles, looks right into our eyes, and LOVES his big sister! This has been a long time coming!

When we got home Saturday our neighbors just happened to be out in the yard and some of our friends just happened to be dropping off welcome home gifts, so they got the first glimpse of Lawson's arrival home. But Lauri was the first 'non-nurse’ to see our little miracle; a perk she received for a huge favor! Since we didn't know we were bringing Lawson home until we got to the hospital on Friday, we didn't have 'the outfit' that my mom and I spent hours shopping for. When I called mom to tell her the great news, she immediately said, "What about his outfit?!" I knew there were several people I could count on to help out, but Lauri was the one who answered the phone! ;) Being in the Care By Parent Room gave us a little leeway with the 'visitation' rule, since she didn't have to pass a check in point to get there. Lauri arrived with the precious cargo right after we finished Lawson's bath, just in time to get him dressed. After all the things she has done for us, it seems appropriate that she got to see him first.

Our first evening together at home was pretty uneventful. Brian and I spent the evening ironing out the details of his feeding and medicine schedule. He has to feed every 3 hours and take 4 different medicines at different intervals throughout the day. His milk is a concoction of my breastmilk, Enfamil formula for the calories, and Simply Thick to make it safer for him to swallow. Since it is truly ‘work’ for Lawson to feed right now, this has been our biggest challenge. He wears himself out about 1/3 way through his bottle and goes to sleep. However, he needs the calories, so we have to keep prodding and poking him until he takes his required minimum of 51ml. In all fairness, he has done wonderfully and takes an average of 65ml each time, although not without a fight. He’s a GREAT sleeper and we have to wake HIM to feed throughout the night. I think this is a good predictor that he’ll sleep through the night when he’s mature enough not to need feedings so often. At least we hope.

Since I’m talking about feeding, I’ll go ahead and take this opportunity to whine about how much more complicated it is to bottlefeed than breastfeed. I know this is what we have to do to help Lawson grow healthy and strong safely and I will stick to it as long as we need to, but I reserve the right to grumble! ;) I have to pump every 3 hours, expressing the milk into small bottles, which we then freeze. Then when it’s time for him to feed, also every 3 hours, we must unfreeze a bottle which was pumped weeks ago, to keep the stash fresh. We then take the thawed milk, which has to be in increments of 60 to mix with the Enfamil and increments of 15 to mix with the Simply Thick, to create the perfect potion. If it is one of the times he must have medicine, we have to mix up a separate bottle of 15ml in which to add the medicine, which gets drawn up in tiny syringes. The smaller, medicine laced bottle, must be given first in case he doesn’t finish his whole bottle. So all this equals two bottles, two nipples, two nipple rings, 3 syringes, and two sets of pump parts to wash every 3 hours. Whew! OK, I’ll stop complaining now. Please forgive my tirade.

There’s sooooooooo much more to share and I feel guilty for using my time to whine, but it’s time to wake my boy for his next feeding. More happy news later . . .