Saturday, December 3, 2011

Baby Zoe (almost) 2 week update

Well Rob and I had all these grand plans that by this time we would have posted our birth story and shared our experience of Zoe entering the world. Don't fret that's still to come. Even the doctor described Zoe's birth as beautiful and I have to say relatively easy (don't get me wrong it was very painful), but I will elaborate on that on a future post.

The past two weeks, however, have unfortunately not been easy. My milk didn't really come in until last Saturday. In the meantime Zoe lost an extremely unhealthy amount of weight. Our 8 pound 9 ounces baby shrunk before our eyes. At her lowest point she weighed a mere 7 pounds 2 1/2 ounces. That was this Monday. Ever since her weight has been an issue we put a hold on visitors and have been on a intensive feeding regimen. Every three hours (from the start of her last feeding) we do 30 minutes of breast feeding, 15 minutes of pumping and then bottle feed her an extra ounce of breast milk/formula 24 hours a day. I get to take one shift off where I just pump for 15 minutes while Rob feeds her formula. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't get anymore than 2 hours of uninterrupted hours of sleep. I describe this as having a newborn squared.

However through out it all Zoe's disposition has been relatively good and we are still able to squeeze in some family time and it's taken me over 24 hours but I'm almost done watching a movie and Rob was able to write an article (keep your eye out for it on PopMatters)! The hardest part is keeping her awake enough to finish a breastfeeding session. As soon as she hits the boob she is out! Ice on the back doesn't even phase her. Putting her naked on the floor barely gets a wiggle. I feel like I'm getting a window into what it's going to be like to wake her up for school everyday. Joy.

Zoe was weighed on Friday and she is definitely on the upswing. She weighed a promising 7 pounds 12 1/2 ounces. We are instructed to keep on this regimen until she reaches her birth weight and then we can start feeding her on demand. I'm guessing that will happen in the next week.

We can't wait for friends and family to get to meet her. We are slowly trying to have people over for some face time. If you haven't met her yet, you will soon. I promise. Meanwhile here are some pics of our first couple of weeks with our Zoe.


Love to all

-Tara & Rob



3 comments:

  1. Glad she is doing ok! She looks great. I hope the worst problem is waking her up for school here on out. I don't think I have EVER had the joy of waking a late sleeper:). -shayla

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  2. Thanks Shayla! I hope so too. Also, I've enjoyed reading your blog.

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  3. Ahh... She's so cute :-) Did you see my email about the dissertation my friend did on Black mothers and breastfeeding?
    -Ranell

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