Week 1 with Dalton has been a challenge, but way easier than it had been with Sonia, which has been wonderful, because we still have her to worry about too 🙂 The things that have pleasantly surprised me about Dalton include: his strong nursing skills, the relative stability of his hands, and his quick grasp of night vs day. The things that have pleasantly surprised me about Sonia include: her immediate interest in Dalton and desire to share things with him, and her ability to tune out his crying both night and day! For all the challenges that a newborn sibling brings to a family, we have really been very lucky to have it go as well as it has so far.
Once again, we only spent one night in the hospital. However, this time, that was plenty. For the first 24 hrs, Dalton nursed every hour on average. Because of this, my milk came in right about that 24 hr mark, and he only lost ~3% of his birth weight. After getting help from the nurse and a blessing from the lactation consultant before leaving, I was comfortable that nursing was going to continue to go well at home. Also, since I didn’t have any stitches, I was feeling good enough physically to go home as well.
With all the tests and paperwork to do, we finally got out of there at 5pm, and so got home with just enough time for Sonia to meet Dalton before it was time to put her to bed. She was very cute about it, enjoying the big sister stickers “he” brought her from the hospital, and offering him her lovey and her milk. That night he continued to nurse every hour, but was good about sleeping the rest of the time and kept his crying to a minimum. Even when he did cry, Sonia didn’t seem disturbed by it at all, which was a huge relief.
The rest of the week, Dalton has continued to nurse every 1.5hrs on average with clusters in the mornings and evenings. He continued to sleep decently well through the night, with the exception of night 5, where he was up most of the night with what seemed to be tummy/digestive troubles, due either to his first bath at home being too late/too cold and/or me having brussel sprouts for the last 2 days. Since Eric was off from work this week, he did diaper duty,which helped quite a bit. Dalton still sleeps through any noise, and is much more content on his back and with arms unswaddled than Sonia ever was.
By day 6, Dalton was back over birth weight. Still, his nursing habits are a bit worrisome for very different reasons from Sonia. Whereas it was quite difficult to keep Sonia awake at the breast long enough to get a good meal, Dalton is so eager and quick that he tends to gulp down a ton of air, and yet overeat so it is difficult to burp him, which leads to a lot more fussiness. This has also led to a less than stellar latch at times as he struggles to swallow quickly enough, which has resulted in more nipple soreness than I expected this time around. I’m hopeful we will both learn the ropes, and he will grow quickly to resolve any concerns soon.
Grannie was also here through day 5 to help out, which was great as we have been learning how do deal with 2 at the same time. We also got to spend Thanksgiving together as a family for the first time, which was fun.
