Week 1

I can't believe we've had Leo home for over a week! It feels in some ways like he's always been with us and the NICU is a faint memory. Now our life is filled with regular feedings, pumpings (nothing new there!) and lots of snuggle time. We're actually sleeping pretty decently. Leo's been better than I think either of us imagined he'd be with the sleeping thing. He's giving us 3-4 hours at a stretch so we're only doing one middle of the night feed, usually around 2 or 3. Jay's been taking the last feed of the night, around 11, so I can head off to sleep first and then I get up at 2 or 3 for middle of the night duty and to pump and then Jay gets up with Leo around 6 for the next feed. This lets me sleep in until about 8 or so. All in all it's working pretty well. So hopefully next week when Jay's back to work this schedule will allow him to get enough sleep to make it through his workday and give me a chance to catch a few extra zzz's in the morning. And the pediatrician mentioned that pretty soon we can start letting him go 6 hours or so! So we might be free of the middle of the night feed in another couple of weeks. Joy of joys. Of course I'll still be getting up to pump, but somehow that feels easier.

Oh the pumping...what a cruel mistress. So the lactation lady told me last week that I could probably start to ween off of the Fenugreek - in her words: "Once your milk comes in, it's there, so you should be fine." Sweet! So I start to ween off and my total slipped a little bit, but nothing alarming...until about 2 days ago when I dropped off the cliff. I was down nearly 50% of my daily totals. Part of this I'm sure is sleep deprivation which does affect your totals...but the other part? So needless to say I'm back to popping 9 Fenugreek pills a day desperate to get my daily total back up to where it was. It's slowly climbing back and hopefully will be back to normal by next week. And the lesson there? As with this whole thing - trust yourself! I had a feeling the Fenugreek was what was keeping my levels up and yet I ignored that. One step forward, two steps back. It seems to continue even after the hospital.

But on to better news - Leo's 7 pounds!!!! He packed on over a pound in one week! The pediatrician is super happy and hopefully he can pack on another pound this week. He is literally doing nothing but eating and sleeping (and pooping) so we'll keep our fingers crossed that we can just keep it going. I suspect he's going to be rounder than he is tall (his little legs are just that - tiny!) but such is his fate as our child I'm afraid. That's what soccer's for!

In other exciting news, we've begun to use our fancy cloth diapers. And it's working pretty well. RIght now we're using the all-in-one Bum Genius diapers for preemies, which are just like disposables in that the liner is sewn into the diaper so it's just all one piece. So all we have to do is get the poop into the toilet and then throw the diaper into the pail until laundry day, usually the next day. I'm still tweaking the washing technique - an ammonia smell seems to linger - but I'm trying a few things that should help with that. And we ordered the sprayer that attaches to the toilet and mounts on the wall beside it for easy poop removal. So once that's in I think things will be much easier on the cloth diapering front. We're still using disposables overnight and when we have to take him out. But we'll get there eventually. Baby steps. And he looks really cute in them too. Bonus! OH, and for all your new Moms or Moms to be out there, I've discovered what I believe to be the greatest burp rags ever - and I know I'm going to sound like my Mother with this one - old fashioned cloth diapers! The prefold ones that they sell at Target, I think Gerber makes them. I swear they're genius. They wash beautifully, are the perfect size - not to big, not too small - and they really absorb the spit-up. Leo's got all manner of spit-up due to all the meds he's on, and these things work like a charm. And they're about $10 for a pack of six, so really you can't beat that.

So that's all for now. Check out my Facebook page for some recent photos with Leo and our other two children, the dogs. They've been doing some good bonding here.

Happy Friday and here's hoping for some frickin' sun this weekend!