eating and sleeping

Eat, sleep and poop. They tell me that's what babies do.

Someone forgot to tell Robbie about the first two.

Sleeping is a bit of a roller coaster. We had one night where he actually slept 6 hours straight. I actually felt like a new woman- it was amazing!

Of course, with 2 steps forward comes a step backward. He doesn't nap. And sometimes he doesn't sleep at night, either.

He will drift off a time or two during the day- but usually no longer than 20 minutes at a time.

David was off work yesterday for Veteran's Day, so I took the opportunity to have my gallbladder scanned (no results yet) and left the boys by themselves for 4 hours.
I came home to find a defeated lump that vaguely resembled my husband.

He muttered several times during the day "but he didn't sleep for 10 minutes.."
I reassured him that yes- that is normal for Robbie.

I suppose it gave him a good glimpse of my daily routine, but I KNOW how exhausting it is. You think "oh, I'll eat some lunch" or "Oh I'll take a shower" except that by the time you gather supplies for either thing, he's already awake and crying.

Now, he's perfectly content to be held. He's not an unhappy baby at all. As long as you're willing to meet his terms, that is.

As for eating, it's been a rough few days.

We finally got his Prevacid filled on Saturday after a rather ridiculous hassle at the pharmacy. (Fortunately I know how to be a little ridiculous myself when required) and Saturday and Sunday were like a dream. He was eating! And not crying or flailing or hiding his face!

I had begun composing a glowing letter of praise to the manufacturer of my miracle drug!

And then came Monday. And flailing and crying and hiding his face. So much for miracle drugs.

The last two days have been exhausting. Usually I can get close to 3/4 of a feed into him, wait an hour and get him to take the rest. It's not a perfect system as it leads to feeding him ALL. THE. TIME. but at least he's getting the calories.

But the last day or so even that hasn't worked. He's flatly refused to eat more than half a feeding every 3 hours.

I'm hoping tomorrow shows an improvement or a call to the doctor might be warranted.

We have a weight check next week. I'm praying it's not as disappointing as I'm afraid it will be.

I know it's not the end of the world- he's growing. He is. Not as the speed we'd like, but he'll get there. Eventually. And the worst they'll really do is add formula back to his breast milk. We can manage.

Formula is a complete pain in the butt for a lot of reasons, but we've done it before and we can do it again if we need to. I just hope we don't need to.

Reflux sucks. That's all I can say. It sucks for Robbie most of all, but it sure makes everyone else miserable, too.

If you could add some prayers that it fixes itself soon, we'd really appreciate it.

--Trish