Baby's First Week

Joys:

Simple actions like looking around, smiling, winking, yawning, sneezing, hiccups look very cute.  Watching him adopt new poses or make faces, like "Blue Steel".  

Telling family and friends the good news.  Hearing family's happiness and friends' comments about the baby's looks.

Studying and holding the sleeping baby.  Thinking about which of his features match which parent or grandparent.  We think eyes and nose are like YW.  Mouth and hair are like AB.    

Thinking about how amazing that a baby was created.  Always makes YW teary to think about.  A tangible human representing this connection between the parents. 

Umbilical stump feel off day 7. Phew! One less thing to worry about and take care of (not getting vasaline/poo/pee on it.  Also circumcision healed in about a week too! No more vasaline ice cream cone needed on the site! 

We like the app babytime to track all the poops, pees, breastfeeding, bottle feeding, etc. Ovia parenting has had some helpful articles and milestones. BabyG has some good milestones and activities too. Too many apps! 

 Challenges:
YW's physical recovery.  YW has always been in good shape, and had a pregnancy without complications.  So it was an unusual experience for her to stay in bed, and need assistance with day-to-day tasks, like getting to the bathroom and turning in bed.  These bathroom trips require peri bottle spray, frozen pads, hydrocortisone cream, tucks pad, dermoplast spray, vasaline on the wound. (Vasaline really helped tear healing, water based vaginal gel helped vaginal dryness/itching).  Pelvic floor pains even make sitting uncomfortable.  The donut pillow we brought to the hospital was a life saver. YW has never taken so much pain and other medications (Colace/Miralax stool softener, Tylenol/ibuprofen for pain, prenatal).  

YW's emotional rollercoaster because of hormones. YW is not typically very emotional, but since delivery, have cried or teared up daily whether from sad things, happy things, or unexpected things. Getting admitted for jaundice was particularly hard. 

Balancing the different approaches of parents and friends.  During pregnancy, we received much advice from friends.  YW's mom is staying with us for the first 6 weeks also.  While their advice and contributions have been very helpful, it is hard to balance all their different ideas with our own desires and research.

Feeding: when they say feed the baby every 2-3 hours, it may not seem THAT bad... But the problem is it takes 1 hour to feed the baby (20mim each side, unknown time to burp), another hour to change diaper, hold up to prevent spit up, put him to sleep, mom to go to the bathroom/eat...and by the time that's done, barely any time to nap before the 2-3 hours is up. And it's 2-3 hours from BEGINNING of one feed to the BEGINNING of next. NOT from end of one feed to beginning of next. Time is so precious! 

When to use formula.  Fear if baby is fed too much formula early on, the baby might reject breast milk later, or reject breastfeeding later, or YW's milk supply might be negatively affected (but if pump at same time, shouldn't be an issue).  We learned that women with longer deliveries and induced labor may have delayed milk, so we did use some formula early because he lost too much weight.  YW's milk came in at day 4-5, but demand exceeded supply during the early days, so YW started pumping to increase supply and AB supplemented with a half to 2 ounces of formula.

Baby's billirubin was high (20.2 at 4 day checkup; 19.8 in ER, LUL 20), so he spent one night getting phototherapy in the hospital.  Maybe if it was checked the day before or day after he would have been fine, but ultimately, probably didn't get enough to eat.  Since only 1 parent was allowed to stay with him, the night was very difficult, since YW had to take care of herself and the baby.  YW was not allowed to have visitors or leave the room, due to COVID protocols. YW couldn't even leave the room to get dinner, so didn't get to eat till midnight. Can't imagine being a single parent! It was a completely sleepless night. Also YW felt very guilty baby needed to be admitted to the hospital. She felt like a failure both as a new mom and as a pediatrician, even though she knew that's not true. 

Sleep.  AB was most worried about this.  It has been OK for him so far, since he has gotten adept at bottle feeding, burping and diaper changes.  However, it has been tough for YW due to breastfeeding demands.  Trying to use every last minute effectively, AB would feed YW while YW fed baby. 

Things I would have done differently:

-Ask for epidural earlier, not during shift change.

-Supplement with a little (half to 1 oz) formula earlier like day 2 before reaching 10% weight drop.

-given high rate of jaundice in Asians and family history, give formula and exposed to indirect Sun earlier.

-not be so worried about vaginal tearing, which seems inevitable in Asians.

-pump earlier to increase milk supply (I only got a few drops in the hospital so stopped until day 4-5, but I should have used the electric pump earlier and more persistently.)

It's pretty disheartening when you first pump, because you only get a few drops but with each subsequent pump you get more and more milk. See following website for different pumping settings for a different uses: https://pumpingmamas.com/spectra-pump-settings/