Z's First Week at Home

Things are going well here...

The first few days after my milk came in were a little stressful. I had plenty of milk for Zivah to drink, but she started sleeping... a lot. I would get to the point of feeling very... uncomfortably... full... If she had been asleep for four hours (most newborns have a sleep/eat cycle of 3 hours or less), I would try to wake her up to feed her. Usually, no amount of poking, prodding, or diaper-changing could really rouse her enough for her to nurse. I would give up, and a few hours later, Zivah would finally wake up. She would obviously be hungry, but she would also be struggling with gas bubbles and the other stuff htat comes out of that end. After an hour of crying and tooting and snorting (in her distress, her nasal passage would restrict and she would have a hard time breathing while she nursed and would snort and cry in frustration. She would finally calm down enough to get a decent amount of milk in her... But then the cycle would start all over again.

After two days of this, I had an epiphany. I was on percoset for pain. Percoset makes me sleepy. I looked online, and most websites would claim that it was not known whether percoset was secreted in the breastmilk or not. I finally found one that admitted it was, and said in rare occasions caused sleepiness in infants. Apparently it was causing sleepiness in mine. I quit the percoset.

A day later, Zivah was more wakeful and nursing every four hours. I was greatly relieved. (In more ways than one.) Now, she wavers between a three and four hour period. I would prefer the four hours at night.

We took her to the orthopaedic doctor on Friday to get her hip checked out. He said the left hip, the one that freely moved in and out of socket, had tightened up and he could no longer get it out of socket. The right hip that he felt some movement in originally, still had a bit of movement. We go back in two weeks, and she will probably only have to wear the harness for only six more weeks. I am completely amazed.

Finley is being less 'into' the Li'l Z than I thought she would be. She does want to hold her once in a while, likes to pick out the diaper when I change her, and once wanted to feed her a goldfish cracker, but other than that, it carrying on with her normal routines.

Joe like to kiss Zivah, run around the house, then come back to kiss her again. He gets concerned when she cries, but like Finley, is carrying on as if there have been no major changes.

We gave Zivah her first bath today, as we are finally allowed to take the harness off and see her little toes for a little bit every day if necessary.

I am thankful.

Zivah is crying. Duty calls.