One Month

This past week Owen reached one month old. It's amazing how quickly time is flying, it could be the sleep deprivation, the excitement and joy of it all or just a fact of being a parent now.

It has been so amazing to see all the changes that happen in just a month. The obvious one is his growth. Breast feeding had not always been easy, Owen was born with his tongue tied making it almost impossible to latch on and eat. He dropped just over 10% of his birth weight in the hospital making it a very stressful time trying to leave, luckily the nurse on duty gave us a bottle of formula to feed him and said she would come back in a bit to weigh him again thus allowing us to leave with his weight at an acceptable level. We met with several different lactation consultants as well as help from our midwives and was having success finger feeding him (with a tiny tube and pumped milk) as well as using a nipple shield (basically a third nipple). A couple of days after leaving the hospital we had an appointment to get his tongue tie snipped and it made such an immediate improvement. I noticed right away he was able to latch on, he always wanted to just never really could because his tongue could not reach past his lower lip.

We were able to stop pumping shortly after but I was still using my third nipple, mostly because it was easy for me and I felt comfortable knowing he was eating. He was gaining weight but not enough said the midwives so I was told to stop using the third nipple cold turkey and that they would see us in one week to weigh him. Well, they were right and in a matter of seven days he put on 19oz, no wonder my arms suddenly were going numb, all that weight gain! I am happy to say that since then there have been no problems with feeding and he is awake and hungry every two to three hours looking for food.

With his fantastic weigh gain we have seen him change before our eyes, his hands and feet are becoming bigger, his legs and arms are getting some meat on them, his chest is filling out and he is growing out of some of his clothes already. Very exciting!