no more sleepy baby

In the past few days, Elias has done a complete 180, staying awake for long stretches during the day. We no longer have to wake him for feedings; instead, he's often awake for the entire hour and a half to three hours before he starts getting hungry again. We were so worried about the wakefulness, accompanied by an unusual amount of fussiness a few days ago that we called the triage nurse at our pediatrician's office. She recommended we bring him in, just to be sure. They couldn't find anything wrong with him and the pediatrician said this is probably just a "blip." And not that I want him to necessarily sleep all the time. I guess I'm just surprised - I thought newborns were supposed to sleep more. And to be honest, it's hard to know what to do with a newborn for several hours straight.

Even so, our days are still pretty unpredictable, but nights have been consistent for a few days now. He finally conks out after a 9:30/10ish feeding. The last couple of nights he's slept for a solid 4-5 hour stretch before stirring again around 2:30. Then he's up again around 5 to eat and back asleep until about 8. At that point he seems sleepy after eating but ultimately stays awake. He was awake this morning until about 10:30 and he's been sleeping since he finished eating. Despite sleeping so well through the night, I'm still pretty beat by the time he's more or less up for the day, I think because I sleep so lightly, waking up and checking on him after every movement of a limb or sound he makes. And he's a pretty active, noisy sleeper. I guess if I could stay up after the 5 a.m. feeding that would give me enough time for a shower and breakfast. A daily nap and walk and I'd be just about set.

His weight on Wednesday was still 7 pounds 2 1/2 ounces. Different scales, of course. Initially I was concerned that his weight hasn't seemed to increase since our meeting with the lactation consultant on Monday, but if you take into account the fact that, according to the pediatrician's scale, he's gained 3 1/2 ounces between Saturday and Wednesday, he's well within the 1/2 to 1 ounce per day weight gain that they look for at this point. And he does seem to be at least filling out his "newborn" clothes. Some onesies are getting a little snug, even. That's exciting. We go in tomorrow morning for another weight check so I'll be anxious to see how much he's gained since Wednesday.

The feeding is going well. One of the doctors we saw on Wednesday had a theory that perhaps he's getting too much to eat, and might have a simple case of indigestion that's causing the wakeful fussiness, with the regimen of breast, supplemented by bottle, which he seems to gulp down no matter how long he nursed before that. He does seem to be doing a lot better at nursing - he'll usually nurse for about 15-20 minutes and the suck, swallow, downright gulping sounds have increased, while the little breaks he takes while latched on have decreased a bit. So I do think he's getting more than the ounce and a half he got at the lactation consultant's office. Not to mention the fact that even a few days of nursing, supplementing with a bottle, and then pumping - even through the night - had really started to wear me down. With that in mind, we decided to omit the bottle supplements yesterday to see how he did. I think he got one bottle supplement in the morning because he seemed hungry still but I'd just pumped. He seemed content and his diaper count was great. He slept a little more, but was still more or less wide awake between about 1:45 and 10 p.m. A little less fussy but still challenging to keep occupied for such a long time.

Whether or not we repeat this pattern today, we're definitely going for a walk. Mama's feeling pretty darn stir-crazy. Here's a shot from our first walk around the neighborhood a few days ago:


Even though he's a summer baby and we have the luxury of warmer weather to enjoy such walks, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the fussiness over the past few days was at least partly a result of the warmer, very humid weather. It's difficult to maintain a comfortable 75 or so in the apartment, even with a very noisy window AC. He doesn't care much for the tight swaddle and even the lighter legs-only swaddle we'd been using (he seems to do better with his upper limbs free) is just too warm. What to do with those flailing limbs? The adventure continues...