Well, today is February 25th and Oakes is now 21 1/2 weeks old. And I finally have time / energy to maintain some sort of blog for all of our long-distant friends and family...
So much has happened in the last 5 months, it only seems fitting to give a quick recap:
Oakes arrived home from his NICU stay very healthy, but with a digestive system cleaned out by two heavy doses of antibiotics. This meant that our poor little guy had an aching belly and was FUSSY. After asking his pediatrician to allow us to give him probiotics and being denied, I quickly began taking probiotics, drinking Kefir, and eating all the probiotic yogurts I could in order to get them to him through my breastmilk (which was going great, by the way). Oakes continued to have digestive issues and I spent lots of time on the internet trying to figure out what we could do to help him. We took advice from everyone: our doula gave us the name of an acupuncturist (she's great!) and on a trip to Mommy-Baby yoga, the instructor gave us the name of a healer in Asheville (not so great...). I also went to the lactation specialists at the hospital who gave me info on a dairy-free diet. I had thought I was dairy free for the 2 weeks prior to Thanksgiving, but it turns out dairy products are in SO much of what we eat! So beginning on Thanksgiving, I was on a strict dairy-free diet hoping it would help Oakes with digesting my breastmilk.
During this time I had ended up switching pediatricians as I didn't feel like the one we'd originally selected was taking our concerns seriously. On a sick visit to our new pediatrician (Oakes was having massive diarrhea), they saw that he wasn't doing the "all babies cry" bit like pediatrician #1 labeled it but was rather crying in pain. They ran tests on his stool and they made some recommendations, but the main thing was that I finally felt like I had a doctor who was willing to help us and who didn't just think I was an over-concerned-new-mom.
We even had an emergency room visit in early December as Oakes had an evening in which he threw up multiple times (more than he'd eaten, even) and then was lethargic and unresponsive. This was probably the scariest night since the day he was born although everything turned out alright.
It was when my mom and dad came up to watch Oakes while Evan and I were teaching our last week of school before winter break, that we really felt like we had to make a change. Mom watched him Monday through Wednesday (dad arrived to join the babysitter's club for Thursday and Friday) and reaffirmed that his fussiness was not normal. So... we made the incredibly difficult decision to stop breastfeeding and start formula. We had tried soy formula previously to no avail and after talking to my friend Krystle (her husband is a NICU doctor), we put him on Nutramigen formula - a predigested (and expensive!) formula. I breastfed Oakes for the last time on Thursday, December 17th and cried the entire time. I think everyone knew how hard this was for me, as this was the one thing that had seemed to go perfectly for Oakes and I had held onto it for so long knowing it was the best thing for him. However, after seeing how different my baby was after 24 hours on the formula I realized that the best thing for him was actually not my breastmilk.
It's amazing how much Oakes has changed... he's such a happier baby now. He sleeps better (he actually naps now!), I don't have to hold and bounce him for all of his waking hours, and he's a giggly little guy with a huge personality! He's still on Nutramigen (we tried switching him to a formula not as broken down, but that didn't work) and he's also eating cereal now. We're waiting to introduce solids until he's at least 6 months as he's had so many digestive issues.
He's also rolling over, he's just starting to sit up, and he's a very strong boy who loves to stand with support (I like to think that all of his back arching during those horrible first 3 month gave him abs of steel. He was actually standing with support at 10 weeks old!).
I'm hoping to add lots of cute pictures and videos to the blog. I definitely have a few... :)
Here is a link to the pre-arrival journey if you feel like reliving the glory days:
