June 2007 - Day 4 - Taking Care of the Mom

When you take care of the mom, you take care of the baby

Lianxin's parents' strategy of resting, stress-free, and good diet paid off quite well. She start producing milk. At the beginning, it is was a bit pale and looked more like water. Renee fed off it very well, and at the end of the day we took her off the supplement.

While I went off to Ranch 99 to buy some Silver Carp, Silk Chicken for the soup, we had a visiting nurse. Renee weighed 4 pounds 8 ounces, which was exactly 10% loss from her birth weight. With mom producing milk, we were fairly sure she will get better soon. Nurse also checked her Jaundice but wasn't sure if it was high. So she took some blood and told us that we will know from the pediatrician, who we would see the next day.

While the nurse taking the blood, she made a comment about Renee had quite a bit of punches at her heels. That is true, she had her screen test twice, blood sugar test four times, and one red cell test.

June 2007 - Day 2 - Breast Feeding, Burping, and the nurses

The second day, Renee was not as active as we hoped. Her biggest communication that does not requires us rush to changing her diaper was this light frowning face. Sometimes you would think she is in pain, but it could just be a bad dream she is having. Can baby have dreams? Anyway, we joked that it was because mom watched too much "Law & Order, Criminal Intent"

Renee was still quite sleepy the second day. We didn't have too much success feeding her thoroughly. Probably because of her small size, she would suck on the breast for a very short period of time, then stop for a long time. This is the first time I start realizing breast feeding is such a difficult job for the mom: Feeding every three hours round the clock means that by the time she finished feeding, she has only two hours to rest. This might not sound bad, but imagine doing that ALL the time, during the day, late at night, early in the morning. To make things worse, we were recommended to feed her 12 times a day instead of 8 times because of her small size. That means one hour of feeding followed by one hour of resting.

Looking back, I don't think that could ever work. Lianxin became so sleepy at the night that I had to shake her arm to wake her up. It was horrible feeling for me: At one hand, I have a daughter kept losing weight, at the other hand, I have a mother who deserves every single minute of sleep.

Since this was the last night that we are going to spend in the hospital, hospital prepared complementary dinner of two for us. Despite the mess in the background, we were able to enjoy a good full meal and celebrate with apple cider. Renee was sound sleeping by the table the whole time.
After the dinner, we endured the probably darkest hour in our parenthood so far. We could express less and less milk out of the more and more tired mom. After some discussion, we thought we should consult the nurse about using supplements after the breast milk. The nurse who came in was really nice and professional. She made sure that we still planned to breast feed every time before the supplement, before she recommended and brought in the supplements. Boy was Renee hungry. That was the first time I learned about the importance of burping, and the nurse showed us how.

We understood the risk of losing the battle against bottle feed, but at least Renee is full for the moment, which is the most important. The mom is still tired, but she is holding it together very well. And that is when we had to survived the second bad nursing.
During the first night, a nurse came and took Renee to the nursery to perform the screening test. This is done by drawing blood from the heal and apply them to five or six squares on a sheet of form. My guess is that it probably takes more of a toll on the watching parent than on the baby. On the second night, yet another nurse just came in and told us they needed to do the screening test. It was the mom, in her all tiredness, remembered that it has already been done the night before. We asked and found out that someone lost the tag of the blood screening and we had to let them punch Renee's heel again.
That was extremely emotional moment. Lianxin was very upset. I calmed her down as much as possible by telling her that the best thing to do right now is to let me go with the baby to make sure the test is done properly this time, and let her just go back to sleep. While I was in the nursery, the nurse who taught us the burping came in, told me that she was sorry to learn about what happened and that she would report this incident to the gala. I brought this news back to the mom, who, not surprisingly, was still awake.

June 2007 - Day 1 - Feeding, Swaddling and Changing Diapers

Ever wonder how parents can get so gentle but firm at the same time, my theory is that they are directly related to the diaper changing experience. You have to learn to ignore the crying and just fuddle the baby around like a doll and wrap things up as fast as possible without compromising the quality (otherwise, you will just pay sooner or later)

Renee was mostly sleepy on the first day. We tried to feed her every three hours. We succeeded six times, although not sure how much she took. The 'milk' at this time was honey-like substance called "colostrum". They required a lot of sucking to come out, especially when comparing to the milk in the later days. We think that because Renee was small, she does not have enough strength, because she will suck in fast rhythms for a short period of time, then stop doing nothing for a long time. Whenever we express the colostrum, she will start sucking again.

The colostrum did the wonder as the book said, she had a stool 12 hours later then another one 5 hours after that. According to the book, these are called meconium and the earlier they are out the better it is for the infant. They are dark and sticky, and being my first time changing diaper, I had a tough time getting them off. I am ashamed to say that I called for the nurse, who came in and showed us how to gently but firmly use the baby wipes to clean them up, make sure she does not kick her feet into the stool, then change on a new diaper. All these are done with Renee kicking and screaming and it took a while to get used to.

We went to the child care class and practiced the swaddling. But boy was the real thing different. I could never get it right. It is interesting at the same time to see each nurse has his or her own signature. They all come out perfectly, and all I need is just to learn one. This picture shows the little ball I ended up with.

(I ended up learned the one that Renee's grandma use. Father and daughter have been quite happy so far.)