Last night, we called the on-call doctor at about 3am because of the gas we thought we were hearing in Melanie's tummy. We started giving her gas drops, applied a warm compress to her tummy, and took her for a car ride. Since the car ride calmed her down, the doc said she probably wasn't in pain. Well, we learned this morning that the "gas" we thought we were hearing are probably hunger pains because she's not getting enough food!
We went for our first weigh-in this morning, where we found out that Miss Melanie has lost a pound since birth. No wonder the poor girl can't sleep at night; she's HUNGRY!! We are going to start feeding her more frequently, and using formula as well as the breast milk that we were already attempting. So far, today, she has been very content, sleeping while lying down by herself (which she hasn't been doing), sleeping through a needle stick in the heel, and being a little calmer. Well, she's always calm when being held; but not so much when it's really time to sleep. In the last two nights combined, we have gotten about 3 hours of sleep. Hopefully this new diet will satisfy Miss Melanie and let her and her parents sleep a little.
We're going for a follow-up weigh in tomorrow morning (Saturday), and a follow-up doctor appointment on Monday morning. In the meantime, we went to get her bilirubin retested (picture of her battle wound above); but the lab just called and they messed up the sample when they went to process it!! The doctor doesn't see any cause for concern over the bilirubin (which measured borderline when we checked out of the hospital on Wednesday), but in the bright lights of the doc's office, we thought she looked a little more yellow. Now we see we were probably imagining things, since we were slightly hallucinating this morning from the lack of sleep.
Please keep Mel in your prayers while we try to bulk her up for her next weigh-in! If only mommy had this problem of losing weight so quickly!
2 comments:
Sounds like it must run in the family...Wyatt and Bella both lost weight after birth and were breast and bottle fed! :) Hope her belly is getting full!
Hope you guys get a little more sleep tonight!
i have to say my first comment when i saw this picture was wow, they dressed her already. Sadie wore sleep and play outfits for her first 3 months! :) ha. Anywho, Ms. Melanie will be great! Sadie had both at the beginning as well till my supply filled up and was exclusively breastmilk fed for a few months starting around week 6. We will keep you in our prayers!
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