She's here!

Our baby was born 9 days ago and came out beautifully perfect and healthy. We are clearly over the moon and falling more in love each day! However, pregnant women beware: nobody tells you how difficult the first week is! Oh boy!

My little one decided she had no idea what to do with a breast and lost a lot of weight the first few days (more than the 10% 'OK-ed' by health services in Quebec). This, along with raging prolactin hormones creating the milk that baby Z was supposed to naturally go for, made for a lot of crying during the third to fifth day of Z's life. She would try to latch and get super angry and frustrated and then I would start crying because I knew my baby just wanted to eat and couldn't. Oh boy. The lack of sleep clearly did not help. The hormones also made me cry for joy about every five minutes. I would look at her and cry, look at my husband (whom I have never loved so much in my life) and cry. We decided to see a lactation consultant who recommended we use a nipple shield. She also recommended we supplement using pumped breast milk and feeding it to her with a medicine spoon. That's exactly what we did for two days. I felt like I was saving a sick animal or something when I was feeding her with the spoon, she seemed so helpless. Finally, one night at 5am or so, she took to the nipple shield and started sucking away! It was a great victory and I am so happy things are going well. She is eating and gaining weight. I am lucky that my milk came in and I was able to pump to keep it going. I have other friends who have lived different newborn stories, but generally speaking, it is hard! It is a very, very steep learning curve, this 'learning how to be a parent' one... and I know we have TONS more to learn, but we are taking it one day at a time. As I said in the beginning, we are falling more in love each day! It is simply surreal how much you can love your child.