Colic… or starvation?

The things we forget….

When Shabree was born, the nurses were quick to give, or to tell me to give, her a bottle.  "She’s starving" they would tell me when she would scream.  They would tell me how much of a temper she had.  When I got home, I tried to breastfeed her, but after awhile, I just gave up.  She would try, and just scream.  I finally, crying, gave it up, and went to full time formula.  Thankfully… it doesn’t seem to have hurt her any, lol.

Fast forward four years later….

I have a screaming infant… four, five, six hours she screams.  I take her to the dr, and he can find nothing wrong with her.  This is on a Saturday, and she weighs 7 pounds 12 ounces.  We have an appointment on Wednesday, and when they weigh her, she’s lost nine ounces in a matter of days.  Which is a LOT when you’re only two weeks old.  Well, she’s lost almost a pound overall…

So they tell me to supplement her, and give me some alternatives to bottles, telling me if it’s all too much, just give her a bottle.  I’m worried about nipple confusion… I WANT her to breastfeed.  But I read somewhere that you SHOULD try a bottle sometime between weeks 3 and 5 or they may NEVER take a bottle… forever resigning you to breastfeeding.  So for the last two days, I have been breastfeeding her whenever she starts to cry… and guess what… she’s not crying for hours on end.  Oh my God… was I starving her by accident?  I kept thinking, there is NO way she could be hungry, she JUST ate!  Um… wrong.  She can eat for 15 or 20 minutes on a nipple, and STILL take a bottle (though she’s kind of choking on it, sucking too hard, so I’m going to go invest in some different bottles for her… I’ll switch later on, when she’s older and better able to handle the flow of a regular nipple)  though she only drinks an ounce or so at a time.  Oh, I forgot to mention, that I went ahead and tried a bottle… and she’s still nursing fine, so I’m glad about that.  I have to take her in tomorrow and get her weighed, so hopefully she’ll have gained some.  She really SHOULD have, she’s eating every hour or two… at least for 10 minutes, but often as much as 30.  Of course, it’s kind of hard to scream when you’ve got something in your mouth, lol… but still, she’s happy to nurse, fall asleep, nurse, fall asleep, nurse, fall asleep…. and the cycle continues.  No, sometimes she’s awake, and she just looks at me… and man, I LOVE this child… I just want to kiss her and kiss her.  I hold her close and kiss her head, and look into her eyes, and I can’t help just adoring her so much.  I have NO idea what I was expecting… well, I guess nothing really… it’s not this part that had me scared… it was the later part, when she gets older, and starts getting into things, and starts following in her older sister’s footsteps, telling me she doesn’t WANT to help clean… and I have to be a MEAN MOM…. God, I hate being a mean mom… though I hate being a pushover worse.   I asked Jerry when Becca got to be so lazy (I’d asked her to put dinner away, it was ONE bowl of a freezer to microwave pasta and cheese sauce dish… and instead of putting it in a ziplock container so it wouldn’t dry out, she put the bowl I made it in, in the fridge… I mean, COME ON, how HARD is it to stick it in a smaller dish where it won’t dry out????  How HARD?)  He asked me, have you seen this place lately?  Yes, dear, I live with it every day.   I feel guilty though, because I am DEFINITELY part of the problem… but how, exactly, am I supposed to clean with an infant attached to my nipple?  And I STILL have to get her into a deep sleep before I can leave, and even then, many times, it’s minutes and she’s awake and crying… so perhaps she still does have the colic, I really can’t say, but right now, she’s screaming… fed less than an hour ago for nearly 20 minutes, one would think… there is NO way she can be hungry.  In fact, Jerry just gave her a bottle, and she drank a good 4 ounces from what he’s just told me.  Yea, I can’t see how she can be hungry… so perhaps she just wants the breast for the comfort.  Now that she’s not tearing my nipples up, I don’t mind so much, EXCEPT for the time factor, and what exactly, other than reading a book or playing solitaire on my Palm, am I supposed to do?  I can surf the net, I can read email on the laptop, but I can’t type, I need both hands for that.  And I do need to be a little more productive… the laundry is terribly built up, and I am in the middle of a load of jeans now (I’ve got enough shirts to last a month, but only enough jeans to last a week)  I need to do Jerry’s laundry…well, I need to do a BUNCH of laundry… but when?  And FORGET being able to scrapbook… I can barely even take pictures.  I keep meaning to, and I just don’t.  I could actually probably do the scrapbooking… I’ve got 2 months worth of week by week already done, so just need to add pictures, and MAYBE an accent or two, plus journaling.  I added some accents, but since I didn’t know what it was actually going to be like, I was trying not to do too much of anything specific. 

In other news, non Sammi related… we signed docs today on our new house… WHOOHOO!  Tomorrow we do our final walk through and get keys, and as of tomorrow, the place is OURS… ALL OURS.  I can’t WAIT to set up my scraproom and maybe get something done… how cool will THAT be????

Well, I should wrap this up, it’s already way past when I intended to go to bed, and I’m tired.  I guess Jerry got Sammi to fall asleep, good thing that… she’s quiet now.

I’m happy I’m able to keep writing on a fairly regular basis, at least I’ve got something of a record of these days somewhere…