Success stories

From Day 1, Alex has had her nights and days switched. She sleeps all day and is alert and ready to party at night. It makes sense, because that was her pattern in the womb. As much as we love her, we prefer to get our sleep during the night! So this week, I started researching how to switch her internal clock, and I don't want to declare success just yet, but at the very least, I will say we are making headway. During the day, we make sure to talk in normal tones, keep the house bright and engage the baby by talking to her and not letting her sleep for longer than 90 minutes at a time. Also, I make sure she eats at least every 2 hours, so she gets most of her calories during the day (instead of her preferred way of getting them all at night!) Then when night-time comes around, we have been doing the same ritual: bathing her, changing into pjs, swaddling her and giving her several "cluster feeds" together. Then we rock her, turn off all the lights, lower our voices, etc... Each night has been successively better, and last night was just plain wonderful! We put her to sleep at 8, and she woke every 3 hours to feed for about 30 minutes, but then she went right back down each time. This morning, at 7 am, Rich and I looked at each other (while Alex was still asleep) and we were beaming ear to ear like the proudest parents you've ever seen. Who knows, it could be just a fluke, but at least we got a few nights of catch-up on sleep!

Also, we had our 2 week check-up and were so excited to find that Alex is now 8 lbs!!! The doctor was beyond thrilled, and said that they are just happy when babies regain their birth weight by the 2 week visit. Our little girl regained her birth weight, plus another 1 and a half pounds! Wow! I have been so worried that I wasn't producing enough milk for her, and we have been supplementing with formula bottles after some of her breastfeeding sessions. Now, I feel a little relieved to know she is getting plenty of nourishment.