It’s official. We’ve had Ian home for 24 hours now….and I thought the labor/first day was exhausting. Last night was definitely nothing like how it was at the hospital. For some reason, Ian had decided that he didn’t want to sleep in the crib/playard we have in our bedroom. Every time we tried to put him in the playard, he would sleep just long enough for Jesse and I to get into bed and then he would start the screaming. It’s amazing what your frame of mind is at 2am in the morning when trying to deal with a screaming newborn. I was finally able to get Ian to sleep around 3am by sitting out on the couch with him on my chest (after consulting both the nurses in the Mother Baby unit at Crittenton and my own mother). I couldn’t lay down – had to be sitting up. Let’s just say that I didn’t get the best of sleep.

We woke up about 6am to eat and Ian did really well. We were able to make it back to bed by having Ian sleep with Daddy (he had his head on his chest and was lying over his side). We didn’t keep him there long, we do not want to get him started there, so we swaddled him tightly and put him in the playard. It worked for about 30-45 minutes. Then his diaper needed to be changed. 30-45 minutes later, he was hungry again. 30-45 minutes later, another diaper change. We finally got up about 11:30-12 and we still only got about 3 hours of sleep throughout the night.

Made another call to mom about noon. Wanted to let her know we were still exhausted but did finally get some sleep. She gave us some advice that worked this afternoon. She basically said to put Ian in the crib and let him cry himself to sleep. Oh, did I mention that when he wasn’t sleeping today, he was crying. Oh yeah. Put that on top of our sleepless night, Jesse and I were doing grand. So we get Ian in his crib and he’s bawling (we had just tried to feed him – no go, just got his diaper changed and he was burped), and my hormones act up. I’m sitting out in the living room listening to him crying and imaging all sorts of things going wrong and my tear ducts go into overdrive. That’s another thing that has been constant today – me crying my eyes out with no stimulation at all.

Ian finally does get to sleep, but I try waking him up about 1pm so he can eat, which he is not interested in. He basically gets two pulls and then falls asleep. This doesn’t exactly instill confidence in my abilities to feed him; especially considering I went from D to DD and it’s not exactly a painless transition. He was able to feed from one side, but hasn’t been able to touch the other. We put Ian back in the playard and put in a call to the Lactation Consultant. Before Ian’s next feeding (which is due relatively soon), I am to use the pump 5 minutes before hand to get the side that’s getting engorged ready, put on some warm compresses, and massage the tissues in preparation for Ian. Afterwards, I am to put cabbage leaves around both of them (I’ll leave this to Jesse to explain).

So that’s where we are at the moment. I’m still crying uncontrollably and unexpectantly. Ian is still sleeping and he’s going to sleep tonight. We’ll get up to change him and to feed him, but he’s going to cry himself to sleep tonight. Jesse and I need to get a good nights sleep and we probably won’t be able to get that until Monday night (guess what mom!).

I know we should be trying to keep Ian awake so he’ll sleep tonight, but how to do that when he’s only interested in sleeping and he cries constantly when he is awake. He hasn’t been as interested as eating today, so we’re hoping for some good feeds tonight. We have his first doc appointment in the morning and we’re going to be bringing up these concerns. Hopefully it’s just that he’s in a new environment. We’ll see though.