One week old update

Abbie is one week old today. It's been an interesting week.

Abbie had/has jaundice, so they made her stay an extra day in the hospital under the phototherapy lights. That was by far the hardest part for me, of my stay in the hospital - them taking my baby away from me. I cried a lot. We went to the nursery every three hours so I could nurse her, and we did this for about 36 hours. Not my idea of fun, especially since I was discharged a day before she was and we weren't sure they'd have a room for us to stay in until about 3 hrs before we had to be out of our current room. I was preparing to spend the night in the hospital waiting room, but they ended up having a room for us. We went home around 4pm on Saturday.


Sunday we took her out of the house for the first time to the commissary and BX on base. We used the mei tai my friend Emily made us, and it worked wonderfully. (And I used it again today.) I started out wearing her, but my back was (is) still hurting, so Mark ended up wearing her a majority of the time. Pretty cute.

Monday we picked my mom up from the airport in the morning. It's nice having her here, and it's been a huge help. She's a pretty easy baby, but it's nice having an extra set of hands, especially since Mark is back at work now and has been studying a lot at home.
Tuesday we had her first peds appt. Everything went well. She weighed 8lb15oz, which is up 3oz from her lowest weight. However, they did a biliruben test on her to check her jaundice, and it's SUPER high now (19.9 - it was 11.6 when we left the hospital). So they ordered a billiblanket to be delivered to our house and we have to have this thing on her all the time, which is a huge PITA. It's awkward and it's connected to this box for the motor and it makes it hard to move her around - especially at night. But hopefully it's helping and she won't have to wear it much longer. We took her in for another blood test this morning, but we're still waiting for the results. And she has another peds appt tomorrow.
The dogs are doing really well with her now. They were SO interested in her at first, and they still are, but not to the maniac point they were before. Both of them want to be in her face all the time, or right next to her, or on her and I'm fairly certain he thinks that she's his. He pretty much guards her now, and if it comes to choosing between being with me and being with her, he chooses being with her. We can tell he's still a little jealous, but not too bad. That went a lot better than I was anticipating.
Breastfeeding has been going really well, I think. She's pooping and peeing 8-10 times a day, and she has the seedy poops now, which I think is a good sign. The hardest part about BFing is that I don't know how much milk she's actually getting, but the fact that she's pooping and peeing enough reassures me some. I've tried pumping a few times with my little manual pump and I got 20ml out one time and 30ml out another. So I'm assuming she's getting more than that when she nurses since they get more out than the pump does. It doesn't hurt as much as I was expecting. It hurts sometimes when she first latches on for maybe a minute, but then it's fine. And I think my milks come in. Sometimes my boobs feel a little sore, but I don't think I have engorgement at all. I was expecting BFing to be much harder, but I guess maybe this is the one thing that's going as planned for me. (Knock on wood.)

Other than that, everything is going pretty well. I don't feel overly exhausted, even though I'm up quite a bit with her at night. I usually fall asleep in the chair while she's nursing and I think last night I slept more in the chair than I did in the bed, but it's not too bad. It seems like as soon as I get back into bed, she's up again about 15 mins later. But I nap during the day when she naps.

The dr just called. Her billiruben count is down at 18.5 now, thank God. It's still high, but at least it's gone down some, instead of up. If it had gone up, we would have had to put her in the hospital again. We'll see what it is tomorrow morning. Please say a prayer that she gets over this jaundice soon. Thanks!