March 18, 2021
To my Rainbow Baby, Henry,
Today, you are five weeks old! I know I start my letters every week by talking about how quickly time is moving and how big you are getting, but it really is insane to me that you have already been in the world for five weeks!! The moment I knew you were going to be born seems like only seconds ago, yet 35 days have gone by since then. Every week, I wish more and more that I could make time stand still, that I could keep you this little for just a bit longer. But with each week that goes by, you are growing and changing and developing your little personality, and I love watching that happen, too. Being a mom is a crazy whirlwind of tension between wanting to freeze the present moment and wanting to see what your future holds. I love it so much!
We’ve had a week of growing pains and milestones in our crash course on parenthood. We’ve been noticing for the past week or so that you have seemed utterly ravenous, especially at night. You seemed to want to eat as soon as we finished feeding you, and mommy was starting to wonder if she wasn’t making enough milk to keep up with how much you needed and wanted to eat. On Tuesday night, we had an AWFUL night of not sleeping. Between me and your daddy, we were up all night. We couldn’t get you to go down longer than 20 minutes after eating. Mommy finally had her first breakdown of exhaustion; daddy woke up to find me rocking you and bawling next to the bassinet, begging you to go to sleep. When we showed up at the pediatricians office the next morning, we were both zombies.
After checking you over, weighing and measuring you, the doctor told us that you had only gained 13 ounces since your last visit, which was low. He said it wasn’t alarming yet, but it was a pretty good indicator that you weren’t getting enough to eat solely from mommy, and that we would need to start supplementing your meals with formula. We weren’t terribly shocked by this, after the week of fussiness and not sleeping that we had had. We worked with the lactation consultant for about an hour to determine approximately how much you were getting from me and how much formula we would need to supplement. She also sent us home with her scale so we could weigh you before and after each feeding to establish more of a trend in how much you were getting to eat. She set mommy up with a plan to pump more milk, too, to hopefully boost my supply and help you get more of that liquid gold.
What a difference a full belly makes!! On Wednesday night, you went right to sleep without any fuss at 9:30, slept until 2:30 and then went back to sleep after eating until 6:30! Mommy actually feels like a functioning human today! I’m already so relieved that we have figured out the root of the problem and are working to solve it. Not only will we all get better sleep, but you will be getting all the nutrients you need to gain weight. I want nothing more than to see you grow healthy and strong, sweet boy! We also started using a new sleep sack last night. Since it correlates with your change in diet, I’m not sure if it had an impact on your sleep, but you seem to like it much better than the one we were using before. I hate having your arms pinned down, and the new one allows you more movement. Regardless of what has improved our nights, I’m grateful that God has allowed us to figure out the best plan to make that happen!
This week, in addition to thanking God for better nights, I ask that He continue to help us navigate your feeding and sleeping schedules so that we can all be healthy and happy. I pray that He will help boost my milk supply to feed you by giving me the energy and perseverance to stick to my pumping plan. I pray that He will help you get as much milk from mommy as possible so we don’t need to supplement crazy amounts of formula. I hope that He will allow this plan to help us get to a point where we no longer need to supplement, but I also pray that He will give me the peace of mind I need, knowing that as long as you are fed, happy and healthy, that everything is good. I continue to praise Him for the little miracle you are and I thank Him for the joy I find in you each day, watching you grow and change into the little person you will become. You are the delight of your momma’s heart, sweet boy!
I love you, little Rainbow Henry.
Love, Mommy
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