Easy baby

Before Ruby was born, I had heard a lot of conflicting accounts from friends on their experiences with their own newborns. It seemed like the experience for the parent was largely dependent on the personality of the baby. Parents of fussier or colicky babies described the first couple of months as a struggle for survival, where you are lucky to be spared 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, and any additional pair of hands to hold or comfort the baby is godsent relief. However, other parents we know told us that it really wouldn't be that bad. Sure, we would get less sleep than we were used to, but we could take relaxing naps with the baby during the day, and in their experience, they didn't need much help from family members beyond cooking some meals and doing some laundry. These parents described their newborn as being an "easy baby." Before Ruby was born, Steve and I were anxious to find out what our baby would be like.

If the easiness of a baby is proportional to how much he or she sleeps and inversely proportional to how much he or she cries, then I would consider Ruby to be a bit TOO easy of a baby. On the first night after she was born, Steve and I were obviously exhausted. I had been in labor for the last 2 days, so it had been a while since I got any appreciable amount of sleep. We were told by the nurses to breastfeed the baby every 2-3 hours, so we went to sleep thinking that Ruby would wake up and start crying in a couple of hours. When I woke up and it was already morning, I at first felt panicked. Why didn't the baby cry at all? Had she starved to death?? We were reassured by the nurses that this was actually normal for babies in the first 24 hours of life. They are often very sleepy and will not awaken even to eat. However, Ruby's sleepiness persisted the rest of the time we were in the hospital, and she barely woke up at all, even through the poking and prodding of doctors doing their checkups and giving her shots.

When we got home, we were told by doctors to wake Ruby at least every 3 hours to eat. This turned out to be a significant challenge because she would often not awaken despite our best efforts of undressing her, changing her, tickling her, pinching her, and even dabbing her with cold towels! The times she did wake up, she would often fall back asleep once she started breastfeeding, again despite our best efforts to bug and bother her into staying awake. At night we would have to set alarms to wake ourselves up every 3 hours in order to wake Ruby up. Sometimes we would spend up to an hour and a half trying to wake her up to no avail. I had heard of easy babies, but I had never heard of setting multiple alarms in the middle of the night just to get your baby to wake up and eat!

When Ruby was 5 days old, we took her in for another weight check at the pediatrician's office, and we were told that she was losing too much weight. The pediatrician told us to start supplementing with formula, which around these parts is seen as The Measure of Last Resort. I think the doctor thought that the problem was that my milk hadn't come in, although I knew that that wasn't the case. Ruby was breastfeeding, but she took so long to eat (usually 1-2 hours) that there was no way she would wake up to eat again 2-3 hours after the beginning of her last feeding. We went back to see the lactation consultant at UCSF, and finally figured out that Ruby was just too slow and ineffective at breastfeeding. She is pretty much half asleep as she is eating, and it takes her so long to fill up that she wasn't eating with enough frequency throughout the day. The only solution was for me to express milk using a pump and then bottle feed her.

This approach has been successful in getting Ruby to put on weight. As of her last weight check, she was about 8lb 9oz, which is a pound heavier than her birth weight. I have also noticed that she is filling out her clothes more and has grown yet another chin. Although we are no longer worried about her wasting away, I am still hoping that she will get more effective at breastfeeding. Pumping 24 hours a day is less than ideal and not nearly as snuggly as the baby.

Needless to say, dealing with all of Ruby's eating issues has been quite stressful, especially since as many of you know, I have a slight neurosis about seeing people fed. However, despite being a bit easier of a baby than we bargained for, there are definitely advantages to Ruby's laid back and sweet disposition. For instance, Steve and I have probably gotten a bit more sleep than the average new parents. Also, Ruby is in general a very low-maintenance and happy baby. She can go to sleep on her own if we put her down, and there are several times where I went to check on her and found her awake, just contently staring into space or at the wall.

In just the past couple of days, Ruby has been waking up more on her own when it's time to eat. Although I might feel differently in the future, right now the sound of her fussing is a great relief to me, as it's a sign she is getting less sleepy and more willing to eat. Now it's just a matter of resisting the urge to gobble her up because she is just too yummy and cute!