12 weeks later. birdie update.

posted on september 13th. written when she was 12 weeks. oops.

i mean look at that face! all the updates and any issues just don't matter at all. but since i wanted to document birdie's beginning very thoroughly, here we go in all the details...

-though she never had an issue with her initial latch and positioning, she never established a rhythm. she was deemed a lazy eater. even weeks later. she was just too comfortable and no amount of jostling or nakedness or cold compresses would wake her! she was just too cozy on me.
-since she was just 5 perfect pounds and 12 little ounces to begin with, losing 10 ounces within the first 3 days was significant enough for the docs to recommend supplementing with formula by the 4th day. side note- since she was only 2 ounces over the 5 pound cut off to send us home from the hospital on the 3rd day, they had to do a simulated carseat test! thankfully, she passed.
-her jaundice caused her to be on the bili light therapy for 5 days. she looked like a robot! her jaundice cleared within a week, yay!
-her acid reflex really started up within the first couple of weeks. poor thing would work so hard to eat and then ended up spitting up a huge amount. the acid would hurt her so much that she would get so fussy before each spit up episode... several per feed and 8 feeds a day.
-she was then put on gentleease formula which is a little easier to digest than the regular formula. she was also prescribed zantac. a few weeks later, when that didn't help, we started on nutramigen (a hypoallergenic formula) and stopped the zantac for two weeks until we could see the pediatric gi. he was most worried about her weight so he first upped the amount of calories per ounce (20 to 24). to help keep more of her feeds down, he told us to add rice cereal to help thicken it in her stomach. to help with her pain, he prescribed an acid blocker- omeprazole.
-after two weeks of no change, we scheduled an upper gi series to make sure there were no abnormalities within her esophagus. there weren't which was such a relief!
-she was put on baby erythromycin last thursday which supposedly helps with gi motility, so we shall see... seems like a lot of medicine to flow through a wee one's tiny body, so not sure how comfortable i will be keeping her on these for more than a couple of weeks if they're not helping. {9/13 update: took her off baby erythromycin within a few days of that since it wasn't helping. after a few weeks of switching her to earth's best formula and the omeprazole, the pain seemed much better! completely off meds at 6 months.}
-she started daycare when she was almost 11 weeks, february 18th 2013. {auntie shi shi's birthday!}