Squirming and Growing Baby - Day 7

I thought this was a fun series of photos that my mom (Barbara) took, so here you go. The tongue shot is great.

I'm happy to report that Alden is gaining weight and it looks like my milk supply has finally caught up with his demand. I went to see the lactation consultant at the hospital today and we calculated how much milk he's getting with each feeding. They weigh him naked before feeding, I nurse him on one side and they take a measurement. I then nurse him on the other side and they measure weight once more. He took a dump after this ordeal and they were able to calculate his net growth (and gross growth efficiency!) from there. I loved how scientific it all was. Turns out he took in 96 ml of milk from that feeding. Wow! That's a 50 ml blue-capped falcon tube's worth in each breast. (For those of you who don't do metric, that's 1.5 oz per boob. I can only think in metric for liquid volumes.) I kinda thought that I could only make a spoonful or so of milk at a time. It's way more than I'd imagined I could produce. I was feeling pretty good about myself on the drive home. After this binge eating, Alden was out like a light for a good 3.5 hours. This was also a new experience. I had been feeding him for 20 minutes, just like the books had told me to do. This was the time it usually took him to empty one breast and fall asleep. But he was waking up again an hour or so later wanting to eat. This was especially frustrating at night, when after a feeding, diaper change, and a rock back to sleep, I barely had time to shut my eyes before he started fussing again. Could it be that the baby books had lead me astray? If I kept him awake for a full hour of feeding and gave him all I had from both guns, would he sleep for longer periods at night? I figured it was worth a try last night. Sure enough, after a lengthy feed at midnight, he (and I) slept a solid 3 hours before the next feeding and then another 3 hours after a 4 am feeding. Sweet! I woke up this morning to his little wimpers, and was feeling.. dare I say it... almost refreshed. Why don't they tell you this sort of thing in the baby books?

Alden in his "milk coma", induced by power breastfeeding.