February 8, 2008

Doin’ things wrong

father and son

We went to get Alden weighed a couple days ago and he’s not gaining as much weight as he should. He should be back to his birth-weight by now and he’s a few oz’s behind. The doc’s say they are worried but not seriously so… I’m not that panicked, but Ilana is pretty bothered by it. He is gaining weight, just not fast enough, and his health is not in danger, but if things don’t improve it may be. It’s a little concerning, but looking back, we haven’t been feeding him as well as we could. The first of many things we’ll do wrong, it’s good to get them out of the way early I guess.

Basically we would let him eat till he fell asleep (which was usually one breast) and try to burp him with mixed results. We didn’t think anything was wrong because he could eat all he wanted and he seemed fine except he was passing a lot of wind (a clue!). My theory (inspired by a talk with Michael Luck in NYC) is that he was filling up on air and felt full even though he wasn’t. By implementing more aggressive burping techniques he is now staying hungry longer. Also, when he is going to switch breasts I pick him up and give him pep talks so he won’t think about sleeping. The beauty is he doesn’t know phrases like ‘dig deep’ and ‘eye of the tiger’ are cliché so I’m feeling like a regular Tom Landry in his eyes… actually I hope that’s not the case.

Anyway, he’s been eating more over the past few days and I think (hope) he is gaining more weight. If anyone knows any tricks we’d love to hear them. Were taking him back to the scales in a couple days. More news then I suppose.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ronin tends to fall asleep the moment I try to burp her too. Changing her diaper or seizing the opportunity to wash her face/neck with a wet washcloth generally gets her riled up enough to burp and then eat some more.