baby's first week: a quick recap

we ran into a few little hiccups during our baby boy's first week, but he rebounded beautifully and is healthy and strong. 

since he was born "big" he had to pass glucose tests before/after meals while in the hospital.  this was to make sure that his body was monitoring his blood sugars, which can drop when a large baby doesn't have access to an umbilical cord, aka endless buffet. 

rawr!

he didn't seem to be latching all that well, but he did just fine on his tests, indicating that he was getting enough food.

however, when we returned to the doctor at his 4 day appointment, he had a fever of 101, had lost 15% of his birthweight (the healthy threshold being 10%) and he had high bilirubin levels (jaundice).

 the evening before his 4 day appointment we noticed

he was looking a little yellow, poor fellow

we were sent to children's memorial hospital.
these things are not uncommon for infants, but were serious enough to not treat lightly.

it was a little scary, because our little guy was SO lethargic by this point.
results at the hospital showed he didn't need the jaundice lamp treatments, but he had to be monitored.  i switched to pumping, feeding him expressed milk with a bottle, so that we knew how much food he was getting.

piper holding her baby and giving her brother a pacifier.

master multi-tasker.

we had several follow up appointments with the pediatricians, and a lactation consultant came to our home.

he started gaining weight (and has since surpassed his birthweight), his bilirubin levels declined, and of course his fever dissipated. 

he's doing just fine! 

between all the doctor's appointments, deciding on a name and dealing with birth certificate people calling us just wasn't our highest priority while we were focusing on these other things.

he is our super snuggly, lovey baby with or without a name!