First 6 days of his Life

Right now the boy is a bit dehydrated and very skinny. Its natural in the first week after birth that the baby loses weight since the new life tends to shock its parents lifestyles. Particularly the food production of the mother.

Since he can sleep up to 4 hours (which is very conflicting, we had to really work through the problems and figure things out at greatly diminished mental and objective capacities.

Lately I've been trying to feed him every hour and a bit some water from a dropper. Basically to relieve symptoms of dehydrations despite the matter that he's not to drink water when breast feeding exclusively.

The reasoning behind this is because, the weakened state could be causing him to spiral downward, and proactively trying to introduce nutrition instead of letting his instincts become the key indicators.

It has been way past the first 48 hours of birth and indicators are pointing to malnutrition. So now on the 6th day, we are slowly introducing small improvements.

After I put a dropper of half an ounce of water, we tried feeding him breast milk pumped within the next hour. It was about 20-30ml, and he seemed to be either hungry or just looking to suckle.

In the first 48 hours we were at a panic, because it seems like he wasn't being fed. He was pooping but this was from nutrition from inside the womb. He did have any indicator of digesting any real food from his breastfeeding. Our doctors and nurses tried to comfort us, it was the only advantage of rooming in: you had a nurse and a midwife on call to bug them about how to take care of the baby - otherwise we would only know of these problems after we arrived home with the baby. But the information they gave were conflicting and there were many things happening that changed the shape of the problem.

Around this time, we got the handle of the baby's indicators and patterns. Its too early to tell, if things are working for the better.

Forgetting Things. I am more frazzled than ever. Its understandable, but it is also enlightening. I really can only have One thought or tasks in my mind at a time. The time to travel and perform the task, I have a lot of internal distractions because of the coping mechanism to intense boredom many of us have.

Still my note taking is helping me get by. I have a lot of work backed up and need a lot of help, but I still trying to manage.

Difficulty. Its pretty hard because anxiety and fear can panic me and my wife. Of course we try to make sense of things, but she has more problems given her minor complications like hi-BP and loss of blood (she is quite anemic looking now). There is also the baby's constant feeding wearing her thin.

When double vision sets in, there is serious problems. I believe any functional mental problem is very serious, especially since key involuntary-automated functions are compromised. Its not like she can just get an infusion of blood, all we can do is bring up the calories and the nutrients that help in blood productions (iron supplements and protein).

Things get hard because of sleep, some other distractions (back seat mothering; "everyone's an expert"), and all the other mundane tasks that wear at our fatigue.

Sleep. 2-4 hours of sleep. I'm a mess, and I have a lot of responsibilities. Then I'm usually on the receiving end of the tempers even when i do go above and beyond when it matters. I'm the only one expected to keep the cool head.

Some Distractions. Then there is the mother in law that has the following Logic:

• Txting and Calling for updates
• When reply we are too busy to provide that added service, offers to "Help out" Her Idea of "helping out" is criticizing everything we do with the baby, without her EDUCATED and EXPERIENCED opinion on the matter (he maid and mother did most of her motherly duties).
• Our only solutions is ignore it all and chalk it up to being too busy to reply.

Do I Back-seat Parent? I remember that I don't tell my brother and sister in law, how to raise their child. I only ask him peculiarities because I like to collect knowledge of them. I may recommed Hinshaw's Origins of the Human Mind, so that people can appreciate the mental phases the child is undergoing and see the science in action, I know better than to tell a person I know how he should do X.

If I were to, I would ask why he/she has not considered alternative or ask what are the results they are trying to achieve and find out their reasons. Although it should only go as far as that.

He is our happiness. It is running me ragged and strangely his poop and pee are what makes us happy in these times. Poop and Pee are indicators of what he is taking in and they have been good lately (even when he poops a HUGE mess).

I keep thinking of that study/survey that says people say they are less happy when they have kids and how the survey is so very POORLY worded.

He is our happiness but he is also a huge responsibility and I'm glad we took our time and had our minds made up when we got into it in the first place (choosing to conceive). I think everyone should have the freedom to choose when they believe it is the best time for them to do what they want and not be forced.

Weight Loss. I'm averaging 175lbs at the end of the day. thats with the huge lunches because we are starved by having to go around fixing stuff. Even when the baby is alseep we have to fix things or rest. I ballooned to 180 when I was at the hospital since I can access my fibre supplements and was constipated for the 3 days I was there.

Now that we live near my parents and have access to maid services, I was able to better achieve my diet goals by having more veggie filled dishes.

I have oatmeal as my midnight snack: its very filling, low cal, high water, high fibre, and I can stand to eat it like a pig with no savor. What goes through my head is: Shut up Stomach and take his crap to digest on. My acidity is very high so I have to eat regularly, even if I can't take some of the calories. I can now stand eating oatmeal every night, as long as there is powdered milk on it. Too bad it staves off hunger for less than 2 hours.

Exercise. I hope to go back on my exercise routine when we can predict the baby's sched and I have time to run. I have tired waking up after 2-4 hours of sleep, at least when I slept 7-8 hours I had energy when i woke up, being perpetually tired just lets all my compulsions and personality barriers become more visible. It is a real test of character... as well as a kind of brain washing.

Imaginations Run wild. Imagining the worse case scenario was a traumatically caused reflex that helped me be more careful about my decisions. I usually imagine gruesome images, and it helped me to do the right thing. now that imagination has me with images of my son as the focus.

Dead Brother. We had a brother who was born premature. So its not so hard to imagine SIDS or something taking away our child. When I'm holding him and I'm too tired and weak, I just close my eyes and I hope nothing bad happens, that my weakened state doesn't result to what may be an inevitable accident at the rate we are going.

The past and kittens. I hate that he just so fragile. I tried to save 2 runt of the litter kittens unsuccesfully. Its nothing new for me to nurse something only for it to die on me. Sometimes holding his small warm and boney frame reminds me of those kittens. Also the poop cleaning.

Looking back, no wonder I still have a hard time believing I have a son.