Weary

If the first three days hadn't been weekend with another adult here, I wouldn't have made it this far. I don't know how I am going to manage today, especially because he only slept for 3 hours. I can't 'sleep when the baby is sleeping' because I have to pump regardless of whether he's awake or asleep and there's only about 90 useful minutes between the end of a session and the beginning of another during the day. (Why am I typing here? Because I'm stuck in this spot for another 8 minutes.)

After we saw evidence of a huge improvement and healing gut (36 hours of exclusively feeding formula) I cheated and let him nurse once. I made it at a time where he wasn't going to get much due to the pumping schedule, but he did still have a reaction. Small, but it was there. I did the same thing about 24 hours later and got an even smaller reaction. We'll see about today. Unfortunately we can't settle for "oh it's just a small reaction" and stay there forever because it would be a long-term problem. But maybe the small reactions now are showing that my body is getting cleaner.

It's so hard to deal with the formula thing, just logistically. Once they start a bottle they have to finish it in a reasonable time (hour-ish) or you have to dump it. Sometimes he takes 4 ounces (that's a meal sized bottle) but sometimes he falls asleep and only eats 1 ounce. You wouldn't want to have to throw 3 out, so we try to anticipate based on when he last ate, time of day, pre/post nap or overnight, etc. Luckily you can mix some and leave it in the fridge for a day. We have been mixing several times a day and then pouring out of the mix into a bottle as we dole it out.

Except then he throws me a curve ball and sleeps for 3 hours instead of 6+. Then I have a screaming baby upstairs, a husband who has to get up for work 40 minutes later that I'm trying to let sleep, and no small bottle ready to give - if it's even hunger that is the problem! In nursing world, you try that, and whether his problem is hunger or something else, it usually worked. This whole bottle thing makes me feel like a beginner all over again!