Any new parents knows that there’s a lot of people that will scare the hell out of you.  Birthing classes find ways to scare you.  Other parents find ways to scare you.  The internet finds a million ways to scare you.  Basically, it all boils down to the fact that if you do something (or not do something) it will somehow mean an increase chance that your baby will die. 

It’s very difficult to be a parent knowing that most of the decisions you face will lead to this increased risk.  Here are a couple areas that they scare the hell out of…

SIDS – Sudden Infant Death Syndrome:

This is a serious issue and because of great education to the masses, the rate of SIDS has decreased drastically.  However, there’s basically research showing that you can’t do anything without increasing the risk.  Stunning was reading through some information about acid reflux babies in information provided to her by a lactation specialist.  Well, reflux babies have a higher rate of SIDS.  WHY WOULD YOU HAVE THIS IN THERE?!?  People are reading this information because their kids have this and there’s little that can be done about it, but thanks for making us think about the fact that SIDS can happen because of it. 

Then there’s people on the internet.  We were researching the idea of supplementing with formula at night and breastfeeding during the day.  We ran across a Yahoo! Answers where someone said a baby would sleep better at night with formula since they don’t get as hungry as fast.  This was a response:

Babies aren't supposed to sleep through the night, this increases risk of SIDS. Definitely do not let them sleep more than five hours at a time.

Thanks.  (By the way, the formula made him sleep no longer at night.)

Breastfeeding versus Formula:

I’m with people that breastfeeding is awesome.  It makes sense that the thing babies need most would be in the milk refined for thousands and thousands of years.  However, sometimes, such as our case, it doesn’t work…  and people need to use formula.  WOW!  Search the internet to see what moms have to say about this.  Basically, if you give formula… your baby will be ADHD, dumb, unlikely to succeed in life, your bad parents for not giving breastmilk, your lazy, your baby will grow up to wear his hat backwards, and anything else that could go wrong will go wrong. 

There are other areas, like the carseat, germs, etc that have the same fear mongering associated with it.  It really makes parenting more difficult as you might imagine. So far though, I’m happy to report Junior is still alive.

I don’t want to jinx anything at all, but I want you to know that on Wednesday night Junior had his best night ever.  It was great and we felt like real parents.  He was chill and didn’t cry once after 6pm to this writing (I’m writing it at 8pm)!  Now, I doubt things will continue to go this well, but I wanted to share in the joy that we at least had a few hours of sanity in our house.

I want to say though that this whole being a father thing is a lot harder to deal with than what I thought it would be.  It seems each night there’s a whole new set of emotions.  Explaining those emotions and telling people about them can also make you look like a real big jerk.  However, I want to try… my hope is that other fathers and people suffering with a child that has acid reflux, colic, milk protein allergy, or anything that makes a baby cry for hours and hours with no consoling can read this and hopefully know that these emotions are normal…

However, before I talk about them, I want you to know that I absolutely adore my son.  I love him more than I ever thought possible. 

• Sadness:  Imagine looking at a person you love more than this world and watching him suffer and know there is nothing that you can do to solve the problem for the kid.  When Junior cried from this, he would cry so hard his face would turn bright red and he couldn’t even get a gasp of air because of it.  He was gasping for air so that he can cry more.  It’s absolutely terrible.
• Frustration: When there’s nothing you can do, and especially when you don’t even know what is wrong, it is the most frustrating thing in the world to hold a baby that will not stop crying.  There are so many shameful thoughts that run through your mind in this situation that it will make you even more frustrated you’re thinking that.  In the height of the crying, I wanted someone else to take him away so that I wouldn’t have to hear it anymore.  How terrible is that?  I wanted to be a dad like no other and now I just want him to go away?
• Guilt:  I felt terrible guilt for feeling so frustrated.  I’m a very even keel guy.  I never get angry or frustrated, so it was difficult to be in that position.  You just feel guilty and like you’re a terrible parent because you can’t handle it. 
• Anger: Two nights ago, I was so angry that I was put in this situation.  Why, of all people and of all babies, were we given one that is in so much pain?  That’s preventing us from enjoying his first weeks on Earth?  I was mad at God for doing that to me, to my wife, to Jack… it didn’t seem fair and it still doesn’t.  The bible is full of anger toward God, but it doesn’t make you feel better knowing that. 

Those are the main ones I guess.  I know I’ll feel them again.  I know I feel terrible that I’ve felt them already.  People keep telling us that he’ll get better and this will only last for a few months… Unfortunately, when you just got done with month one… it’s hard to hear it could last 10 months.  We’ll get through it though.  Just needs some prayers for patience and healing and perseverance.  And to anyone that got here from searching Google, please know that the frustration is normal and you’ll get through it.  Just take some time to breath and know the baby is just as frustrated and angry as you are.

From the wife today:

This is a long post—I am hesitant to write it because we have so many friends who are trying to have/expecting babies. I don’t want to scare anyone into thinking that parenthood is dreadful. So I will say that what we are going through, although not terribly uncommon, is not normal. My sister and brother both have babies who are happy and rarely fussy and sleep for hours at a time.

I didn’t have many expectations for motherhood but the one that I did have was that I would breastfeed for as long as possible (hoping to meet that 1 year mark). John and I attended the nursing 101 class and had many discussions about how he could encourage me to keep nursing even when I started to think I didn’t want to anymore. I think that we thought the hardest thing about nursing would be the “inconvenience” of it. Wrong.

First, for some reason, I developed a strange side effect of nursing: I grew increasingly nauseous every time Junior ate. I’m talking first trimester, I-might-puke-all-over-this-kid sick. That lasted about 2 weeks and then it died off. On top of that, Junior would only latch every once in awhile. We had to give him bottles half the time because he simply wouldn’t latch. Finally, early last week, we had a good rhythm: he finally started latching but he would nurse for a full hour and then would want to eat again in an hour or less. Then he began to scream bloody murder after every nursing session. A lactation specialist told me that he was just frustrated because bottles are so much faster and he was frustrated that he couldn’t get that same fast feeding from me. Of course, I thought this was ridiculous because if that were the case, wouldn’t he scream at the beginning of the feeding? After a few days of this, we started giving him a bottle when he would start crying. Luckily, I had a bit of a supply built up of pumped milk so we were good to go. Except for the fact that the kiddo usually drank 3 oz even AFTER a 60 minute feeding. We decided that something must be wrong with my supply. I went back to the lactation consultant and we found out that Junior was only getting 1 oz from me. Considering that he could down a 4 oz bottle with no problems, we were beginning to get concerned that my milk supply was low. After comparing what I was pumping to what is normal, I realized that I have a horribly low supply. Enter fenugreek and pancake smell. Unfortunately, although I did begin smelling like maple syrup, my supply remained the same. I can’t tell you how sad this all made me—I had convinced myself that I would nurse for a year and now I couldn’t even provide my son with 1/4 of what he needed at each feeding. We decided that I would stop nursing and only pump—we’d give Junior my milk from bottles during the day and formula at night (we just didn’t have enough of my milk to go without formula). It was simply too hard to nurse for 60 minutes, give a bottle, settle Junior down, and then pump to get any excess that Junior had missed (and to get a supply up for the bottles we now had to feed him). By the time all that was over, I only had about 45 minutes before Junior was ready to eat again. I was going crazy. I should say that I think it’s a shame that people make women feel so guilty about their decisions regarding nursing. There are people that are so pro-breastmilk that they forget that there is a human behind those boobs who needs sleep and sanity. I was not going to be a good mom to Junior if I kept that up. But everything I read and almost every “professional” I talked to made me feel like I was selfish if I stopped nursing, even though I couldn’t satiate Junior if I continued. Anyway, we made our decision and that first day was great! I gave Junior bottles when he got hungry and then pumped right away. He was way more chill because he didn’t spend all that time screaming out of frustration that he wasn’t getting enough food. John and I thought we’d turned a corner and that we would FINALLY have a happy baby. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

The last week or so, Junior has started to get hysterical after every feeding—even from the bottle (which he normally loves). It got worse and worse to the point that he would scream bloody murder during a feeding and for about an hour afterward. He was/is absolutely inconsolable. He is so hungry but he will take a few sips and then scream and scream and scream. So he wasn’t eating as much but then he’d wake up an hour later starving. And we’d go through it again. We finally got in to see the pediatrician and found out the news: our sweet little boy has both acid reflux and a milk protein allergy. Basically, he has such bad acid that his throat is totally raw. So every time he eats, it upsets that already irritated esophagus and he screams out of pain. But, of course, he’s still hungry so he has to basically suck it up and eat anyway—despite the fact that he is in agony. So when I thought that he was mad at not getting enough milk from me, he was actually in pain because his stomach had begun sending up all that acid to his esophagus. So low milk supply + acid reflux = super unhappy Junior.

It is, by far, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. It is impossible to watch him in such pain. He screams to the point where no noise comes out—one of those horrible, guttural cries. Add to that the fact that there is NOTHING we can do to calm him down or make him feel better. Mix in the lack of sleep because he truly won’t doze for long enough for us to fall asleep too. We usually get an hour of sleep and then he’s up for an hour and a half screaming. Rinse and repeat. It’s horrible. But at least now we have a diagnosis. The pediatrician prescribed Zantac—it’s weird and sad giving my one month old prescription medication but we are praying that it will work. We also switched to a special (and freaking expensive!) formula that is supposed to neutralize acid in his stomach so it won’t come up to his throat. Finally, I have to cut out all milk and milk proteins from my diet so that it doesn’t pass to my milk (and thus to Junior). I didn’t think it would be that hard because it’s easy to avoid cheese, yogurt, etc. But I was wrong: milk proteins are in everything! Even the stuff where milk is removed still has the proteins left. We are so praying that this will all heal our little boy. The doctor said not to expect him to be better for about two weeks (TWO WEEKS?!?!?!) and we are sincerely asking for you to pray that it works. Today was his first full day on all the medicine, formula, etc. and there wasn’t much improvement. He went three feedings without screaming but then freaked out again (I am writing this post in the middle of the night after one of his scream fests). I really cannot tell you how much we’d appreciate your prayers. Thanks everyone!

Almost all kids deal with the thing called jaundice at one point or another.  (Well, I guess it’s usually within the first few days of life that they deal with it, but you get what I mean… it affects a lot of children.)  Junior was one of those kids. 

When we left the hospital, the nurses said there were no signs of jaundice.  24 hours later, his nose had a crisp yellow and the whites of his eyes were not very white anymore.  Therefore, we called the doctor and headed in that day.  When you have a baby, it seems you go to the doctor a lot.

It’s amazing how quickly you can get attachment to your child.  While I knew everything was going to be okay (again, most children get jaundice), it was still tough to know that there is something wrong with your baby.  Of course, it didn’t help that the nurse practitioner messed up the severity.  The first time she told us, and as we left the office, she had us believing that Junior was at “high” risk from jaundice.  In reality, it was moderate.  That’s a big difference for parents who are both good at worrying. 

Anyway, it led to an uncomfortable 24 hour period.  We had to sunbathe Junior:

We also had to feed him more..  Since we were breastfeeding it meant Stunning had a lot of work to do.. Here were the orders: 1) Feed Junior from the boob every three hours.  2) After feeding him give him a bottle of pumped breast milk. 3) Pump breast milk 1.5 hours after the start of a feeding.

That doesn’t sound too bad.  However, when you realize it takes this kid 30 minutes to feed, which means when he’s done feeding, she had 60 minutes before pumping.  Then she’d have to pump for 30 minutes to get enough milk. Then feed him 60 minutes later.  After pumping, she would wash everything, change his diaper, get him to settle down.  She did this for 24 hours.  Talk about torture and making you feel like a milking machine… 

Anyway, after all that work we went back to the doctor the next day and found out his levels had actually gone up.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because increased levels can be sustained as he gets older.  However, he was still at the “moderate” risk level.  This meant we faced another 24 hours of this torture. 

When we went to the doctor’s the next day, we discovered his levels had decreased and we rejoiced.  It was 72 hours of worry, torture, and pretty crazy period of his life.  He’s done with jaundice now though, so we can be happy.

However, I must say, for as bad as Junior had it.   His cousin had it much worse.  He had to go back to the hospital.  He got better after being under a light bath for 24 hours.  Now that’s torture!

Poor little dude.

Well, now that I’m a dad, I am pretty sure I know everything now.  In fact, from my knowledge of being a young child I remember knowing that my Dad knew pretty much everything.  Of course, now that I’m in that same situation, I have realized that fathers don’t really know as much as their kids think they do.  In just the first week of being a dad, there have been challenges and unknowns at pretty much every corner.

There’s really nowhere to begin that I can accurately describe to you everything that has happened over the past week.  However, I wanted to mention a few things:

1. Perhaps I’m a weirdy, but I did not have that life altering “My life has changed since I saw my son” moment when I first saw him.  I definitely got teary-eyed, but that entire impact of the new situation has not hit me.  People say it will change your entire view of life, and while Junior has changed my life (that’s an understatement), I would say I carry the same worldview that I did a week ago.  God is good and the world is amazing, but I’ve known that for a long time now.
2. Since we’re now home, I kind of wish I could go back to the hospital.  :-)  People, with advanced degrees, were available at every call.  They were all very friendly and if I had a question or if a problem arose, they would take care of it.  Now, all I have is Google.
3. When you’re baby is crying and you can’t figure out why and there’s nothing you can do to settle him down… well, that might be the most frustrating moment of a person’s life.  I told him last night, “I can’t wait until your older so we can just talk about what is bothering you.”  He responded by screaming louder.  (Oh… he was hungry…)
4. Somehow you’re ability to operate on small amounts of sleep increases tremendously when there’s another life depending on you waking up.
5. My wife is amazing.  Absolutely amazing.

Of course, there’s much more to come.