Mueller Family Happenings: Theron's first month

The first month of Theron's life was probably the hardest month of my life. I have never functioned on so little sleep for so long! People will tell you that having a baby is the hardest thing you will ever do, but it doesn't really sink in until you're in the middle of it, changing diapers and feeding your baby for an hour straight just to do it again and hour later. It's crazy how long that month seemed, but it really was such a short amount of time of his life and it is amazing how it is such a distant memory now!

I had a lot of complications stemming from an adhesive allergy that I didn't know I had until after I had the reaction. It was pretty horrible and to get rid of it, I took a round of steroids, which lowered my immune system and this on top of stress and lack of sleep resulted in me getting Shingles. I mean, really? I never even thought I would have to think about that until I was in a nursing home!

Breastfeeding was going great (besides it taking an hour every time), until we took him to get weighed right before his two week visit and found out that he had gained no weight since he was discharged from the hospital. That absolutely broke me and I was pretty much hysterical and felt like I was the worst mom in the world. I didn't understand how he could nurse for an hour and not be getting what he needed.

The next day, the lactation consultant weighed him before and after a feeding and determined that he was only getting a quarter of what he needed from me because he was sucking inefficiently. She told me there was no way to really help him with that, but that we needed to try to increase my milk supply by pumping and start supplementing his feedings with formula. So, I was nursing him, then handing him off to someone else to give him formula while I pumped.

It was so incredibly draining and on top of that, I was getting pretty much no sleep. I was so stressed at this point that I couldn't even fall asleep when I tried.

After two more weeks, I started working half time from home. Probably not the best idea, and I won't do that with my next one. After about three weeks of this feeding schedule, I decided that I needed to switch to formula only. I can't express how guilty I felt about this, but I had a lot of great support from my family and friends. It was the right choice for our family and he has been doing wonderfully with it.

After we started the formula, he became a different baby. Much happier and much more satisfied. He started sleeping better and growing fast.

Here are his first month stats:

On June 17, 2011, he was 21 in. and 7 lbs. 15 oz. (not quite back up to his birth weight)
On July 13, 2011, he was 11 lbs. .5 oz. (he started gaining some weight!)

We took about a million photos of him this first month, but here are a few of my favorites!