Does it smell like pancakes and the great poop explosion!

Jude will be 2 weeks old tomorrow.  Crazy to think about that.  We waited so long for a little guy and here he is and has been for 2 weeks!  Being a new mom is challenging.  I wish I could always know what he wanted.  I will check his diaper 3 times and feed him and rock him and hold him and sing to him and sometimes, he just needs to cry it out.  I feel like we are getting the hang of each other a little more everyday.

We decided to bottle feed him breast milk as much as possible and formula when I don’t make enough.  My milk is still pretty wussy.  At this point, I am only pumping enough to mix half breast milk with half formula for his bottles.  He drinks 2.5-3 oz every 2-3 hours, so I can not keep up!  I started taking an herb to help make more breast milk and now I am pumping 40 ml instead of 20, so that is an increase, but still not enough to keep up with his appetite.  The herb has a strange side effect.  It makes your pee smell like maple syrup.  Yes, my pee smells like pancakes!  The new method of feeding him has taken so much stress off worrying whether he gets enough to eat.  I still let him breast feed twice a day just to stimulate, but he is just not getting much milk that way.

The other day, Liz was changing him and I was pumping across the room when little guy had a crazy poop explosion!  He was not even aimed up, but just pooped that hard.  Somehow, Liz got out of the way, but I was splattered across the room!  I was pumping, so my hands were busy holding the pumps, so Liz had to towel me off.  He still has not peed when getting his diaper changed, but he pees thru everything.  He has peed in his crib twice today and once on Liz today.  We are experimenting with different diapers to try to not let him get soaked on a regular basis, but have not found a perfect one quite yet.

Liz goes back to work on Friday and I am really nervous to be by myself.  The pumping for 20 minutes every 3 hrs is what makes me nervous.  I can’t stand to just let him cry, so I am hoping he is chill that day and can just hang out for 20 minutes in his swing or asleep somewhere.  It will be a work in progress I think as far as working that out for both of us.

Overall, I feel better everyday.  I feel like we are making major progress as a new family and we just love him more than anything in the world.  Just when he cries for hours and I feel like I am doing nothing right, he will fall asleep and just look like a little angel in my arms.  We did a small photo shoot for his birth announcements today, so I will leave you with some pictures!
-S