James & Carolanne

I thought that since I had some time right now I would write a post for the blog about how life has been going. Right now Benjamin is taking a nap so I have some free time to do other things.

Life with a baby can be really demanding, but really rewarding too. Benjamin looks to us to fulfill all his needs.

The last Wednesday of June Benjamin weighed 8lb 9oz.(that was my birth weight) It took him a little longer to get back to his birth weight, but I did not mind, because this meant he was smaller for a longer period of time. Babies already grow up so fast, so to get to have him smaller for a longer period is a blessing. Along with this whole issue of him being smaller also meant that he was "cluster feeding" meaning that he was always hungry, so we had to supplement a bottle of formula at night. My body just could not keep up to his demand and could not produce milk fast enough when he was cluster feeding.

He's getting better at night. He is now in his own room! We have been giving him the bottle of formula before bed and then putting him down to sleep with his music softly playing. If he cries we leave him for 3 minutes and then we go in to comfort him, but we do not pick him up and we talk in a quite voice. We stay there for a couple minutes and then leave regardless if he's crying or not. If he cries again we wait 5 minutes and then repeat the rest and every time after that we wait 10 minutes before going in to comfort him. Normally he settles down before we get to the 10 minute intervals, but there has been a couple times where we have had to wait for 10 minutes. It's hard listening to him cry, but it is worth it for all our sakes. I think that this has been helping us to get more sleep as well as being better able to care for Benjamin's needs. It's been making us less frustrated.