Tough times

It's been a while since my last post...as it might be guessed, I've been too busy to write.

Since early January, Evan has decided that the only person he wants to be held by is me. No grandma or grandpa, or even Dad. If anyone else holds him, he just cries and cries until I rescue him. A few seconds in my arms, and he calms down. At first I was amused and maybe even a little pleased at this new development, but now I'm just tired. We've tried to let Evan cry it out so that he gets used to being held by Ko-chan again, but what that results in is endless crying that escalates into a hoarse, aching scream that neither Ko-chan nor I can bear to hear. The longest we tried this "method" was forty minutes, and looking back I don't know how we survived emotionally.

By the way, although I can usually calm him after a crying fit he starts in someone else's arms, there are plenty of times I can't calm him when it's just the two of us. I mentioned before that Evan pretty much cries whenever he's not sleeping or eating, and that hasn't changed much, but now he doesn't sleep during the day. So that mean's more crying. I tried really hard to respond to Evan's cries at first, but when his crying takes up much of the day, I don't have the will or the energy to respond right away.

Through spending endless hours trying to figure out what's going on, I've come up with two possibilities. One, he's hungry (back to my breastfeeding worries), and two, he's tired. Because his growth really slowed down his second month and because weighing him before and after a feeding showed he wasn't drinking very much breastmilk, the first conclusion is/was a very real possibility. So I decided to bottlefeed him exclusively. Result? He rejects the bottle. So now I have a baby that's ineffective at the breast and no longer interested in the bottle. The pediatrician suggested that I increase the time between feedings (the good ol' "He'll take the bottle if he's hungry enough" school of thought) and I did, only to have Evan still reject the bottle anyway (he'll maybe drink an ounce). Frequently, I succeed in getting him to drink if he's half asleep (but remember, he doesn't nap during the day). Basically, he's getting what seems like just half the milk that he needs per day, if even that much. Now nearing four months, I doubt that I can correct his latch-on or get him to improve his sucking, so I feel like the only hope is to get him to bottlefeed (yes, I've tried various nipples/bottles). But it sure is hard. Right now it takes an hour or an hour an a half to feed him at night because I first feed him (slowly), burp him, put him back to sleep, and then pump. Multiply that by three because he still gets up three times a night, and you've got a really exhausted mommy.

That's one of the reasons that I've been making a concerted effort to get Evan to nap during the day. Of course it's because he needs the sleep, but it's for me, too. And, unlike the feeding problem, I've been having some success in this front. It takes my lying down with him to get Evan to nap, but that's a small "sacrifice." Every once in a while I can even get up midnap without stirring him.

I hope this is just a phase, and that we'll soon have more of the happy baby that we've only seen glimpses of.

Writing this post cut into my sleep time, but I feel a little better now.

An update...Evan's mood was worse than ever today. Ko-chan thought that maybe he's upset at having reduced access to the breast, so I'm going to try going back to breastfeeding (and then supplementing with pumped milk when he's sleepy).

You know, I expected caring for a baby to be a challenge, but I never thought that something as basic as feeding would be so difficult...