Charlie's First Week

We made it through the first week! Here are some notes from our first week home...

• Thank Goodness my Mom stayed with us for a week! Kyle slept in the guestroom while Mom &  I slept in my room with Charlie. During the day I could focus on Charlie while she picked up the house and took care of Kyle & I.
• The dogs reacted to Charlie exactly how we expected. Jackie is very interested in him and likes to gently lick his toes, hands, and the top of his head. When Charlie cries, Jackie whimpers. Cody likes to look at him and smell him but he mostly walks around looking sad that he's not getting as much attention.
• Charlie is a lot more expressive than I expected him to be at this age. We love watching his face as he sleeps and hearing his little coos and cries when he's dreaming. He smiles, frowns, scowls, purses his lips, and even looks like he's about to start screaming, only to suddenly smile again. Who knows what he's dreaming about?!
• Charlie loves to suck on anything...especially a pacifier. Even when he absolutely refuses to eat any more, he'll take a pacifier.
• Charlie seems freakishly strong, especially with his head/neck, but maybe I didn't realize how strong newborns are
• The day after our appointment with the Pediatrician (more on that below), Charlie woke up with extremely goopy eyes. I figured it was just clogged tear ducts but (luckily) my Mom thought it was worse than that and suggested we call the Doctor. Sure enough, they wanted us to come in and turned out that Charlie had pink eye in both eyes! They told us it's really common in newborns. We got an antibiotic ointment that we've been putting in his eyes 4 times a day. Amazingly it doesn't seem to bother him.
• Charlie's first visit to the Pediatrician was Wednesday, December 29th. He is healthy, weighed 6 lb 8 oz, and measured 19 inches long. By Jan 3, 10 days after he was born, he had regained his birthweight of 6 lb, 14 oz.
• My biggest challenge with Charlie right now is that he never seems to wake up on his own to eat. I have to wake him up 95% of the time. At night I set an alarm for every 3 hours to get up and wake him. One night I slept through the alarm and when I woke up - 5 hours later - he was still asleep. It's really scary to me that he can sleep that long. Everything I read says that newborns will want to eat every 2-3 hours, but he just sleeps. Once he's awake, he'll eat, but he falls asleep while eating. I met with a lactation consultant who told me I have to undress him down to his diaper every time he eats and touch his belly or side with a cold washcloth every time he stops eating. It does help but I can still only get him to eat for 20 minutes. The lactation consultant wants him to eat for at least 25-30 minutes. Even when I can get him awake again (like with a cold wet washcloth on his face or changing his diaper), he is still uninterested after 20 minutes. Their concern is that he isn't getting enough to eat because he is sleeping through his internal "hunger cues". In addition to that, newborns usually eat 8-12 times each 24 hours. Charlie only wants to eat 6-7 times in 24 hours. So needless to say, it was a huge relief to me that he is back up to his birthweight.
• I'll do another post with pictures and video. I wanted to get all this typed up before I forget it...but I've got to wake Charlie to eat now so the pictures and video will have to come later.