By all accounts, he’s a very easy baby. He really doesn’t cry or fuss very much. He does eat a lot, which is good, since he was born pretty small, 6lbs 1oz. The nurses at the hospital actually tried to get me to stay longer because they were worried about his weight, and feared that I wasn’t managing to breastfeed him properly. I refused to stay longer since I knew that what I needed most at that time was to get out of the hospital and away from fussy nurses. They were just trying to be helpful, I know, but at that point I just wanted to go home with my baby, where I’d be more comfortable and relaxed. The nursing was tricky at first, but four weeks later Liam has beefed up to a whooping 8lbs 1oz (as of yesterday).

It’s been difficult to establish a set routine for everything. I’ve sort of been holding off since I’m heading back to work in about two weeks and figured things would probably change then anyway. I’m slowly adjusting to the lack of sleep, although it sometimes means getting things done at a slower pace. They tell you to take naps when the baby takes naps but I never can since I usually want to use that opportunity to get things done. With school and comps coming up, every spare moment is precious. Breastfeeding is a real bonding experience, quite literally bonding. I certainly wouldn’t have it any other way but it does mean having to learn new tricks and talents like eating dinner one handed, typing with a baby balanced on your knees or just getting things done at a mad pace before the next feeding time comes a long. He has days where he sort of “snacks” inbetween his feeds which often makes me feel as though I’m feeding him all day long. Apparently this is pretty normal especially during growing spurts, however, since I am going back to work, the doctor has advised that I try to make his feedings as regular as possible so I’m trying to space them out with at least two hours in-between each feed. Today was the first day that we really did this. He isn’t taking to it really well, but luckily he’s learning to take a pacifier and putting him in the stroller and rolling him back and forth outside seems to calm him until it’s time to eat again. We also have a lovely swing that Mike’s aunt gave us. When he’s in the right mood, he’ll sleep in that thing for hours.

My main concern right now is how I’m going to continue breastfeeding after I go back to work. I just read an interesting article in the New York Times about the difficulties experienced by some mothers who have tried to keep up with nursing when their employers don’t provide the space or sufficient break time for them to pump their milk. Some states have adopted laws to help with this and Oklahoma turns out to be the most recent, however, it doesn’t actually go into effect until November. In addition, the law isn’t very specific, simply stating that the employer has to provide “reasonable break time” for nursing mothers. It also appears that the employer can then request that the mother make up the time she used to pump her milk. This would technically mean working an extra hour since most experts advise that a nursing mother pump three times during an eight hour day for twenty minutes. It’s frustrating since all we want to do is to provide our child with, what most doctors agree to be, the best source of nutrition for a growing infant.

Mike and I are both getting more and more nervous about my return to work. I have to admitt, I would prefer staying at home with Liam. That has always been my wish but it’s unfortunately not realistic for us. Mike and Liam are now both on my medical insurance since it has a much better policy than the one at Mike’s work place. Not only that but we just can’t afford to live on a single salary, not where we stand now at least. For the time being, Mike is going to “stay up” with Liam on my shorter days and my parents are going to help babysit on my longer days and Thursdays when I have class. Hopefully this will be a workable schedule until I find something that pays enough for Mike to stay at home with Liam. Mike has always had intentions to return to school in order to get some experience that would qualify him as a computer programmer (or something like that…PHP, Mysql type stuff). We’ll see how things work out.