Home Sweet Home

Hunter's home.  :)  He came home on Sunday evening & he's settled right in.

I'm scared to talk about how good he is because... well, he's so good.  I know he's still in the sleepy newborn phase, but he has seriously mayyyybe cried for a total of 2 minutes in the past few days.  Total.  He's on a NICU schedule... but not really because he was always Ad Lib in the NICU, but he's eating pretty much every 3 to 4 hours on the dot.  (For an hour or more, but still, so easy.)

He's pretty much exclusively nursing.  He has to get a small bottle 1x a day with his iron & vitamin.  And I'm also nervous because I've always known how much my kiddos were eating so it's so hard not to really know.   (I'm so tempted to rent a baby scale!)  So, though he eats for what seems like forever and then he seems content and sleepy, I have snuck in a few smaller bottles just to be sure that he was getting some milk... a 20ml bottle last night and then his vitamin bottle today was 50ml (as opposed to the "needed" 10ml).  It's just so hard to not know that (or if) he's eating what he needs!

As far as nursing/pumping, I'm not sure exactly how to do that either!  With the girls I was so focused on getting my supply up to support the 2 of them that I focused much more on pumping than nursing.  Now I know I'm making more than enough, BUT with him eating sometimes 4 (or even 5) hours I'm afraid that my supply will drastically dwindle because I was pumping every 1.5 to 2 hours when he was in the NICU.  SO what I'm doing... I feed him then when he is satisfied I pump for 15 to 20 minutes.  Then I usually pump again another hour or so later.  Then he wakes up another hour or two later & the cycle starts again.  But part of me knows I don't need to pump... but the neurotic part of me that loves the numbers makes me pump... (and I already have about 70oz of frozen milk in the deep freezer...).

So... what were your solutions?  And how do you get over the need to know that you babe is getting all they need?  (He was up 2.5oz yesterday at his check up over his discharge weight, so I do know he's eating.)