Our first few days alone together

So Monday, August 22nd was our first full day together without daddy and without any friends or family to help out. Jason had returned to work by this point and all of our guests and visitors had gone home. It was now officially just me and Bree. And it turns out, this wasn't as much of an easy transition as I would have hoped. By now, I felt like I had gotten a routine down with Bree, knew approximately when and how often she would wake up at night, and what to expect when she did wake up. Well, we had one little problem in this equation, Bree hit a bit of a hungry streak the night before and finished up all of the breast milk, which I was hoping would last until Tuesday. So we switched her over to Enfamil newborn formula. We started with 2 oz to see how much she would need. She guzzled the 2 oz down and appeared hungry for more, problem was each and every time a gave her a little bit more she fire-hydrant spit-up, then of course appeared hungry again. She would eventually quiet down and fall asleep after I refused to give her more food, but of course this left me with a mess of spit-up to clean. So we did this formula dance for quite awhile. Now, what also changed was Bree's sleeping habits. So in the wee hours of Monday morning, rather than waking up every 3-4 hours (sometimes longer than that), Bree was now waking up every 1-2.5 hours, causing me to get a very restless, sleepless night. Mixed in with the explosive spit-ups and an explosive diaper, you can guess that I was a crying ball of mess that night. At one point, Bree had an explosive diaper which leaked all over her swaddle blanket. I cleaned and changed Bree, put her in her crib, cleaned the swaddle blanket in the bathroom sink, only to realize that now the bathroom sink had baby poo on it and needed to be cleaned as well. Now this is all before Bree was fed, so Bree is in her crib crying and I'm in the bathroom cleaning the sink doing the same thing! We continued this dance all Monday and even into Tuesday. Monday night into Tuesday morning was just as bad, two explosive diapers leaking onto two different swaddle blankets and still waking up every 2 hours. Thankfully, when Jason called home on Tuesday to check in with me and Bree, he heard the frustration, tiredness, and sadness in my voice and offered to do some research while on his lunch break. He is a miracle worker, I swear!! A few hours later I received a wondrous call from Jason saying that he got on some mommy blogs and formula review sites and found a story very similar to ours. The remedy: switching formulas. So after some thought, we decided to switch Bree over to Similac Advanced and what a change!! She is now keeping all her formula down (well minus the times that she refuses to burp for us....sounds like a stubborn child like her daddy!) and is back to sleeping for 3-5 hours again! I can't believe the difference! It's amazing how quickly the negative thoughts about mommyhood will enter one's mind when one is sleep deprived. I had to keep telling myself, "you'll feel better when you get some sleep." And sure enough, I was right. At night, without any sleep, the smallest of problems made me tear up and cry, but during the day after a nap, Bree could be screaming her pretty little head off and it wouldn't cause me to tear up at all. All I've got to say is thank you Jason for finding us an answer to our sleep deprived problem and thank you Similac for making a formula that my precious little baby loves!!!

Oh and P.S. I forgot to mention that on our first day together, Bree also decided to get a plugged tear duct causing her right eye to become goopy and runny. Thankfully, after a quick call to the doctor my nervousness was calmed and in just a day or so her eye returned to normal.