the small guy is now more than 2 weeks old and successfully took Siepke’s position as the “center of attention” of the house :)
He also managed to eliminate all my other hobbies, passions and even my night sleep. I am always tired :P
Next thing he will eliminate is the positive balance on my checkings account, I fear ;)

I am trying to get into a “normal” rhythm again after all this.. going to work helps a lot, so do my colleagues. But I really don’t know anymore where is up and where is down.. all seems distorted and shifted.. things that were important all of a sudden are irrelevant and my life all of a sudden is circling around other things. Well, one thing to be precise – and I don’t think that’s so bad :)

There were some “issues” that made the whole thing a little unpleasant, for example he kepy falling asleep while eating, effectively not eating enough.
Last week Anna “discovered” that his skin is still a little yellow. (that’s pretty tricky having yellow/orange walls and bedsheets) – while being at the consultation office (where we have to go now every now and then and get his “progress” reported…)

For the moment, Anna’s mother is helping a lot, giving me time to get back to work and into my rhythm and helping Anna to focus on Vincent, he really needs lots of attention.

Well, I want to write this down to remember it – examples of bad communication.
These people told her that she doesn’t give him enough food and that he looks yellow. Very tactical, to tell this to a young mother who already has 1001 things on her head that can go wrong (plus a medical education that gave her 1001 baby-diseases that she can think about).
A long talk with the midwife (who was nice enough to come over and look at him) revealed that the colour really was suboptimal so off to the hospital we went. Checking Bilirubine levels at the emergency room.
It turned out that everything is okay with his blood levels (good!) but indeed he is not eating enough and his weight should be higher.
So Anna went to a pediatric and then to a “lactation-expert” (didn’t know this existed!) and discussed her feeding technology with her.. revealing that her breast just seems not to produce enough (not being stimulated enough)
So now after every feeding (in the natural way) she continues with a pump, getting out half a bottle more which is then my privilege to “force-feed” the small guy. :)
It’s been three days now and now he is eating the 240 ml he is supposed to take in every day – also the yellowness has diminished. Knock on wood!