This post was originally written June 7, 2007 when Zacharie was 1 week old.
[twitter]The most frustrating part about being parents for Jen and I is not the lack of sleep, or the delicate fumbling while we try to bathe our son, or the stinky diapers – it’s the variety of information we receive on a daily basis.
From breast feeding nazis, to formula fiends, to schedule crazed bureaucrats, Jen and I have been driving ourselves nuts trying to be “the perfect parents.”
Jen has been having difficulty breast feeding, the whole 4 days in the hospital we had 6 nurses giving us 8 different ways to do things. Now that we’re home there are community nurses and lactation consultants offering even more ways to get it done.
Do we feed 8 times a day or when he’s hungry? Do we wake him up at night to feed on a schedule, or leave him be? Each person has a different answer. We are absolutely killing ourselves trying to keep to everyone else’s schedule.
We’re nervous about feeding. In the beginning he dropped over 9% of weight, that’s a little high of normal range, so we’ve been extra careful. We do a mix of breast feeding and pumped breast milk, but we don’t know how many mls a day he should get. We keep charts and notes and logs and every person we talk to gives us different advice.
We saw the doctor today who told us to chill out. He’s getting fed. He’s a big boy. He’s put all his birth weight back in a week, when it normally takes 2. Jen and I are going crazy for nothing.
We’re going to try and sleep tonight. We’re going to let Z tell us when he’s hungry instead of trying to anticipate the perfect timing for the perfect latch.
We’re good parents and we’re going to just keep doing our best, damn the rest.