A Reader Is Born

For those of you who know me in meat space (it's just how the kids refer to real life, Mom), you will be shocked to learn that I DID NOT PUT THE BOOK IN WITH JANE.  Swear to god.  I came in a couple days ago to find that Awesome Nurses Kristy and Meg (who looks EXACTLY like my three-year-old niece Molly will in twenty years) hunted this book down for Jane, and most of her nurses have been continuing to show it to her.  She really does look at the images. 

Of course, here she has fallen asleep reading.  Like mother, like daughter.   Pity Tom who wakes up most nights to the sound of my book thumping to the floor.

Because things were funky in the unit today, rounds didn't start until 1:30, so for a change I got to listen in while I was kangarooing with Jane (three hours of snoogling!).  She's at a point now where they just run down her stats, the attending says "Anything else?" and mostly no one says anything and they move on.  Awesome.  Today she earned herself another break from the weaning and a drop in her caloric intake.  They've been boosting her meals with additional calories for quite a long while.  Breast milk naturally has 20 calories per ounce; they were adding supplements to boost the level to 27 per ounce.  Chubby has gotten so big that she doesn't need all that, so they brought her back down to 24.   They also increased her feeds from 45 ml to 48, which is over an ounce and a half per feed.  She's getting just shy of 13 ounces of milk a day.  That's like a bottle of beer, plus an extra swig!

I was so cocky about my milk supply a few weeks ago.  Ha. HAHAHAHAHA.  Now I'm thinking of trying to pump more frequently and taking fenugreek and drinking weird hippie teas to make sure I have way more than enough for a VERY long time.  Because you know perfectly well that if I don't, she'll be one of those kids who never is able to nurse and she'll plow right through my dwindling supply in like a month.  But if I do ramp things up, she'll nurse with no problem and I'll be scrambling for ways to use up the extra milk before it goes bad.  Bring an umbrella, it won't rain.