Lessons Learned

And now tht we are on the home stretch and awaiting these next 36 hours, we find ourselves reflecting on how we got here. It didnt help that little Vincent spent his whole time in the womb sucking on his tongue and fingers. Then, he was born with elevated bilirubin levels, which is fairly common for Asian males. We wanted to exclusively breastfeed and he was able to pass his meconium in just a couple days (36 hrs -see Shu's poopgress reports for more info). We saw a lactation consultant at the hospital who identified the it would be tough for us to identify if Vincent was actually eating since his sucking talents allowed him to latch on ineffeciently without it being detected. So, we closely monitored his poop and pee output. And, between that and checking his bili levels we realized that he wasn't getting enough. At some point the little guy got his UTI and who knows when that happened, but it has been interesting to talk to the nurses and see that this is not uncommon. Should we have supplemented those first days? Did he really need the bili blanket? Well, all we know is that he's doing really well now and that he was able to kick and infection which we would have had a hard time identifying. Live and learn. We'll write more later...