Trying to Keep Up

Newborns need to be fed every 2-3 hours around the clock. This makes getting enough sleep a serious challenge.

I don't know how we would have done it without the help of Tati and Noemi (Elisa's sister and mother).

Funny story: just like I sometimes do with bags of groceries, when we first arrived at the door of our apartment, I stepped in and closed the door and left little Vinny in the hallway! Tati said to me, "Uhhh . . . . aren't you forgetting something?" Pretty humiliating, but pretty funny too.

The boys didn't open their eyes much in the first few days, but in the last 24 hours, the will actually open their eyes and look around for a bit in between naps. They are still so tiny (Vincent still weighs less than 5 pounds), as we found out at our first appointment with the pediatrician. It's normal for babies to lose up to 10% of their birth weight and take up to 2 weeks to regain. The important thing is that they are eating 6-8times a day, pooping 3 times and peeing 6 times, all of which we must carefully document as if we are conducting some kind of high school science experiment.

The pediatrician also said that the boys seemed to be doing great, that we look great considering the sleep-deprivation, and that Elisa's milk supply is way ahead of the curve. She was surprised that we haven't needed to supplement with formula since we left the hospital, saying that first-time mothers rarely produce enough milk during the first weeks to satisfy one baby let, alone two. However, she cautioned that Elisa's schedule of pump-feed-pump is "unsustainable" and that we should consider supplementing just so that she can get some rest.

She is proud that she can supply all the nutrition that they need, but she also was thrilled at the idea of skipping a feeding and sleeping more than 2 hours at a time, which she hasn't done in week. So around 7pm, her mother and I will feed the boys the milk she pumped and some formula while she sleeps like the dead.