Night One

Night one was a rough one. Quinn was inconsolable. We had no idea what he was trying to tell us, but he was telling us for 5 hours straight at volume level 11. We were basket cases. We thought we were failures. We thought we were killing him. We phoned Telehealth on an unfortunately busy night and it would 1.5 hrs before they phoned back. We paged our midwife and she phoned back very shortly - thankfully - about 430AM.

She said he was probably hungry and we were in the unfortunate interval where the colostrum wasn't quite enough and the milk hadn't come in yet, but to point him at the boob often and don't be afraid to sleep with him in our bed if that was the only way he'd settle. After 27 verses of "Sweet Virginia" on guitar, he finally settled enough to fall asleep on Bec's chest, and off to bed we went. With regular boob intervals for Quinn, we managed to get fitful sleep off an on for about 5 hours. We had all survived.

It was harrowing, but a valuable learning experience. I liken it to the time when my house and Bec's cats became our house and our cats. At first they hid in the basement for weeks, but after that they ventured out a bit at a time, exploring, and retreated to their safe haven in the basement whenever they freaked themselves out. In our case, it was our first night, we were freaked out and we didn't have that safe place to retreat to. But we still survived it, developed a plan to deal with it, and as I write this two days later, the last two nights have gone much better.

I will also recommend the "Dunston Baby Language" dvd's, which purports to educate you on what your baby's different cries mean, with 5 different "words" they utter, representing hungry, tired, upper gas, lower gas and uncomfortable. I will say that so far I have trouble discerning most of them (on tape or in Quinn) but the "upper gas" one is pretty distinctive and that alone has made a significant contribution to days 2 & 3 going much better. The City of Ottawa handout and the Baby Whisperer book had some writeups on the topic, but listening to actual examples on the dvd's was quite helpful. Plus the dvd's describe the physical actions used to make the sounds, which can make audibly similar sounds discernible if you see how they make them.