"Sleeping like a baby": oversupply and the fussy infant

One of the most stupid sayings ever.  Babies don't sleep.  They nap.  All day long.  Especially during the day and then it's party, party, party all night long.  Everybody and their mother would always make remarks about bracing myself for years of sleepless nights; they would smile knowingly, taking some perverse pleasure in knowing that I was to unwillingly join this sleepless club soon.  When I was pregnant, as I suspect most pregnant women think, I thought that these people were full of crap, exaggerating what happened to them just for the sake of interesting, juicy conversation.  I had it in my head that MY baby was going to be different: he would inherit my and Billy's genes for sleeping and sleep for stretches at a time.  Yeah right...that's a big, fat FAIL.  Desmond sleeps for hours at a time during the day, waking up to nurse and then he's back asleep.  He's up for the night at about midnight and stays up until 5 or 6 in the morning. 

Trying to pacify a gassy, poopy baby.

Add to this the fact that if he's awake, he's fussing and sometimes screaming his head off because he's got gas or is trying to poop.  For the first 1.5-2 weeks, he was doing wonderfully.  He was nursing, pooping, and sleeping and wasn't fussing at all.  Now, he brings his legs up close to his stomach and, in between screams, grunts and pushes.  What feels and sounds like a heavy load is actually a very wimpy poop.  And it's green instead of that golden yellow color and it has tons of mucus in it.  Yep.  Booger poops.

 Color of Desmond's poops. 

So, as I scour the internet and the WAB (womanly art of breastfeeding), I find that I may have an issue with oversupply, which means that I produce way too much milk.  Poor little Desmond is finally just figuring out how to latch on correctly and now he has to deal with being bombarded with a ton of foremilk (the watery milk that leaks out when you first go to nurse).  He sometimes starts gulping loudly (which adds more gas to his gut because he ends up swallowing a lot of air) and sometimes looks like he's about to choke!  He ends up getting full quickly on the foremilk and doesn't have a chance to drink the hindmilk (this is the milk that's way up in your milk ducts...this is the "dessert" of the meal.  I call it the ice cream since it's high in fat and acts as a laxative). 

Initially, I was switching breasts as soon as he "finished."  By "finished," I mean if he started slowing down his sucking or doing those flutter sucks or  actually turns his face away.  But what was happening was that he was getting just foremilk from both breasts and none of the hindmilk.  So, after reading WAB and other posts on the internet and getting advice from Christy, I started "block" feeding, where I will feed Desmond as often as he wants to from one breast only for a period of 4 hours and then I'll switch to the other breast.  This gives each breast a break (decreases demand which will hopefully decrease my supply a bit) and allows Desmond to have access to the hindmilk in each breast. 

 How cute is this???  Totally not posed!  For those of you who can't figure out what's going on, Desmond is propping himself up while he's nursing.

We have started seeing a little bit of improvement: last night, after being up with him from 1-4 in the morning, he blissfully slept for 5 hours!  and he had poops that started resembling the golden yellow variety we have been waiting for. 

 Happy well-rested, well-pooped Desmond!

By the way, 3 years ago, I would have vomited all over myself if I knew that I was going to spend a whole blog post talking about a baby's eating, pooping, and sleeping habits.  This has to be incredibly boring for my non-parent friends and relatives.  My younger self empathizes with you :)