max turned 2 weeks old yesterday. since the last post, a lot has happened and it's been very trying for us.

the friday we were to be discharged from the hospital, max came down with a bad case of jaundice. this was magnified because he wasn't intaking enough milk and outputting enough bilirubin (poop) and consequently he was admitted to the intensive care unit on friday evening. for the next two days, because J was already discharged from the maternity ward, we had no where to stay. we had to keep driving back and forth to the hospital to feed him which didn't exactly speed j's recovery. max was severly dehydrated and his weight dropped from 9lbs 4 oz to 8lbs 1 oz. it was very difficult for us to see him hooked up to IVs and under UV light treatment.

on sunday afternoon, max's bilirubin score dropped dramatically and he was cleared for discharge.

since being home, the difficultly remains but in an unsimilar way. j and i are steadily adjusting to the feeding rotation and how we sleep and it's been extremely wearisome especially on j. every 2 hours j breast fed, then handed him off to me to bottle feed while she pumped. this cycle lasted and hour, and we'd have to repeat it about every hour around the clock. we knew it'd be hard but i guess it took us by surprise how actually hard it was. we still had a certain paranoia that max would lose weight - so in the beginning at least, we overcompensated for it by sticking to a strict feeding regimen and feeding him every 2 hours.

since then we've realized that we need to be more adaptable and every couple of days we've been trying new things (giving him less formula, feeding every 3 hours instead of 2). if it's one thing i learned from this whole experience, it's that you can't necessarily trust professional help. everyone has a different opinions; thus we're trying to figure out what works out best for us.