06 April 2012

Actual vs. Adjusted

We've been home with Samuel 4 days now and let's just say neither my husband nor myself have gotten a lot of sleep.  I know, sleep when the baby sleeps, but we're dealing with a baby that sleeps best when being held and I just don't feel comfortable sleeping with him.  I move around a lot in my sleep, so maybe I'm just paranoid that I'll squish him or throw him on the floor.  So for now, I sleep when Ben's taking care of him at night (we trade off feeding times), and catch some cat naps during the day.

Right now it is extremely important that we help Sam sleep as much as he can!  Of course if he is happily awake, we won't stop that either, but we need him sleeping.  Which is why we hold him so much, if we're holding him he sleeps better, and if he sleeps better that means he eats better.  The NICU doctor told us he should eat every 2-4 hours and about 8-10 times per day.  This means we are not training him to sleep through the night right now, which brings me to the title of this post!

Samuel's actual age is currently 10 weeks.  His adjusted age is only 37 weeks gestation, or he should not even be born yet.  That means in some ways he's still kind of like a baby that is at 37 weeks gestation.  As we move past his due date he'll have a different kind of adjusted age.  His due date is the 28th of this month.  That means on the 29th he'll be approximately 3 months actual, but only 1 day adjusted.

Where exactly am I going with all this?  Well, we've been given some great advice on how to get Samuel to sleep through the night and for right now, we just have to file it away for when we'll finally be able to start getting him to sleep through the night.  For now however the game is, get him to eat as often as we can!  Most babies don't come out of the womb sleeping through the night right away (at least that is my understanding) and considering Samuel should not even be out of the womb yet, we have some time to go.

This doesn't affect just sleeping through the night however, there are many developmental markers that work the same way.  Obviously every baby is a little different, but things that babies generally do around 3 months of age, is 6 months adjusted for Samuel.  So just because he's 3 months old (on his due date) does not mean he'll be able to do the same thing as his 3 month old peers, rather he'll do them with his 3 months adjusted age peers (when he's 6 months actual).  Confused yet?  Welcome to my world!

I like to look at it this way, for other babies of his adjusted age, he's quite advanced!  Most of them are still mooching off their mamas and haven't seen the light of day and Samuel is eating on his own and pooping quite well.  So I like to think we have quite the advanced baby for his age!  Maybe he'll even be ahead of his adjusted age peers in those developmental markers (though probably behind his actual age peers).  All this of course won't matter much in a couple of years.

A quick illustration on why it is so important that Samuel keeps eating frequently:  The first couple of days we struggled to get him eating more frequently than 4 hours apart.  If you do the math, that does not equal 8 feedings in a day.  When the visiting nurse came and weighed him, he had actually dropped 2oz from his discharge weight!  Oops!  Well, the last couple of days he's been a much better eater and he is now a half an ounce above his discharge weight!  (discharge: 5# 14.5oz, Wednesday's weight: 5# 12.5oz, today: 5# 15oz).  You see how important it is that we keep him eating as much as we can?  I've already resigned myself to probably not remember much of the month of April....

I hope I wasn't too rambly...  But I'll stop now, I need to wake that little baby up so he can eat and then I'll pump (oh yeah, still pumping after every feeding...).  My time goes quickly with all this feeding stuff going on!

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