Homebound

Emmett did great in his first car ride! He slept the entire way home. We were so eager to get home, but as any dog parent would be, I was starting to get nervous about how the dogs would react to Emmett.

For those of you who don't know, we have two dogs, Charlie and Fiona. Fiona is such an easy going pup, so I was not at all worried about her with Emmett. However, our trouble child, Charlie, likes lots and lots of attention. He also has pretty bad anxiety and needs to establish trust with people before he feels comfortable with their presence, so I was more worried about his reaction to Emmett.

To my surprise, both Charlie and Fiona adored their new brother. It was a huge relief! They quickly adjusted to all the baby items that took over their play space and they would make sure to greet Emmett at least once a day by giving him kisses on the top of his head. My mama heart was so full!💗

Emmett continued to do great at home with his new bottle and formula. A few days after getting home, we went to his first doctors appointment to check in on his weight and progress. Emmett's weight had increased since we left the hospital, which was great! Our Pediatrician did want to continue to air on the side of caution, so he recommended we continue the formula and come back in one week for another weight check. I continued to pump at home and started a freezer stash of breastmilk in hopes to be able to feed it to Emmett very soon. After one week passed, we went back to the doctors for another weight check and again Emmett's weight increased. Even though at this point Emmett was back to his birthweight, they recommended us continuing the formula for a little longer just to be sure his weight gain continues in a positive direction. Again, the Pediatrician wanted us to return in another week for another weight check.

Emmett's weight continued to increase week after week at a slow, steady rate. We continued the formula for awhile, but I started to get worried that Emmett would get so used to the formula that he would not take my breastmilk when I would eventually be able to introduce it to him. I also started feeling frustrated that I was doing all this hard work pumping every two hours around the clock and he couldn't even take my milk, so I decided to start adding some breastmilk into his diet due to his positive weight gain. We did an every other bottle rotation with breastmilk and formula and his weight continued to increase, which was such a great feeling! We continued this rotation for some time and kept checking in on his weight at the doctors until everything came to hault on June 4th.

Emmett all the sudden started becoming super fussy after feeds, extremely gassy, not taking bottles well, and just overall looked uncomfortable. I immediately attributed it to my breastmilk thinking it must have been something I ate! We stopped the breastmilk bottles for a couple days and he didn't improve, so I was then sure he was having a reaction to the higher calorie formula.

I read somewhere online that it can take up to two weeks for babies to get used to new formula, so with us being just outside of that timeframe I felt confident that this was definitely the cause of Emmett's symptoms.

We decided to switch Emmett's formula to Enfamil Gentlease as it is a partially hydrolyzed formula making it easier for babies to digest. He immediately began to improve and was his normal happy self again!