Tomorrow, Riley will be a week old.  He has already taught Jason and I more in those 7 days then i learned from 9 months of reading books.  He was not at all interested in letting his rookie parents adjust to their new role, and couldn't have cared less that parenting on 15 minutes of sleep in 24 hours was not yet in our skill set. 

The doc ok'd me to leave the hospital on Thursday and the pediatrician ok'd Riley as well.  A mere 48 hours after coming into this world, we cut Riley's tags off.

The nurse said, OK, now DON'T let him out of your site no matter WHAT you do.  She was speaking of the fact that there was no way to identify him amongst the other babies on the floor….but it was one of those philosophical moments where the grander implications of what she was saying hit home.

24 hours home and all was going as expected.  Riley did an OK job of sleeping, he was eating and pooping, we were fumbling through feeding, diaper changes, and burping. 

Then, all hell broke loose.  For the next 24 hours we were wandering around holding screeching, screaming child, red faced and hoarse because his parents just weren't getting it. He would nurse for all of 2 minutes, fall asleep, and stay that way until we tried to put him down, then it would start all over again.   We took turns making guesses, but each one Riley promptly told us was a WRONG answer.  Around 3am, my body gave out and we couldn't nurse him anymore, which made things worse.  Luckily, i had been pumping (albeit small amounts) because Jason was eager to try feeding.  We looked at these 2 oz of liquid gold which had taken us approximately 16 hours to procure in multiple installments, warmed it up, careful not to spill a drop, and hoped for the best.

It was not the magical cure we had been hoping for, it did not suddenly make him stop crying and put him to sleep, but he did at least stop screaming, and his face turned from purple to peach again.  He would sort of sleep whenever we were rocking him, but put him down and life would get a whole lot more painful.  So, frustrated and exhausted we began our day yesterday.  In the morning i noticed the beginnings of a diaper rash so we broke out the bottle of cream.  We fed him as often as we could and tested out even more creative strategies and theories as to why Riley HATED to be on his back (i was in the midst of developing intricate psychological mind games "WHAT IF we feed him, set him down in his crib, then go back and pick him up after 5 minutes no matter what he is doing, eventually making the time we wait longer" sort of scenarios).  We wearily took a trip to Target that Riley slept through, and both sets of grandparents came over which he fussed through.  All the while, we were nursing him for as long as possible and pumping small amounts in between.  Somewhere around 11 am we had a breakthrough and got an entire 3 oz's.  We bottled it up to save as our secret weapon.  We went out to dinner, nervously casting glances at our child with every peep he made.  He slept through the entire thing. 

We were gun shy to try and go to bed to say the least, but we worked out a game plan and set it in motion.  At first things were shaping up to be a repeat of Saturday night, Jason took first shift and fed and rocked him.  Confused and sleep deprived I jumped out of bed at around 12:45 am (apparently just after Jason had come to bed), changed him, fed him, held him, and in anticipation of our expected "i know i just fell asleep while eating and was sleeping peacefully for the last half hour in your arms, but if you put me down, I will scream bloody murder and demand to be fed again" phase, I pumped any milk that was left (about 1 oz), put Riley in his crib and crept out of the room.  Sure enough, i was just turning out the light in the kitchen when i heard the all too familiar blood curdling FEED ME NOW scream.  Armed with the bottle and quite satisfied with my ingenious, i picked him up and fed him that last oz.  turned out all the lights and rocked him for 45 minutes.  It WORKED!!!  he slept for the next 2 hours (heaven to me!!) and i repeated the same thing 2 more times during the night.  The 2nd time, he didn't even need to have his secondary bottle.  I was so proud of myself! 

Still tired, but happy that things may be somewhat back on track (haven't heard the death scream in a little over 12 hours).  Jason and I will continue to fumble through, but we are learning every minute of every day!

 By the way, check out the gallery for the pics of Riley