The Birth and those early daze!

My son was born 3 weeks early on the 23rd of December after being induced due to pre-eclampsia.  My labour was only 5 hrs long, but believe me time seemed to have frozen and distorted as I lived those 5 hours.  It was a mostly beautiful birth, without any pain relief but as with most births there were some drama.  My little 7lB boy got stuck on my hip and we pushed for almost two hours before my gorgeous midwives convinced the doctor to let me push in a different position.

When he was born we refused vitamin K and vaccinations as I was just entering the world of 'natural parenting' and didn't see the need in traumatising him any further.  He was beautiful and serene.  He slept for hours and hours, he rarely cried...and that's when things started to go pear shaped

By day three he was jaundiced, had lost a significant amount of his birth weight and had crystals in his urine.  Although he was breastfeeding every couple of hours he would often fall asleep at the breast.  So many people told me, "he'll feed when he's hungry" but my little man must have missed that lesson.  By day 4 he was being fed expressed milk and formula through a syringe.  By day 5 he was sometimes taking a bottle.  By day 7 I was expressing every hour while trying to feed him down a supply line and so sleep deprived I barely even remember those day.

By 14 days we had worked out a good rhythm, using a combination of shields and bottle feeding expressed breastmilk every hour and a half.  It took us until 9 months of age to finally be able to breastfeed without any shields but it was worth it!  We often wonder now if these were the first signs of signs of his autism; he still doesn't seem to feel hunger or thirst and he is very fussy about the texture of foods and the utensils he eats with.

He was what was termed a "high needs baby".  Which seemed to basically mean he liked to be held a lot.  He cruised around in a sling a lot and seemed to crave motion.  In a pram, in a sling, as long as he wasn't still.  In fact the only time he seemed to sit still was when there was static on the TV.  

But we never batted an eye at this, he was our first and we were 3 hours away from family and friends who may have wondered about these things. He was and still is our gorgeous, unique little man