Margaret and I went back to see Dr P this morning to follow up on her jaundice, which is basically gone. She’s pink and alert and hungry these days, and she weighed in this morning at 7 lb, 3.5 oz, having regained about half of the weight lost since birth in just the last 4 days. The doctor was pleased with her progress and said to just keep going as we are, since it’s working.

In theory, I could go back to nursing at this point, but I’m kind of on the fence about it. Whether because of the low supply or because it’s just her happy way, Margaret bites. Hard. I’ve been pumping, and getting a decent return (about 25-33% of her nutritional needs), and now that I’ve had some time to heal up, I think I might be okay with this method. Actually, I think she might be getting more breast milk this way. I know babies are supposed to be the best pump, but not if I tense up and flinch every time.

And I’m okay with the formula being a large part of her diet. I promised myself I wouldn’t beat myself up if this happened again. Of course I did anyway, in my sleep deprived state. But Elizabeth is turning out just fine, and Margaret will too. The bottle feeds allow the whole family to be involved, and my pumping gets her my antibodies.

A friend of mine said this, which both made me feel better and made me laugh: “Breast may be best but that doesn’t mean formula is bad; formula is good. Formula is the Olympic swimmer who came in .07 seconds after Michael Phelps.”

Overnight and today, Margaret has been pooping up a storm (probably one of the last times we’ll be happy about THAT), eating steadily more at each feeding, up to 2-3 oz per feeding now, staying alert more, all the right things. We took her for another blood check this morning. She was way more pissed off about it than yesterday, which, while hard to watch, was also good news.

I just talked to the doctor about the results. The bili levels are the same as yesterday, which the doctor said was good news. She said the levels take a while to come down, but as long as they aren’t going up, we’re in good shape. So we’re to continue the same way through the weekend, but the best thing? No light table! Which means I actually get to see 4th of July fireworks after all.

I hate jaundice. I’m not going to write much about it right now, because right now we don’t really know how things will go.

First off, though, Margaret is going to be just fine, don’t worry. We are following her doctor’s orders to the letter. It remains to be seen to what extent, if any, I’ll be able to nurse her. Which sucks, but after all, Elizabeth seems to be turning out okay.

My longest sleep stretch, in the meantime, is still about an hour. I’m hoping to fix that tonight, since a bottle feed doesn’t require me in particular.