Mommy guilt

I have it!

I feel guilty that I am too tired and too far behind on stuff to do fun things with my little ones. I feel guilty that I don't spend more time at the hospital with Ben. I feel guilty that so many have helped us so much; I am so used to being relatively independent that I feel like a leach on society. I feel guilty that my heart sank when D decided to do wrestling at school (practices and meets are just one more thing on our plates). I have felt guilty and responsible for the fact that not only did my body evacuate Ben far too early, my body also has not been able to support him the way that it should. I feel guilty and a little sad that I didn't enjoy my pregnancy more, and I am sad for the 11 weeks I missed out on. I feel guilty that I haven't found the time to get together pictures and things for the kids' bio mom.

I know that this is a season. Things won't be like this forever. A year or two from now our lives will be completely different.  Heck, maybe in a month if Ben is home our lives will be completely different.

It is just hard. It's very hard right now.

On a much lighter note, yesterday I tried to give Ben a bottle for the first time. The faces he was making were so hilarious, I was just cracking up. He was totally giving me the stink eye. 

So when he takes a bottle, first you have to get him to open his mouth which stays shut like a steel trap. Then once you get the nipple in his mouth, he just stares at you like "ok I have this thing in my mouth...now what am I supposed to do??"  He will suck every once in a while, frowns, sometimes chokes a little bit. Rinse, repeat.  It's hard work! He only took 10 ccs of the bottle, he takes 40 ccs at a feeding so 30 had to go in through his feeding tube.

He is up to 4 lbs 11 oz. He is 34 weeks and 4 days gestation, and we have been in the NICU 5 weeks and 4 days.

My supply is going up. Yesterday I pumped over 7 ounces! Ben takes about 11 ounces per day. I am catching up to him slowly but surely. I have tried to give it to God, basically I will do all that I can but ultimately it's up to Him. I am doing all I can but the results are out of my control.

I feel like if my supply was better nursing might be Ben's ticket out of here. On the one hand, milk comes slower out of the breast than it does out of the bottle, so there is less choking and he doesn't get so overwhelmed. On the other hand, it's harder work to get it out of the breast so even if my supply was amazing he might not be able to finish a feed anyway before getting too tired.

I guess that is it!