Shakespeare, in describing purgatory in his play Hamlet said those who were in that place were, "Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires, 'till the foul crimes done in [their] days of nature are burnt and purged away." Perhaps the insane sleepless nights are a kind of purgatory which all parents must suffer through in order to have the joys of children. (God's way of making sure you are really serious about this parenting business.)
We discovered shortly before we left the hospital that Quinn has a cleft pallate. Not knowing much about this, a specialist came to visit us to explain what that meant and what that will mean for Quinn as he grows up. Apparently, this is one of the most common forms of birth defects about 1 in every 600 babies has it. What it means is that there is a hole in Quinn's pallet (roof of his mouth) which connects his nose to his mouth.
It means he cannot nurse like a normal child from the breast; however, is not life-threatning and has a 75% chance of being resolved with a surgery when Quinn is between 6-9 months. It may cause some speech and dental problems later on, but for now we are just happy to have a healthy baby boy. Right now the problem is nutritional. Quinn just needs nutrients and were he to continue to attempt to do this at the breast he would likely use more energy in the attempt than get the nutrients he needs. The solution is apparently to use a special "Pigeon" nipple that costs about $22 a piece.
Since Mer and I believe strongly in the necessity of breast milk but we must bottle feed Quinn we have been doing a lot of research into breast pumps. The problem of breast pumps is that they consume a lot of time. One has to spend a half an hour or more pumping, then another half an hour or more feeding the child (not to mention the regular cleaning of all the valves and do-hickeys that come with it). Effectively this more than doubles the amount of time that is required just to sustain the nutritional needs of this baby (not to mention all the diaper changing, etc. that just is part of having a baby to begin with.) When this feeding is done every two hours you can begin to see why the reference to sleepless purgatory seems more appropriate. Mer deserves a gold star for her efforts. She is the best and most devoted mommy.
(The resources of time and personnel are finite so thus we are in search of the ideal method [optimization routine] to maximize that precious comodity there is all too often little of... sleep!)
