Hospital stay and baby health issues

So Archer was born with some breathing issues and mild jaundice. His respiration rate was pretty high and so they kept an eye on that quite a bit while we were in the hospital. The real issue though was the jaundice. They kept having to poke his little heel for blood! I felt so so bad every time they came in for more blood because they literally milk his heel to get enough blood to test. Poor baby had a nasty bruise on one heel for days. And I think that some of the heel poke marks are still on his feet as scars. They said the needles weren't that big but they lied. They didn't put him under a bili light but said that they might have to if his levels remained high. As desperate as I was to breastfeed, and as great as the lactation consultant was, Archer was still too sleepy to breastfeed (what newborn ACTUALLY latches and feeds a lot right off the bat?) so they suggested adding some formula to my nipples to help encourage him to suck. We tried that and I was actually making some colostrum so that helped too... but ... he wasn't eating the way they wanted because the extra bilirubin gets excreted through poop, and so a well-fed baby will poop a lot and get all that bilirubin out faster. And so supplementing from the get-go happened... and now we don't really breastfeed because my supply sucks. But I do pump what I can and give him the milk in a bottle. I'll latch him when I feel he will take to it and he does a decent job, but he doesn't drain my breasts all the way so I still have to pump after I feed him. But I digress; Archer was born on a Friday, and we were discharged that following Sunday with orders to get him to the pediatrician on Monday for another bili check. And we did, took him to see our pedi (whom we will be leaving... ) and they have a lab in the same building so naturally, we went there to have his blood drawn. Well, they screwed up! and we had to go back Tuesday for ANOTHER blood draw. My poor baby. We chose the lab at our local hospital this time and thankfully his levels were fine and we no longer had to keep having him tested after that. But boy was I pissed and I will not be going to the lab by our pediatrician ever again.

I cannot tell you how much I hated being in the hospital this time. Last time I wanted to stay another day or 2, but I couldn't get comfortable in the bed, the pillows sucked, it was really hard to get Archer positioned for breastfeeding, I was so sore I had the worst time sitting on the bed and the bracelets itched my wrist something fierce! I just wanted to be home, away from all of the interventions and in my comfortable place. So I was grateful that we didn't have to stay longer than Sunday (not only for my comfort of course, but mostly that Archer was well enough to come home) We got home and got settled and that was 7 weeks ago! Holy cow time has flown!