Kev was born on 7:11, Tuesday morning, after a greuling 48-hour marathon. For the remainer of the day, we had visitors and nurses coming to our room every 30 minutes to poke and prod kev, give us advice, give Emily medicine, poke and prod Kev again, check to see how much he poop he ejected out of his bum, repeated ad naseum. Similarly, most of our memory of the subsequent stay in the the hospital is mostly of people checking up on us and giving us food, and even a nurse once offering to take Kev to the nursery at 2 in the morning so we could get an hour or two of sleep. We learned right away that he seemed to really, REALLY like to eat. During his first breastfeeding session, our nurse was impressed that he went “a full 30 minutes”. Another nurse later commented that he was a “pirahna” when she saw our written log of how long he was eating. This was all just foreshadowing. That night, we wrapped Kev up in his swaddle for the night, and we lay down, hoping to get at least an hour or two of sleep. It was only a few minutes before we heard him getting restless and in the dark, and we heard “smack smack smack”. We recognized this as a sign of hunger so we dutifully got up and fed him again. After 30 minutes or so, we laid him down again. Again, we heard him stirring restlessly and we were dismayed to hear more lip smacking. Finally, at a little past 11 PM, he fell asleep, thankfully. We were able to sleep intermittently for a few hours (he still woke up hungry every couple of hours), followed by a glorias 3-to-4-hour chunk of uninterrupted sleep early Wednesday morning, which was sorely needed. He slept most of the day that following Wednesday, and we didn’t realize it then, but he had what seems to be a common condition in newborns, where he had his days and nights mixed up. We ameloriated it fairly quickly in the coming week by simply making sure to wake up him every couple of hours during the day, and within that first week, he was doing most of his sleeping at night. Wednesday night, Kev wouldn’t sleep and he seemed like he was only happy if he was breastfeeding, and that’s what we did for hours and hours, watching new episodes of TV shows that we had prescentially been avoiding so we would have a nice backlog of stuff to watch. At 2 AM, he still wasn’t sleeping, and seemed to be inconsolable. Our nurse entered the room (they came into our room at all hours of the day and night), and offered to take him to the nursery and wrap him in a warm blanket to see if that would help while we tried to get a couple hours of sleep. She had offered this previously, but we declined, wanting to make sure we were self-sufficient for when we went home. This time, however, in the wee hours of the mroning and not having had much sleep in the past 96 hours, we accepted and did indeed get 2 or 3 hours of sleep, by which time of course Kev woke up and was ready for more. We were slated to go home on Thursday, which was Thanksgiving Day, which meant there weren’t many people on duty, except the one fill-in nurse who normally doesn’t work in that section of the hospital. The hospital treated us with a special Thanksgiving-style meal before we left, which was hospital food - but nice hospital food to boot. The anxiety induced by the thought of going home and being on our own was starting to take effect. You see, at the hospital we were waited on and pampered, we had nurses delivering medication and answering questions, and making food for us. We knew this wouldn’t, and shouldn’t last forever. Soon, like a parent pushing their child out of the nest so that they can start dealing with the realities of life and grow and become self-reliant, the hospital needed to kick us out of our comfortable existence. 
We hadn’t really made arrangements to have anyone help us at home, because we didn’t exactly possess a crystal ball, and we assumed we’d want some peace and quiet to get adjusted to our new life. That was partially correct, but we obviously didn’t know that Emily would be coming home with a 2nd-degree tear, and Kev would have a symobotic relationship with the breast. The day we got home from the hospital was possibly the hardest day - and night - of my life. That night after coming home from the hospital is permanetntly seared in my brain. Kev was unsatisfied if he wasn’t nursing every waking minute, Emily could barely walk, and her nipples were beaten to hell, which now amounted to pain whenever she fed Kev, who seemed to be eating almost more than he was sleeping. We had planned pretty well for coming home with a baby, or at least we thought. Our swaddles didn’t quite work as well as we’d hoped, neither did the bassinet, and we needed a few other supplies like ice packs and medicine to help with Emilys pain. I needed to go to Wal-Mart, but I was scared of leaving Emily because she couldn’t easily get up to change his diaper or handle any other emergencies. I relucantly left her sitting in the recliner, with diapers and supplies close by while I navigated the store at 10 pm through bleary eyes and a haze of exhaustion. I had forgotten that it was the night before Black Friday, but it didn’t take long to figure that out. It’s already a rather offensive event to me and one I choose to avoid if possible, but now somehow I found myself in a parallel universe navigating through the gluttinous crowd of people already congregating after completing the task of being thankful and were hungry to buy more crap. I made it through the checkout line and told the checkout person that everything was great, no problems whatsoever, like you’re supposed to do. Back at home, 12 AM turned into 1 AM which turned into 2 AM. Kev did not seem interested in being put down to sleep. We were under the impression that we should be “responsive to cues”, meaning if he’s crying, we should try to fulfill his needs, which in our case seemed to mean stuffing a boob in his mouth. We didn’t have any pain mitigating ice (not sure why I didn’t think to get any from Wal-Mart), and in my haze I couldn’t think of a place to get ice at 4 AM (Maverick, duh!). 
At some point around 3 or 4 I had tried to lay down to get some sleep, but I felt so bad for Emily who was still on the couch trying to soothe Kev and just seemingly going through hell. At 4:43 AM, I texted Emily’s mom and said “I think we might need your help sooner than anticipated, we’re just feeling overwhelmed right now”. Well, as it turns out, Emily’s mom was recovering from a bout of food poisoning, but she got a hold of Emily’s dad and stepmom, who said they could come the next day. In the meantime, we decided we were heading out to the pediatricians office as soon as they opened at 7 AM. We had to go get him tested for Bilirubin anyway, but we were also desperate to talk to somebody about what was going on. Knowing that it takes 30 minutes to get to Idaho Falls, we left at around 6:30 in a move of desperation-mixed-with-wanting-to-actually-do-something-about-this, even though we hadn’t confirmed our appointment yet. Luckily, the pediatrician was able to see us right away. On our way there, I realized I hadn’t eaten dinner (or much lunch) on Thanksgiving, the day before. I don’t remember much of what we talked about with the pediatrician, but I do remember we felt a palatable sense of relief. Breastfeeding was still a painful experience for Emily but we decided we were going to see the lactation specialist as soon as possible, which would have to be the next day. Chris and Annette arrived later that day and helped us get back on our feet, making ice packs, running errands, and helping out wherever they could. It was what we needed to feel like we could breathe and take care of ourselves again. We went to the lactation specialist’s office on a Saturday. She normally wouldn’t have been working that day but she had taken Thanksgiving and the day after off and felt like she needed to be there, and we were grateful that was. She helped Emily with her technique (which ended up being a game-changer), and also gave her a nipple shield so her body could heal. The next weeks and months were still difficult, with having to get up and feed Kev every two hours during the night, and our struggling to get him to fall asleep. Emily feeding him for 12 hours a day (not exaggerating) didn’t help. We realized that he might have been sleeping when he was “eating”, but we were following the directive we had been given to be “responsive to his cries”, and the only thing that seemed to satisfy him was to eat. We were looking for clues that he was just comfort sucking, but he had a massive amount of dirty diapers so we figured he was actually eating, and he would actively sucking and swallowing the entire time he was being fed. In short, the first month was confusing and exhausting. 
We started looking forward to each new milestone, which in our minds was every completion of a week, which happened every Tuesday (the weekday he was born). Somewhere along the 2 month mark, we found ourselves not counting and trying to just make it to the next week anymore. Kev was still waking up a couple of times in the middle of the night to let us know he’s hungry, but we developed a system in which I would get up the first time he woke up and feed him formula, and Emily would get up the second time, and having a somewhat predicatable routine was a morale booster. We were expecting parenthood to be exhausting and horrible in many ways, and it actually kind of was. But I think the fact that our expectations were suffiently tempered helped us fully live in the moment and look for the good. It also started to get easier over time, and now 5 months in, we’re finally starting to get a full night of sleep again (spoiler alert). 
He has always insisted on sleeping with his nose pushed up against something. From almost the day he was born, no matter where we put him in his bed, he would somehow end up like this, or some variation thereof. 
I hope I never lose my wallet, it would put me in a spot. I hope I never lose my sense, at least how much I’ve got. Never lose my family, never lose my friends. Never lose my youth, I hope it never ends. Hope I never lose my wallet. Never lose my hair, I would hate to go without. Never lose direction and wander all about. Never lose my courage, never lose my hope. Never lose my girl, it would make it hard to cope. And hell I hope to hell and only time will tell I hope I never lose my mind. Or lose my self somewhere not too far from here that nobody can find. – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones