Nobody tells us what the order of operations has to be, which makes the process a tad confusing.

Here's my documented steps.

When discharged, the hospital will provide a document indicating that a child was born at that hospital. (Exact phrasing may vary.) There may be a line at the bottom that says something like:

At the request of the parent(s), a social security number for the child was applied for and transmitted by this facility.

At least this is how MGH handled the SSN thingy.

The SSN is super important, as apparently, on the health insurance that I was on, having an SSN is necessary to add a dependent onto an insurance plan.

Here's the kicker though: My insurance plan gives us 31 days to update plan after a "life change". Partners Healthcare (which manages MGH) has a form letter that says:

If you have requested a Social Security Card to be applied for (through the hospital) you should receive it within 3-6 weeks of your child's date of birth.

The phrasing is frustrating, as it smells like a "cover my posterior" line that lawyers added in. If the card arrives 3 weeks after, then I only really have 1 week to add the child onto the health insurance plan.

So in any case, keep checking the mail.

Once the SSN arrives, add child to health insurance plan, and adjust the options as necessary.

This is admittedly an $n=1$ observation, but I found that when our kid is swaddled while feeding and burped, she goes to bed afterwards more easily. Somehow, less agitated, appears to feel more secure.

This seems to be pretty important, especially for babies 2 days old. (see: Babies two days old are the most troublesome) On their second day of life, they tend to cluster feed. In particular, they get really hungry and want to eat, eat, eat. Throw out all notions of "feed once every 3 hours". Feed whenever you see The signs of a newborn hunger.

If breastfeeding is not going well, it's totally, like 100% ok to supplement with formula. Nobody ever said adding formula on top of breastfeeding was a bad idea. (BUT! Keep in mind that one should, in general, prioritize breast milk over formula milk.) If it gives the baby a full tummy so that she can go to sleep till the next feeding (typically in 3 hours from the start of the first feeding), be all for it.

How to decide how much to supplement? First off, we need an upper bound on the amount. 20 mL is what pre-made liquid formula comes in, so that's a good prior to start with. Look at her reaction. Babies that are 2 days old need (on avrage) 7-10 mL of milk, including the colostrum produced by the mother, but because during the cluster feeding phase an infant just wants to be fed, look out for The signs of a newborn hunger. (I personally find smacking of lips to be the most obvious to look for.)

Do not confuse the act of filling up a baby on the 2nd day cluster feeding phase with The goal after the first few weeks of a newborn life is full feeding each meal.

If there are signs of hunger, don't hesitate to top off with more pre-made formula. A good rule of thumb: 5 mL at a time. Don't do more. Roughly keep track of the total volume being fed; 15 mL feels like a good upper-bound for the first few days of life.

see also: How to feed a baby with a syringe

If baby is not completely full after each meal, this may extend the period during which she has issues with feeding.

The formula for calculating the daily total amount of milk to feed:

$2.5 \text{oz/lb}$ which is approximately $160 \text{mL/kg}$.

If we are going for 3 hours per feeding, then in one day, we will have 8 feedings.

So for a baby that is $4 \text{kg}$ in weight, the total amount of milk to feed will be $640 \text{mL}$. Spread over 8 feedings, that makes $80 \text{mL/feeding}$.

Assuming we're going for 3 hours per feeding, here's a table that shows how much per feeding as a function of baby weight.

A tip for us from Dai Chao and Zhang Jie: lie baby flat on tummy, lift up feet to do bicycle peddling. This may help eject gas, because of the pressure put on the belly.

These are, in no order of priority:

• Smacking lips (to me, this is the most obvious one to look for)
• Looking around as if looking for food
• Hands in mouth

How do we know what a baby is crying about?

I can't presume to have the answer, but I have collated some pointers into a checklist I can run down each time I hear a fussy baby. This list is also a chronological list that comes after the start of a feeding-waking-sleeping cycle.

1. Gassy tummy - go burp the baby.
2. Dirty diapers - go change the diapers.
3. Wanting attention - go hold the baby, cradle him/her.
4. Over-fed - hold the baby vertically; reduce the feeding frequency and volume.
5. Hungry - go feed the baby.

Hungriness should always be the last priority, and should be used only when enough time has elapsed, such that we are close to the next feeding cycle. Otherwise, we risk over-feeding.

Be aware: Burping can take up to 20 minutes or so. 5 minutes might not be enough.

Depending on the child, you might need to hold him/her for close to an hour before they'll go to sleep.

Tried playing a YouTube video containing white noise, and used it in conjunction with a remote controllable red light bulb and swaddling to get the kid to bed.

If you have an old iPhone, then this is a great use case for it: sacrifice the phone and use it to play white noise on demand.

See also: Script to download white noise mp3 from YouTube

According to Chinese auntie folklore (not sure if science backs up this point):

• If the poop is yellow and clumpy, then the kiddo has eaten well enough in the last meal.
• If the poop is greenish, then that's a sign of poop getting oxidized (hmm?) in the gut (hmm?), i.e., it's been there for a longer than usual amount of time, and hasn't been moved through the bowel, so that's a hint that the kiddo hasn't eaten enough the last meal.

This is an idea espoused by Growing Families, a ministry by Gary Ezzo and his wife Anne-Marie.

The idea here is that we ensure that by the 2nd week of life, we have an infant that is able to fully eat and then go to sleep after each round of feeding.

Every nurse, doctor, midwife, staff at MGH has said this to us: babies at 2 days old are the most needy. New parents should not have any surprises here.

Life hacks:

• On keeping healthy: Stay healthy with simple exercises
• How to pull corn off the cob
• How to take care of a newborn baby
• How to find out power outage history in Massachusetts

Computer hacks:

• How to set powerline fonts with tmux in hyper on zsh
• Learn CSS with Julia Evans' CSS zine
• Installing magic mirror on a raspberry pi
• Fix a 3D printer that is not feeding fialment
• Script to download white noise mp3 from YouTube
• jQuery notes

This rhythm comes from a place of a deeper "why": that the Lord God created an orderly world for humans to live in, and the deep conviction that humans thrive and flourish with order and repetition.

The pattern we are going for is "feeding", then "waking", then "sleeping".

The first two weeks will have feeding and waking basically merged together.

After the first two weeks, feeding and waking will gradually separate out. At week 3, a pertinent reminder is that Weeks 3-5 will gradually see splitting of feeding and waking times

According to Growing Families, during the 3rd to 5th week of life, feeding time and wake time will gradually separate. Feeding time will be about 30 minutes, wake time will be up to 30 minutes, so up to 60 minutes in total. Sleep will be about 1.5-2 hours.

If baby is having trouble breastfeeding, then it is possible to use formula en route to helping mom and baby breastfeed.

Three primary ways I have seen this tip in action.

The first way is to drip some formula onto the breast, and let the baby suckle on/taste it for a few moments before baby goes open mouth.

The second way assumes that the baby is crying hard; soothe the baby first by dripping a small amount of formula in her mouth.

The third way is to top off breast milk with formula. This way, baby will get a full meal, and will be more likely to wait the full length of time till the next feeding session.