I've been considering staying home and doing in-home daycare... I would have to watch 3 more kids (plus my 2) to make more than what I make at my job. I can't decide, though, not knowing what it will be like! Any thoughts/ideas/advice??
(Westen and Kaden at the high school homecoming parade)
Westen
Westen has been quite funny over the last week.
One day, I was telling him there were blankets in the basket by the sink. He had walked into the kitchen (where the basket was) and again asked where they were. The conversation went like this..
"By the sink Westen."
"What?"
"By the sink!" (louder)
"What? I can't hear you!"
"BY THE SINK!" (even louder)
"By the seat?" hahaha
"No! By the SINNNKK."
"Ohh.. by the sink!"
Haha, why I didn't just get up and show him I don't know.. maybe I was occupied by Baby at the time.. can't really remember!
He has also started this thing lately (going along with his dramatic attitude lately) about going to people's houses. He will say "But I thought I was going to Aunt Chelsea's house. Or grandma's house. Or Optimus Prime's house. I'll never get to go to anyone's house!" He always sticks in Optimus Prime or Batman or some such superhero's house.
Westen also saw a commercial about Aspbergers and officially thinks it is the funniest word ever. He first said "They can't say that! That's a bad word." I told him that it wasn't and since then, he has asked me several times "Are you sure?" followed by "Are you telling the truth?" (Another thing he has started asking about things :) .. because I'm often asking him this!)
Westen went to his first football game last weekend. He loved it! We're going to go to another this weekend.
He also got his flu shot yesterday. He did very well! We talked about it a lot in the days before. He decided the morning of that he was NOT going to get one. He ended up being fine, though, and I held him on my lap. He started screaming a little when she was coming toward him with the needle but didn't cry until she was actually pushing the serum into him. Then he only cried for a minute, which was a relief for me! He's been very concerned with no one touching that arm since, though!
Aeson
Aeson is 7 weeks old now! Westen was smiling frequently by this point and we have yet to see even the hint of a smile from Aeson. :( In fact, it is him this time that I don't have many updates on! He's still my precious little newborn.. I never really know whether to think of him as a 7 week old or to think of him as even younger, since he was born 4 weeks earlier than he was supposed to be. I'm still dreading going back to work and being away from him that long. We went to our first Le Leche League meeting last night and it was helpful to hear from other mommies who have done it.. and I got several books to read, which have made me feel better and given me tips for once we start. I plan on getting into the routine next week. :( Tomorrow is Aeson's surgery follow-up appointment. I expect all to go well, since he has shown no more signs of any problems.
He seems to sleep better on nights he has had a bath. Last night, he slept four and a half hours in one stretch! I've tried the bedtime bath & lotion, but it makes him too sleepy to nurse fully and then he wakes frequently to begin nursing.. which resulted in less sleep for me! So I think we're done with that stuff for a while!
Oh! I had to put a bunch of Aeson's clothes away already. :( He's outgrown all the newborn ones. Some he only wore once. Luckily my sister just found out she's having a boy (yay!!), so my first little nephew will get to re-use some of the clothes.
hosted by Lerin at mycatholicfamily.blogspot.com
Well, we're starting to get into a routine around here it seems like. It always get messed up if we leave for the day. I have to go back to work in two weeks too, which I'm dreading. My little 9 week old boy will be at daycare all day long. :( I'm not sure how nursing will go after that either. I'm going to continue as long as I can, but he already has problems after having a bottle, so I'm expecting he will after he eats from them all day. :(
I had my six week check-up this past week. Everything went well, which is good. I've come to dread doctor appointments, because it seems they've only brought bad news for the past several months. Anyway, I asked her about the probabilities of problems like we had in future pregnancies. She said the knot in the cord was just a freak thing.. In her 18 years, she's seen 10 of them- one of which was ours. She said the previa is also a random thing. If it should happen again, the only additional problem it could cause were if it were right behind my incision.. then that could mean problems for me but not for the baby. Then, she said there is actually less of a chance of getting pre-eclampsia again, as long as it is same mother and father. The chances of pre-eclampsia increase when it is a different father. She said there's some research being done about this. If you don't know, pre-eclampsia is much like the baby is 'poisoning' your body. I found it odd that your body would know that it was dealing with different chromosomes than it had previously.. and pretty interesting too. But biology or whatever needs to know that with me, the change in fathers was a GOOD thing. :)
(Aeson at the Balloon Glow this past weekend)
(Westen at the Balloon Glow)
This photo was my poor little Aeson just after surgery. He is now over 1 month old. It was strange because he was sent to the hospital the first time on the fourth of August and this time it was the fourth of September. Let's hope everything is well on the 4th of October!
Aeson had his one month dr's appointment today. He weighed 9lbs, 4oz. He had been 9lbs, 6oz before the pyloric stenosis.. and then dropped down to 9lbs, 2oz while that was going on. He was 21.5 inches.. which leave both his height and weight around the 20th percentile. His little head was only in the 14th percentile! She said there's no way to account for his prematurity, so he's just going to be our little guy I think. :)
Our pediatrician showed me how to get him calmed down when he's upset. I cannot leave him ANYwhere without him crying! He can be sound asleep, but when I put him down he's awake within 5 minutes. The absolute only thing he'll tolerate sometimes is the Boppy.. thank GOODNESS for that thing!
It's so weird for me to have a blue eyed boy. I LOVE his eyes.. they're SO pretty. Having brown eyes myself and knowing they usually have dominance lead me to believe I'd never have a child with light eyes!
Aeson's doing so well with nursing now too. I'm so glad I didn't give up.
***
Westen is my little challenger right now! He thinks he knows everything and he will not stop arguing with you if you get started! Lately, he's been quick to tell people that Aeson doesn't talk when they try to talk to him.
Westen is always saying/asking the funniest things but by the time I go to write in here I can never remember them!
One thing he has been very 'into' lately is giving presents. He'll wrap things up in a Kleenex or envelope and give them to us as presents. :) He gets very excited about it too.
The past couple of nights, Westen has wanted to read the Halloween Clifford book each time. We went to a flea market thing this past weekend and he got a bunch of little pumpkins in his own bag that he has been playing with since. I think he's very excited for Halloween.
This past weekend too, his Uncle Eddie was teaching him how to throw a football. It was so cute, and I wish I'd taken my camera.
Last Wednesday, Aeson started spitting up after he ate. He had NEVER spit up before.. none at all. Westen, on the other hand, used to spit up SO much with every single feeding. Most of his newborn clothes were ruined from it! This was different, though.. the consistency was different. I thought maybe I ate something that wasn't agreeing with Aeson or maybe he was just starting to spit up for some reason. On Thursday, the spit up changed consistency again. By afternoon, it was more like vomiting and quite forceful. I called the pediatrician at closing time and she told me to come in anyway.. It was odd that he would just start this out of the blue. She did an exam and said he looked well otherwise (the vomiting didn't even seem to bother him at that point either). She scheduled an upper GI for the following morning and said it could be two things- pyloric stenosis, which is when the muscles around one of your stomach openings enlarge and block food from going through, or it could be acid reflux (which is what Westen had).
As Thursday night wore on, the vomiting got worse. It was so forceful and really didn't stop. I continued to feed him because he was still hungry but I hated to at the same time because he just threw everything up. It would happen multiple times between feedings. We went through several outfit changes before deciding just to wrap him in a blanket.. and then proceeded to go through every single blanket he had. I knew this was totally different than what Westen had.. and I knew if it wasn't pyloric stenosis, something else was definitely wrong. We were up pretty much the entire night. I was too afraid to go to sleep and also too worried. I knew pyloric stenosis meant surgery.. my brother-in-law and my cousin both had it- and when they had surgery, the IV had to be put in their head, which also was freaking me out. I'd also looked it up online and it was very much Aeson.. all the symptoms.
Eric decided to stay home on Friday, just in case. We took Westen to school and went for the upper GI. I wasn't able to be with him during that, so that stunk.. but at least it was nothing bad. They sent us over to the pediatrician's office right afterwards and there she told us that it was pyloric stenosis and that they don't do surgery here.. so back to the children's hospital in Peoria we would have to go. She also said the radiologist had said his colon looked dilated.. which she said wouldn't be related to the pyloric stenosis, so she didn't know if it was something else or nothing at all.
So we all rushed around.. picking up Westen to see him before leaving him once again, getting clothes and things from home, getting Westen and the house key to my sister's, etc etc. And off we went to the hospital. Aeson hadn't been able to eat since 7:30 a.m. and they said not to feed him anymore.
We got there and got checked in. The doctors came immediately. We dealt with three different residents, the pediatric doctor, and the pediatric surgeon while we were there. It's amazing how many doctors are around that place. All have been wonderful too. They had to put an IV in him (but got it in his hand, thanks to us saying we'd rather it be somewhere other than his head!) and a tube down his nose again. :( It's absolutely terrible to watch your infant go through that. We got to hold him but there were several times when he was inconsolable. They scheduled a sonogram to look more clearly at the pyloric stenosis for 7am the following morning, with surgery to immediately follow.
This unit wasn't as nice as the NICU.. We found out we were to stay there, which was fine but that also meant the nurses weren't around like at all!
Saturday morning, Eric's parents got there before everything started. It was so nice of them to be there. We went in for the sonogram and the doctor showed us how thick the muscle was. We were then taken to surgery to wait, where we signed all the consents and waited with Aeson until it was time. As we had been reading through the paperwork on pyloric stenosis, it had the risks listed and at the end said 'Your infant may die.' Gah.. I know they have to include that, but that was pretty terrible to read.
While Aeson was in surgery, we had to wait in the waiting room. They had a neat system that updated you on what was going on though. The surgery took only about 15 minutes and the surgeon came to let us know everything went well afterwards. There was only a 1-2% chance the surgery wouldn't work. I got to go to recovery with him after that. He was still kind of out of it and crying the most pitiful little cry.
He then got to eat starting at noon and increase the amount every 3 hours. They said spitting up was normal but he actually didn't until the very last (and most) feeding. It was more like vomiting again but then he never did again through the night. I was able to nurse him after the initial three feedings.
He did very well, and we were able to get discharged the following morning. We have to follow up with the surgeon in 2 weeks. They really never said anything about the colon, although we kept asking! One resident had said it could be related to the pyloric stenosis.. and one talked to the surgeon and said they had noticed it but weren't worried about it.. that we can bring it up at our follow up appointment. One resident also heard a heart murmer at one point but then it went away when he moved.. which he said was normal.. but again, that worries me! Thank goodness everything went well, though. This is a relatively common thing, I think.
So now we're home and I feel like we're almost starting over again in some aspects. Aeson's seemed very well.. We give him Tylenol regularly, but he's seemed content and has had no more vomiting. He still acts like he's going to occasionally but nothing has come up. We go to his doctor tomorrow. They also confirmed his jaundice (which has still continued to some degree.. it seems to go up and down) is breastmilk jaundice.. because his score went down when he wasn't able to eat for that day. Once again, this is something that only occurs in less than 2% of babies.. It seems like everything has been that way with the pregnancy/birth.
Well, baby's up now. That's about the end of this story anyway. :)
Aeson's due date was yesterday, and he turned 4 weeks old. Every day is different with him- some good, some not so good. :) I feed him 'on demand,' so sometimes it seems like all he does is nurse. After particularly rough nights I've wanted to give up, but I haven't yet (yay for me!). The bottles have decreased. I'm not sure why but sometimes those satisfy him more than I can. We're down to 1-2 (2.5 oz) bottles a day, though. He really is an eater! Sometimes he will eat 2 bottles fully, in addition to nursing!
Last night he had his first 'real' bath. He liked it too! Westen hated his first bath and cried the entire time, but Aeson didn't even fuss. I think he liked the sound of the water. :) He fell right to sleep after (in Daddy's arms), woke up to eat before bed, and then slept just over FIVE hours! It was very nice! It's amazing what those blocks of sleep can do for you!
Westen's falling into the big brother role very nicely. He's constantly going up to Aeson saying 'Hi baby brother!' and he often says how cute Aeson is. :) He's very interested in everything Aeson does.
Westen returned to school (daycare) one day last week. He did fine when I left, which was a huge relief to me. He's in a new room now (but with the same friends!), and they're having a preschool teacher come in for 3 hours every day. It looks like he will be learning a lot!
He's been quite dramatic lately, saying he will 'never get to do' something again or 'never have it again' when he loses something. It's quite funny. He's very interested in machines of all sorts and has been pretty excited to watch them working on our street lately.
