more visitors!

I haven’t posted in awhile because we’ve had a run of wonderful visits. Last week, I went to Laura’s on Monday to spend some time with Laura & Elyse. Laura was a great help in walking around with a crabby baby and giving me a break. Then, Rita came to stay for the week to hang out with Henry and was a huge help. She took a ton of great pics, which I’ll post when I get a chance, but here’s a few to get you started.

And today, my oldest friends in Madison–Norma, Vicki & Jill–came to see Henry, bearing gifts and good cheer and great advice and willing arms.

Here’s happy Henry, getting kisses from Mom:

And here’s happy Henry, telling me what he knows.

keeping us on our toes

yesterday, Henry was up the entire day. ok, he maybe took one 30 minute nap. other than that, He. Was. Up.   and not happy about it, although neither was I.

Then last night, after an incredible crabby spell, he fell asleep at 9pm and woke up at. . . 3:30am.  Yep, you read that right.  That’s 6.5 hrs, and technically, according to the baby books, that’s sleeping through the night.  Of course, I woke up in a panic at 2am like, “where is he? what’s he doing? is he ok??” and then basically stared at him for the next hour and a half until he woke up on his own.  He nursed, and then fell back asleep from 4 to about 6, nursed again, and slept for maybe another hour.

Even odder yet, he took two naps this morning and is now in the midst of a third, monster, 2.5 hr nap.  He doesn’t appear to be ill ( I took his temp last night during the crabby spell), and he was in a good mood today, and ate normally, so I can only surmise he’s either making up for not sleeping at all yesterday, or just messing with us.

more pics

Grandma Dickinson requested pics of Henry in a “boy” outfit. Sad to say, I usually have him dressed in a plain onesie, or a gender-neutral playsuit, and he wears those for a few days at a time.

At any rate, I finally broke out one of the boy outfits that Henry received as a birth gift. Here he is modeling his little farmer short-set, from Grandma Dickinson, and some ducky socks from Auntie Katie. And yes, it’s warm enough to wear this today–high of 76 here in Madison.

These were taken this morning during a very brief happy spell.

crabby

We’ve had a long string of crabby days with Henry. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great little guy, but he now is consistently going through a lot of fussiness (read: crying) on a daily basis. He still is dealing with the gas issue as well (although that is slightly improved) , so that compounds the fussiness. And, to top it all off, he seems to have become extremely attached to me, to the extent that he often won’t really settle down with either his daddy or his grandma, my two relief pitchers.

From the reading I’ve done, it looks like this is very typical –babies actually cry more and more starting at 2 weeks and peaking at around 6 weeks. So, he may start to fuss less now. . .or he may continue on up to the three month mark, when most of that infant chronic fussniess or colic seems to end.

We’re trying every trick in the book to soothe him—swaddling, walking around, dancing (this one seems to work–especially to very upbeat music), bouncing, mobiles, walks in the stroller (only works about 50% of the time), etc. He doesn’t like car rides in general so we haven’t driven him around much.
It’s a little exhausting, but we’re soldiering on through. You just feel so bad for the babies, like you wish you could help them! And you also have visions of the crying never ending, or never being able to put the baby down. . .at any rate, we’re taking it day by day.

He does have wonderful moments of playing, alert behavior and even a few brief smiles now, which is just great–here are some recent pics.

Hanging out in the crib:

and one hanging out with our neighbor, Marcia. She’s one of nine kids, so she knows how to hold babies! Here she’s demonstrating the cradle hold.

Visitors!

I’ve been remiss in posting recent pics. . . here are a few of recent family visits.

here’s Henry with his Great-Aunt Tami

and Great-Uncle Warren

and here’s Henry with our good friend Nancy

one more, a slightly happier Henry. . .

9-6!

Our little guy continues to grow and change before our very eyes. At his doctor’s visit yesterday he weighed in at 9lbs 6oz, which the doc says is excellent weight gain, and shows we’re doing great with the b’feeding.

The doc also said that Henry’s healthy as a horse, and 80% of all babies have severe bouts of gassiness due to immature digestive systems, digestive enzymes not totally working correctly yet, etc.

Interestingly enough, he also said that the very thing I’m doing to try and soothe Henry during these gassy bouts — nursing — is probably further contributing to the issue. Apparently when you b’feed a baby little meals frequently, they get a lot of high-sugar “foremilk”, which ramps up their gastro-intestinal track and can be hard for them to digest. So he recommended spacing out the feedings a bit to try to make sure Henry doesn’t constantly have his digestive system in high gear, and also gets a full dose of foremilk and hindmilk, the protein-rich fatty “hunger-satisfier” milk that comes late in a nursing session after the foremilk is gone.

I sort of looked at him and said, “well, Henry will cry if I don’t soothe him with the breast.” And he laughed and said it’s one of many parenting choices we’ll have to make–there’s not a “right” way to handle this, and neither way will hurt the baby, but either we space out the feedings to reduce gassiness and deal with some crying in between feedings, or we decide we can’t deal with crying and keep him on the breast full time, knowing that the gassiness will continue.

My sister-in-law, who is a lactation consultant, also had some useful advice about just making sure we nurse completely on one side rather than switching sides because it seems like it’s time to do so. Same issue–you want the hindmilk, not just the foremilk.

At any rate, we’re going to try moving in this direction and hope to see some progress.

Other advice from the doc on this issue:

–ok to try “gripewater”, a natural/holistic remedy popular in Europe for this.

–ok to try the drops (simul something?)

–try tummy massage

and, the other good news is the doc says since I’ve modified my diet and we’ve seen no changes, it’s probably safe to assume the gassiness is not caused by my food intake. So while I shouldn’t go out and have chili, I can reintroduce dairy and some other things back into my diet slowly.

Oh, and finally.. .Henry peed all over our doc. The doc just laughed and called it an occupational hazard.