Day at the Doctor's

So G's been having some drama lately...

Last night we had quite a scare. G seemed like she needed to poop while we were feeding her dinner, so we took her out of her high chair and put her on the toilet. She managed to poop, which we were very happy about. The bad news was that she seemed to strain quite hard and had a tiny bit of bleeding. We immediately called the advice nurse, and was told that we didn't need to come in but to give her a baking soda (or salt) soak to help heal her bottom and to give her more foods to "soften" her up.

So, after struggling all week about whether G really had ringworm, I decided to take her back to her regular pediatrician today for a second opinion and to check on her backside. The good news is that she did not think G's rash looked like ringworm at all. The bad news is that she is actually only 13 lbs 13 oz. Today's weigh in was with a digital scale, and the one that is usually used to weigh her. The scale from last week was an older free weight scale, which apparently can make a big difference. So instead of being in the 8th percentile, she's below the 1st percentile. The doctor wants us to up her solid feedings to 3 times a day and eventually increasing to 2-3 snacks as well, and says we can introduce new foods every 2-3 days (we had been doing 1-2 new foods each week). So G is no longer on a "new food hiatus" and this afternoon we gave her yogurt. Later this week we will try pears.

After her doctor's appointment was over, I waited to get a copy of her immunization records (it's what airlines use for baby identification), and E went to work. A few minutes later I headed for the car only to realize that E had my car keys! To make matters worse, last week E's phone stopped working, so I had no way to call him until he got to work. So I left him a message and sat with G on a bench under the trees and looked at flowers. Then we went back inside the office so I could feed her. All this time, I was repeatedly calling E's work to see if he was in yet. Before I had finished nursing G, E walked in the door. He apparently hadn't made it to work yet but had stopped somewhere to pick up some lunch and when he was going back to the car he realized he had two sets of keys in his pocket. All was good, and G and I headed home while E headed back to work.

After her nap and feeding, we heard a lot of noise outside the house. The city was trimming our tree because I had called earlier in the week after noticing that a branch had cracked after the latest storm and was resting comfortably on our roof. G was fascinated watching the 4 workers with their 2 chainsaws, sawing and dropping and dragging and woodchipping huge chunks of tree branches. They will be back again in the next few days to finish up the tree trimming.

Oh, and while feeding G, I am fairly certain she said "mamama". I've been trying very hard these last few days to get her to combine her "mmmm" sound with her "aaaa" sound. I think I have been successful.

Mixed Blessings

So having your baby go for longer stretches between feedings is a great thing, especially when it happens at night.

Having hard breasts and plugged ducts because you baby is nursing less often is a horrible thing, especially when it happens at night.

This time around, I'm not even sure they are plugged because it doesn't have the same INTENSE PAIN that it had before, it's just lumpy. Maybe it's in the early stages? Who knows. I've put in a call to our lactation consultant as well as to the La Leche League. Hopefully someone will call back.

Speaking of calling back soon, we finally had to call the pediatrician/on-call advice nurse. I feel good that we lasted 6+ weeks without having to call. But this week has been stressful... worring first about G having a cold or fever and trying to use the nose sucker and ear thermometer (yes, I know that in infants the ear one is less accurate, but I was NOT going to put the butt one in without E around to help), then noticing yellowish gums around where her molars would be, and in the process of examining the yellow gums, finding a white bump along the front of her gums... sigh. 

For reference, it was the yellow gums that worried us enough to call the doctor.

Oh, and I did mention the longer periods between feedings, right? That's interspersed with periods where she does not sleep at all between feedings even though she's tired. How do I know she's tired? I don't have that great alert calm baby period, instead I have the yawning, almost dozing, then crying, turning to wimpering, then sleep, then waking up and crying, repeatedly until her next feeding. This occurs both when we try to put her down (we can get 20-30 minutes of peace) and when we continuously hold her, either walking around with her or just sitting with her.

We're chalking it up to her 6 week growth spurt.

6 weeks

When we scheduled my post-partum appointment for 6 weeks after G was born, it seemed so far off. But here it is. The appointment went well, I got the all clear that everything is ok (won't go into details) and most importantly, I've lost all of my pregnancy weight from G plus some. However, I always add 10 lbs to my pregnancy weight because of my first pregnancy, the 5 lbs I gained from it, and the 5 lbs from after our angel went to heaven. So all told, I still feel like I have 5 more pounds to lose. We'll see if it actually happens, since I hate dieting (I like to eat too much). If I want to get back into my wedding weight, I'll probably have to lose a bit more.

On another note, we had a parenting high last nite, where G went SEVEN hours between feedings! We were kind of shocked when we woke up at 4:30am both of us wondering if we had missed a feeding (her last one being at 9:30pm). The downside of it was that she had only nursed on one side before, so I was majorly full and G unfortunately could not completely drain that side (and I was feeling some hard spots and became deathly afraid of getting those AWEFUL plugged ducts again). So we spent the next hour and a half sterilizing all the breastpump parts E had literally just purchased before coming home that night and trying to read the online directions on how to put all the pieces together to make it work. I managed to pump out another 7 ounces total! After we finally went to bed at 6:30, I commented to E, if G had just nursed for 5 more minutes, we could have gone to bed an hour and a half earlier. It's amazing to me how even a hospital-grade pump is still nothing at all like the real thing. However, unlike a pump, you can't control when the baby wants to nurse and for how long.

G's second major accomplishment for this week is that she is getting much better at burping after her meals. For the first 5 weeks, it was as if she just refused to burp. You could pat and rub her for hours and she still wouldn't burp, though often you could easily get a spit up. The rare burp that she graced us with almost always was accompanied by the hiccups, which of course helped wake her up more and thus making it take longer to put her down to sleep. Somehow, in this past week, she has been so much better at burping. I think it's a combination of her getting older and "learning" how, and also her parents learning the tricks for how to best burp her. For G, it seems that most of the time you just have to sit her upright holding her torso straight (as opposed to hunched over because she likes to curl up in a ball lying upright against us), I usually do this with her facing me, and within a minute or so, she will give you a great burp. Sometimes accompanied with spit up, but still, a burp nonetheless, and without the patting, though usually I will pat her for a little bit before sitting her up in front of me. Very handy trick...