And let the cooing begin!

For weeks now Eleanor has been making these little mouth movements (looking like a monkey, for the most part) and acting like she was trying to talk, but then finally on Tuesday night – two nights ago – she got something out! She laid there while John and I played with her and cooed! She did it on and off for about five minutes, then got hungry and fussy. : ) Later on that evening, I had her propped up in front of me getting ready to feed her (yet again!) She was fussing a bit, then at the end of a string of little cries she made this perfect coo sound. I looked up really fast and she had this look like “did I do that?” I said “yeah?” to her really brightly, and her whole face lit up into this huge, gorgeous grin!! It was the best smile I have ever seen from her! Then she went immediately back to crying for food, haha! Mercurial child… Ever since then, she coos a few times pretty much every time she’s awake. It’s like as soon as she figured out how to do it, it’s easy and she does it all the time.

In other developments, I cut out all dairy in hopes of helping her colic, and it might be working. It also could be complete coincidence! Some friends are coming over on Friday and we’re having fondue, so I’ll find out if she is indeed sensitive to dairy. I really hope she isn’t: I’m not a huge meat eater, so dairy is one of my best sources of protein. Plus I just really miss cheese!

We’re also trying acidophilus pills for me and baby probiotics for her to help her colic and reflux. There’s some research showing that they help. There’s plenty of research showing that they’re safe, so it’s worth a shot.

With all this fussiness, I’ve noticed that if I read to her as she’s nursing she stays calmer and eats better. So instead of reading ten baby books to her every nursing session, I just started reading Harry Potter, haha! She seems to like it, I think… At any rate it’s much more interesting to me, and I think John enjoys listening in, too. : )

She can hear!

We took Eleanor to the audiologist today, and she passed in both ears!  The test apparently can only say if the baby can hear, not how well they can hear, but there’s no reason to suspect she has a problem now.  The lady said that some people just lack the response that the hospital test requires, which is part of why so many infants fail it.

After that appt we took Eleanor to the ped: she’s been really congested for the past couple days and yesterday her voice became hoarse.  At first we just figured it was a cold and it would pass, and the hoarseness was probably from all her midnight crying,  but then we started reading all this stuff about RSV and that with an infant under three months you should always take them to the doc when they exhibit signs of a cold, so we decided to take her in.  We explained all of the fussiness of the past week as well as her new issues, and the doc said it was all because of reflux, even the hoarseness!  Thankfully, she doesn’t feel it’s bad enough to warrant meds – Eleanor looks great and is gaining weight well – so we just need to keep an eye on her.  She told us basically to do everything we have been doing, with propping her up after feedings, etc., and to “be prepared for some more bad nights.”  Fun!  I’m happy she doesn’t have a cold on top of the reflux, though.  One thing is quite enough to be going on with!

About the weight gain: she’s officially 8lbs 9oz now!  That’s a gain of almost two pounds since birth, the little chunk-a-lunk.  : )  She’s just starting to grow out of some her newborn onesies, which is kind of sad.  We have tons of cute 3 mos clothing for her though, so I’m not too sad about it!

After those appts, we went to the store and bought her a new bed: it’s a little nest thing that will (hopefully) fit between us in our bed and that we’ll be able to prop up on an incline.  She likes to sleep with us, but this should give us more peace of mind that she’s in a safe zone.  It’ll be a lot easier to prop her up with it than on our arms too, and much more comfortable for us!  We’ll see how it works tonight.

We also (finally) turned in our last set of taxes without her on them.  It’s been quite an eventful day!

Crabby little girl!

Well, it’s happened: we’ve hit the 3-6 week fussy zone, and my happy little girl has turned into a crabby little girl! Eleanor does ok during the day, but she’s incredibly fussy at night, eating about every half an hour to an hour from around 10pm to 3am, and needing to be walked/rocked/held or else she screams at us. We’ve finally given up on trying to get to bed before about 2-3am, which has helped our stress level tremendously. It’s a crazy schedule, but thankfully John is still off of work for another four weeks. I really hope by then that this has improved!

I know this isn’t her fault, and emotionally I’m handling it much better than even her occasional fussiness of the early days. I guess my pp hormones have finally started leveling off, thankfully! That is one roller coaster I am thrilled to be off of.

We’re actually a little worried that she has some bad reflux going on, but we’re just keeping an eye on it for now. She does much better when she’s propped up, but even with that she started spitting up a couple days ago. : ( Poor baby. I know spitting up is normal to a certain extent, and she’s not doing it a ton, so hopefully it won’t get worse. We tried some mylicon drops yesterday at a couple of her feedings which seemed to help, so maybe she just has some gas issues. I’m going to cut most dairy and all spicy foods for a couple weeks to see if that helps, since those are the most common food culprits in BFed babies. I really hope neither of those is causing this, though: I don’t know how long I can happily go without those two foods, lol!

When she’s in a good mood, she’s smiling like crazy now! It is so cute! She also loves playing little games with me, like Pat-A-Cake. She gets all excited! She still loves the outdoors, too: I took her out on the deck yesterday evening when she was a bit fussy, and she just laid in my arms and stared up at the trees against the sky. She kept looking around trying to find the source of the chirps she kept hearing, too. Such a smart little gal. : ) I can see her little personality starting to form, which is so much fun. I wish she spent more time like this and less time uncomfortable and crying, but I know this is just a phase. I remind myself that about every hour… ; )

She’s growing!

We had her latest ped visit on Friday, and she was up to 7lbs even!! Grow baby, grow! She was healthy in all other ways, and may have gained a bit in height too, though she wiggles so much that she messes up the measurement every time. : ) She also had to have her second set of labs done for the PKU, etc. testing that our state requires. I haven’t heard anything from the first set yet (done in the hospital), but maybe they just combine it all.

Her next ped appt is at two months, which seems like a really long time away! We do need to get her in for a hearing test in the next two weeks, though. I don’t think I ever mentioned it on here, but she failed the screening test in her right ear at the hospital. Her left was fine, but they tried four times on the right over three days, and nothing. About 95% of babies who fail the screening are perfectly fine, and I’m almost positive she can hear in that ear, so we’re not really worried. It’s just another appt!

She’s been doing the reflexive smile – where they smile for no apparent reason – pretty much since birth, and she’s also responded to me a couple times with smiles that I’m pretty sure are genuine, since a few days old. I was just reading in What’s Going on in There that the difference between a reflexive smile and a real one is the eye muscles move in a real one. It looks to me like she crinkles her eyes up a bit, though I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, I finally got one on camera the other day! It’s not the best pic (I had to snap it very quickly with no flash) but it’s so cute! You can also see her double chin and chubby little cheeks:

Quick update

I really don’t have much to report, which is kind of nice!  Little Eleanor appears to be gaining weight, which is great to see.  I hope to have some new pics up soon.  BFing is going much better: I no longer have any pain beyond the first latch-on, at least when I use the nipple shield.  We’ve tried a couple times without the shield, and she just doesn’t seem to get it.  It’s also quite painful for me.  I have a feeling weaning her off of it is going to be very difficult! 

We have her second ped appt tomorrow, then we’re going to go out with my parents for dinner.  They live about four hours away, and are in town for one night before flying out of here for a vacation.  It’ll be our first outing to a restaurant, which should be interesting!  We went to BRU the other day and she did very well, so I hope she does as well tomorrow.

I’m feeling pretty good and seem to be healing well from the c/s.  I’m down to just taking an ibuprofen every four hours now, which is great!  I hate taking meds  but I also kind of like walking without an inordinate amount of pain, so it’s a trade-off.  : )  As of this morning I’ve lost exactly half of the 36 lbs I gained, which I’m quite happy with.  I only look about four months pg now too, instead of seven or eight, haha!

Oodles of news

In the last three days we’ve had a pediatrician appt, two blood draws, and another LC appointment.  Whew!  We have had an appt or lab visit every single day since we’ve been home with Eleanor, and are so looking forward to a quiet weekend!

Pediatrician on Wednesday:  Nora was up to 6lbs 5oz, which was a gain of 3.6 oz in the 28 hours between the first LC appt and this visit.  Woo-hoo!  She was perfect in all ways but one: I had been worried that she had more jaundice than she should, and the ped shared my concern.  She ordered blood draws so we headed there next.   Her billirubin came back at 17.7.  Under 12 is considered normal, 12-18 is the “watch” zone, and above 18 calls for UV light treatment.  Since she came in just barely in the watch zone this meant another blood draw the next day to see if it would go down.  If it did, then she would be declared ok and no further testing would be necessary.

Blood draw Thursday, and visiting Daddy’s work: we went for the second blood draw on Thursday, and it came back at 15.2!  Still high but dropping, which is what matters.  Even at 15 it’s the likely culprit behind Nora’s sleepiness, so hopefully it’ll be gone soon. 

We did the draw at the same health campus where my husband works, so of course we had to make the rounds!  I was having a good day, pain-wise (I actually stopped taking the Percocet that day and switched to normal acetaminophen), so we wandered around for a good hour showing Nora off to all his co-workers.  They were thrilled to meet her, and I’m glad we got her first round of stranger-meetings in while she still has all my immunities.  I keep reading that the first few weeks are the safest time for babies to be exposed to new people, which is really counter-intuitive to me, but I guess it makes sense. 

LC appt today: This appt went really well!  She’s now up to 6lbs 8oz, and is on track to be up to her birth weight by ten days, which is what they like to see.   My milk supply is now keeping up with her demand, so I’m not surprised she’s started putting on weight so well.  Even better: we were able to get her to latch on to me using a nipple shield, and without causing me a ridiculous amount of pain!  Apparently the problem is that she has a very “narrow palette”, which basically means she can’t latch on to me without causing pain, no matter how good the latch is.  We’ve been doing it mostly right since day one, which was comforting to hear, though I got a few pointers today which I think will help.  This will get better as she gets bigger, and then I’ll be able to wean her off the shield.  I wish I didn’t have shield-weaning to look forward to as I’ve heard it can be very difficult, but at this point I am so happy to have her getting nourishment straight from me that I just don’t care! 

It still hurts a little with the shield, so we’re going to do BFing on the breast in the morning/early afternoon and then just pump during the evening/night and continue with finger-feeding, since she’s more fussy and frantic later in the day.  I’m also only to give her 20 minutes at the breast unless she’s nursing well, and if she’s still hungry at that point we’ll do some finger-feeding to fill her up.  This is both to help me continue to heal and also to encourage her to not dawdle.  She has a tendency to latch on and fall right to sleep, which would be cute if it weren’t so frustrating!  We’re also supposed to keep up with the skin-to-skin, so she thinks of mommy as a safe place to be.  

All in all we’re doing well!  Tired and still trying to figure out her schedule – or rather, dealing with the fact that she has no schedule and there’s precious little we can do to change that at this early stage – but things are improving.   I took some new pics of her last night, but haven’t had time to load them on the comp yet.  Hopefully I’ll have those on the picture page in the next couple days.  She’s developing a little double chin, which is a crack-up!  Nice to see that milk going somewhere.  : )