Paging Dr. House

Just wanted to send out a quick update for those following the Little Joel sickness drama. Sadly, not much has changed. The ear infection, or so we thought it was, has cleared up but he still has the pain, irritability and fever. We are just trying to hang in there and monitor him closely for a few days and are hoping it will clear up. He has gone through more tests than you can shake a stick at in the past few days, including chest x-rays, multiple types of blood tests, flu tests, urine tests and so far everything is negative. So, we are stumped. Sadly there are a few babies right now admitted into the hospital with very similar symptoms to our little one and the Drs are stumped. We are thankful he is well enough we can still stay at home, but hope they figure this out real soon.

Anyone know Dr. House?

I miss my happy little boy. Between the bed rest, our troubles with breastfeeding, and now this I am just sick of carting back and forth to the hospital and canceling plans with friends and family. I treasure the prior two weeks in which we had some sense of normalcy, going out and about and to the lake with family. I am so sad that this has upset me this much too, because I know in the grand scheme of things this is really nothing and will hopefully pass soon. There is so much worse out there and I should be thankful. I will try to focus on that in the interim. Hopefully we will have some happy news to report and some good photos soon.

Not a Crazy Mommy

Last night we went to the ER.  LJ woke up at 1 am, which is very abnormal, and he was screaming bloody murder - which really does not happen.  I was immediately alarmed and took his temperature.  Over 100 degrees!  Thus, our first trip to the ER was born.

Sadly, this was sort of a waste of time.  By the time we got in there for registration, his temperature had moved to 99, and he was exhibiting just normal fussy baby behavior.  Not the terrifying cries I had witnessed at home.  This probably made the nurses believe that I was crazy, and this was not an emergency - so I believe at this point we were moved to the back of the line.  I could also sense that my loving husband was thinking I was nuts and overreacting.

By 3:30 am we were moved into an ER room to be examined, or so I thought.  At this point LJ was sound asleep on my chest.  LJ sound asleep, Mom not.  Dad not, and Dad trying to hide anger at Mom for his lack of sleep.  A nurse shows up, and tells us we are third in line.  She goes on to say "We like to get the infants out as soon as possible to avoid the risk of them catching anything else while they are here."  So, now I loose it.  I have brought my probably-not-sick child to the ER, no one is getting sleep and now he is probably going to get sick from the swine flu.    

By 5:00, yes, 5:00AM - the Doctor comes in.  Looks in his ears, hears his lungs and then sends us on our merry way.  That was it.  Again, my loving husband bites his tongue, and I cry the whole way home. 

But, I am not crazy I keep saying.  The rest of the night LJ is so restless and goes back to screaming bloody murder each time I lay him down.  The only way I can get him to sleep is if I sit upright on the couch, with him on my chest.  At 9:30, a few screams into a diaper change, I decide to take his temp again.  The under arm thermometer says 99.4, the rectal (I know, very unpleasant) says 101.4.  After five minutes of arguing with husband about whether or not the rectal thermometer works, I insist we go in.  Joel is probably thinking, another trip, another 5 hours for an ok baby who probably is just getting colic?

This time the pediatrician's office is open.  We are ushered right into the office and they immediately take his temperature.  I am not crazy, 101!  The immediate sense of relief for me not being crazy is now crowded with the worry of what could be wrong with my normally happy baby.

The pediatrician takes one look in his ears, and ear infection it is.  But before we can get the antibiotics, we find out LJ needs to go through a series of challenges.  Not only do these challenges torture the poor child, but I was totally beside myself.  At one point I uttered I rather give birth again than watch this.  They put a catheter in him - which was horrifying. The poor little man.  They took blood from his heel, and then told us they needed to take blood from a vein.  Of course the little guy who is barely 6 weeks hardly has veins that are noticeable to the human eye.  For this awful test they send us on a wild goose chase, where we end up in a closet somewhere in the bowels of the hospital.  Three women take 45 minutes poking, prodding and cutting off his circulation before they declare "it cannot be done."  We are sent back to the pediatrician's office, and she is clearly annoyed.  She notes we "have to" have this test.  She proceeds to poke and prod for another 20 minutes while another pediatrician is screaming on the phone in the background trying to find anyone, anyone at all, in the entire hospital who might find a vein on him.

At this point I am so hysterical that they are asking me if I am ok.  No sleep and watching your baby writhe and squeal in pain for three hours straight will do that to you.  I start to say that this test DOES NOT need to happen.  The pediatrician says it does - and proceeds.  So, I make a deal with God out loud, you make this test work and I will baptize him Cathlioc.  Guess what, she finally got a vein and the test ended. 

Two more pricks ahead for the medicine to be delivered, and the poor tortured boy was released.  He has black and blues and broken blood vessels along his arms and hands.  He is pooped beyond belief but wakes up screaming.  I have yet to see his temp this evening, hopefully the antibiotics are doing the trick and it is going down.

We get the full results of the tests tomorrow, and Monday.  I hope they are fine, I am thinking they are fine and am sure it is just the ear infection.  Earlier in the week I had brought him in for what I thought was a slight cold and they found nothing.  Now I am sure it was a cold, as that is the perfect set-up for an ear infection a few days later.  

The moral of the story is, trust your instincts.  The poor guy.  I think about all of those families who watch their kids go through tests like this all the time for various illnesses, and I do not know how they do it.  My one afternoon was heart-breaking.  My thoughts and prayers are with you guys, and of course with my son who I hope gets better and does not need to do this again anytime soon.  

Now I am off to call the Priest at St. Theresa's in Rye.

5:00 am Poetry

So, yes he sleeps 6 hours in a row, but what about his mom?  I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 4:30am.  What do I do?  I knew he was going to want to eat at any moment, so what was the point in going back to bed.  So I puttered around for a bit.  Made Joel's lunch, did some e-mail, some volunteer work even.  At one point I heard a loud noise like furniture crashing on the monitor.  I thought either he woke up or something bad happened.  As I was running to check, and the monitor remained silent, I realized the little one had just sleep-pooped.  Nice.

Who cares, I thought.  I will just get things done until he wakes up, then we will both get back to sleep for at least another three hours.  Think again.  He did wake up, but the new fun difficult stage of bobbie feeding has begun. Yes folks, not only is it not easy to get it to start working, but it seems that there are all sorts of hurdles that you will continue to need to jump as time goes on.  He now chokes on his own breakfast, which then leads him to wheeze the rest of the night.  A wheezing baby is not a sleeping baby.  We brought him in to the Dr. yesterday because I thought this was a cold, but I should have known - more breastfeeding fun.
Good thing he is so cute, because another part of this fun is lots of spit-up.  I do not know why I decided to wear a nice outfit for the day at 9am, when I will not be seeing anyone till 1pm.  I should know better than this - but now one of my only nice shirts is soaking.  

Other than this continued challenge, all is going well.  The Dr. was impressed with his strength, and noted he is 10 pounds, 5 ounces!  I am taking photos of him in all of his cute outfits and trying to get use out of all of them (the blow-out diaper thing is helping with this).  I am afraid we will miss wearing one!  Yesterday we wore the car outfit to the Dr, and I went on an errand.  In front of all the ladies at Jared (yes, he went to Jared), he exploded!  All over the car seat and his cute outfit.  I was mortified, but he had on a great smile!
Ok, nap time for both of us now!  We will get this new schedule right soon...

Hot Potato

This weekend we went to Sebago Lake in Maine with my parents, and Joel's entire (immediate) family was there as well.  It was sad for me a bit, as I was to be at a good friend's wedding.  This was the 5th wedding I missed this year!  At the time of RSVP we still did not know when the baby was coming, so even though he came early, with all the trouble we have been experiencing with the breast feeding I left it as-is.  I was worried about being away from him for more than 2 hours at a time.  I know, I need to learn!  But, we already had to cancel on one wedding last minute this year because of bed rest, and I did not want to do that again.  Still, very sad!  So - to Hubi and Jazlene, Eric and Randi, Lisa and Heath, Tim and Michelle and now Shaira and Andy - CONGRATULATIONS.  I am sorry I missed it, but I wish you many, many happy years!

So, the parents came in from Chicago, and we went up to the lake.  As you have previously read, it is a lot of work to get up to the lake.  But, we were situated and once we had a groove going we were just fine.  

LJ loves it up there as far as I can tell.  I am glad they say you cannot spoil a newborn, because if you could - boy would we have spoiled him this weekend.  I think he was held basically 95% of the time by one grandparent or another.  It was nice to have hands-free for a bit!  

It was also nice to do some lake things which I feel I missed out on this summer.  A glass of wine on the porch, a cup of coffee on the porch, dipping the toes in the lake, throwing the ball for Otter.  We still have a large list of things to do: boat ride, long walk, campfire and smores, canoe ride - but that will all be done Labor Day weekend.  (There is a lot of pressure for good weather Labor Day weekend!). 
As you can see, LJ is not sure what to think of his first dip in the lake.  Mom had fun at least!  Below Grandpa Dave is snuggling with him, he almost held the record of at least two hours - but that was beaten, I think, by Grandpa (Pa) Ken the next day.

Some exciting things to report from this weekend's trip - we now "sleep through the night."  The books count 6 hours as sleeping through the night and he is there.  In order to accomodate this, he is a little chow-hound piggy from about 4:30pm - 11:00pm, but I will take it!

Some other excitement, we have finally learned what "blow-out diapers" really means.  I am glad we learned that this weekend while Grandma Hedy and her laundry skills were here.  But now I am worried.  He seems to have the talent to have one of these at least once a day now...  Good thing we have more than 50 outfits in the 0-3 month size!
We are trying to decide if we should go up again next weekend.  Labor Day is coming soon, I can't believe the end of summer is upon us!

I Don't Want to go to the Bank

Today was a fun day.  Said with slight sarcasm.  Really, it wasn't so bad - but my worst nightmare came true.  I know this by far was not the last time this is going to happen- but as it was the first, it was tough to take.  We had our first tantrum in public.

The day started simple enough.  LJ actually slept pretty late for him.  Usually after his 7:30 feeding he goes back to bed until about 9.  Today at 10:15 I was standing over his crib checking for breathing.  A few minutes later he awoke, a very happy baby.  We read two books ("Peter Rabbit's I Love You" and "If You Give a Moose a Muffin"), were changed (during which time he managed to pee all over the changing pad and table), had a good twenty minutes of mat time, ate, and cat napped.  Things were going so well, and we had so much entertainment that I decided to quickly get him in the car for a few errands.

I should have known, the sleeping late was not going to make for a happy trip to the bank.  He cried in the car, where he usually passes out by the time we are at the end of the driveway.  I decided to drive to Rye to see if he would tire-out.  No dice.  Famished, as lunch (for me) was to be part of our outing, I stopped at Me & Ollies.  Lots of children in there, so I thought I was covered in the event of screaming fit.  He was pretty good!  He smiled at the lady at the counter and seemed to be enjoying looking around at his new surroundings.  Back in the car, I swear I could hear giggles from the back seat.  What's this?  A happy, awake baby in public, let's try it!  Let's go to the bank.

That was bad thinking.  A happy awake baby only lasts for so long until one of the three important things needs to get done, eat, poop or sleep.  While at the bank, LJ decided either one or two needed to happen -  right now.

I walked in, to get an account opened for him - we were there for him - and they put me with the new associate.  I knew this was trouble from the start.  At this point he was still pleasant in his car seat.  But at about the fifth time she needed to get up to ask a question (not her fault, she was trying very hard and I think sensed my urgency to get this done), he started.  It started simple enough.  I gave him my pinky finger which soothed him for a bit.  At question number 8 though, LJ had had enough.  It was time to leave and eat right now.  He screamed.  I didn't know what to do.  Do I take him out of the car seat?  That alone can take five minutes of even louder screaming.  The associate quickly finished the work, bank account opened, checks deposited, and tried to make small talk with me as I collected my things and bolted out.  On my way out I saw it... the disapproving look of an old man.  He was probably thinking "who brings a hungry baby to the bank?"  I wanted to scream "I swear I just fed him an hour ago!"  Cranky old man.

The car ride home was my punishment for pushing the limits of our fun.  I knew he wasn't up for a trip out, and I still thought we could make it.  He screamed the entire Drinkwater Road home, which is 5 miles of 25-30 mile an hour strict driving.  Do you know how hard it is to go 25 miles an hour with a screaming infant in the back?  I didn't know whether to pull over or just see if I could get him home.  Just 5 minutes I kept saying, louder and louder.

The good news is he forgave me.  We got home, and all was well.  I promised there would be no more trips in the bank again (thank those who invented the drive-up ATM) - but told him one day he would thank me for opening this account.

Party Time

Yesterday we went to our first party - for Lauren's Baby shower.  See his adorable party outfit above. He was a little crabby - get the pun - but all in all he had a great time.  There were lots of other little ones there, and lots of ladies to go crazy over him, so all in all he was very happy!  We were gone from the house from about 10 am to 5 pm, as after the party Big Joel and I met up to get our hair cut.  LJ's first trip to the hairdresser was a big success, and mom lasted almost the whole day away from the house.  It was exhausting though!

He blends into his changing table here.  As it was Sunday morning, both LJ and mom stayed in PJs until noon.  LJ seems to really like the Sunday Morning show, which is mom's favorite - so that is nice!

Dad and the little guy having some quality time.  It is amazing that even though he is growing quickly, he is still so small!

We have been playing around with the video camera, and I am trying to get videos to load.  Hopefully those will be up soon!  More excursions to come this week.  We hope to get to the...Mall!  (very exciting), as well as to meet Dad for lunch one day in Portsmouth.  It is never boring here!

 

Quick Updates

For those of you not on Facebook, Facebook allows you to post quick one sentence updates.  I thought you might like to hear some of my recent updates:

"Julie is...not sure as to whether the smell is an Angus (french bulldog pictured above) fart, or if LJ needs to be changed." 

"Julie is...thrilled to have discovered the Baby Bjorn, so much more gets done."

- then the next day, this post:

"Julie is sad you cannot take a Baby Bjorn in the shower.

A photo of LJ watching his first Patriots game.  He is literally staring at the flashing colors of the TV.  I am not sure this is so good for a newborn...

And, the swing.  We have discovered the swing and love it.  We get a good 1/2 hour of fun in the swing, maybe twice a day.  

Things are going well. We are getting out more, running errands, finding ways for Mommy to still get things done around the house while taking care of the baby.  I can't believe that next week he will be a month old already!

Like a Weed

I am going to be yelled at to go to bed any moment now... But I wanted to let you know that he is growing fast.  Today at the LC we learned he is now 8 pounds, 13 ounces!  This is a whole pound more than when he was born.  He is growing an average of 1.75 ounces a day!  
He no longer fits into his favorite PJs and we really should be out of the newborn clothes and into 0-3 months - but I am sad to see them go!  A few photos of his favorite sleeping outfit... This was probably the last time he may wear it. Oh, the memories!
Here is hoping the growth continues.  Now that he is on the right breastfeeding track - the new struggle is trying to calculate if he has really eaten enough!  

Hole in One?

Yesterday we had a hole in one, or shot the best game ever!  But, that was followed by green poop...  I wonder what today will be like!  
All day at home, alone - with nothing to do, the two of us had a great time.  We cuddled, went for a quick walk (it is VERY hot outside and I thought it might be better to stay inside).  We prepared dinner, watched Anthony Bourdain (mommy's favorite) and planned the next 8 months!

Today is another lazy day, followed by another appointment with the LC.  I can't wait to tell her about our successful yesterday.  Now off to morning nap...

Bago Lake!

This weekend we ventured up to Sebago Lake in Maine, where we have a cabin.  Well, actually, we have more of a compound.  My in-laws have a place right next to our cabin, and my sister-in-law has a place right next to them.  So, for most of my husband's life, and for the past seven years of mine our summers are spent at this gorgeous lake in Maine.

Of course, I was very sad when they put me on bed rest and told me that a two hour trip to Maine was not allowed.  I had planned a 6 week pre-birth vacation - where I was going to spend as much time as possible at the lake, but alas this was cut short almost immediately due to the bed rest.  We missed the entire month of July, so we have been itching to get up there, and to show the little guy a little slice of heaven.We made it up Friday afternoon, and boy did that take work.  Lots of work.  The car was packed to the gills, we are still unsure as to what he might need.  We pretty much brought everything except for the crib (we got an extra pack n' play).  This was so much work and so exhausting, that by the time we arrived I was frazzled.
But, after a good night sleep I woke up on Saturday to the best weather we have had all summer.  It was sunny, slightly cool and gorgeous.  J (we have taken to just calling him J now...) and I snuggled on the couch and enjoyed the lake view.  We all spent most of the day and Grandma and Grandpa's next door.  We played cards, and watched the little guy sleep, a lot (why can't he do this when I am just at home with him?).  
Saturday night I had a delicious glass of wine, and a gourmet dinner ala Grandma Karen.  I went to bed knowing the grandparents were having the best time watching, snuggling and playing with J.  See the the photos of Grandpa Ken and Grandma Karen getting to know their first grandchild.

We are home, and the trip home and unpacking was just as exhausting as the process to go up.  Hopefully we will streamline this in the future.  We plan on at least three more trips up this year, the next two with my parents as well.  So, I am sure with four grandparents we will get the swing really quickly!  Maybe the next time I will actually get to go out on the dock... or in the boat!  Baby steps...

PS - we stayed out of the sun, and have yet to get a good photo of him as evidence that he was at the lake.  Next time!

Golf and Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is like Golf.
Golf has 18 holes - A baby must be fed 8-10 times a day.  You can do really well on one hole, and the next get stuck in the sand trap or water hazard. 

You have good days, and you have bad days. Some days you get so frustrated you swear you will never play again. 

You can take lessons, but no one can swing for you.This week, a few times, I felt like the guy from Sideways. You know, when he gets yelled at on the course and goes running down the fairway swinging the club after another golfer.  The next day, a better day, I was Tiger Woods.
Those who know me well know that I do not love Golf.  I refuse to do 18 holes in one day, and when I score I use happy faces and unhappy faces.  I added this smiley face scoring system to my game a few years ago in order to take the pressure off. I seemed to play much better when a number was not looming over my head.  I have decided that this system also applies to breastfeeding.

Today we had a 6/8 smiley face day, which is an overall super-smiley face in my book!  It helps to learn that there are so many others out there who also share in my struggle.  You think mother nature would make this easy, but alas.

Some photos for you.  See how long Joel Andrew is next to Angus, Turskey (my stuffed animal as a child), and Lu-Seal (Big Joel's stuffed animal as a child).  Little Joel had his two week Doctor visit today, and he is up to 8 pounds, 4 ounces!  Despite our troubles, he continues to eat, eat, eat, one way or another and is growing fast!

Also, check Little Joel out in his polo - just like Daddy!

Night and Day

Yesterday was tough.  We had a little fussy guy on our hands, who only wanted the bottle.  This combined with an over-tired mommy did not mix very well.  I am trying to learn patience, and that not everything flows perfectly... but it is tough.

Today on the other hand was much better.  I think we all woke up thinking we could do better.  It was really nice to be home, the three of us hanging out in the living room - watching episodes of Big Bang Theory (which is very funny by the way).  Joel and I took some turns getting errands done around the house - I gardened  bit.  
LJ rested, ate, pooped (a lot), and cuddled.  I swear he smiles now, though I know it is too soon.  It was nice family time, even Angus and Otter were playing silently in front of us at one point.
We decided to really take in the good moment, and went out to dinner!  LJ's first trip to the 99!  This went off beautifully, so we then went to ice cream.  This was also a treat, so a walk around the neighborhood with the dogs was next.  It was nice to have the whole family out and about.
The feeding thing continues to be a challenge, but I know I just have to take it day by day.  He will get it eventually for sure! (I hope...).