Okay, 6 weeks and 3 days.

Observations:

  • When she lifts her eyebrows (what she has of then) she gets forehead wrinkles.
  • Her forehead wrinkles are mostly on top of her head. Had her forehead not grown already then the wrinkles would be fully atop her head.
  • Nicole noticed the forehead wrinkle thing comes from my dad.
  • Even though she is gaining weight her hands still look more like they are in normal proportion to her arms.
  • She is over 8 pounds now and I expect her to hit 9 by around Wednesday.
  • She is strong. Since about week 4 she’s been able to push up into a stand on my lap nearly vertical. Her balance and coordination isn’t very good. We just need her arms to catch up now.

Problems:

Shortly after my last post Olive developed reflux. It started with a gurgling noise in her throat that we now know is silent reflux. So she got her first hospital visit since these things seem to have to happen on the weekend. After a bunch of tests to make sure it wasn’t an infection and waiting for her blood oxygen to get out of the slightly low range the doctors all decided it was reflux. I also learned that on some babies a phlebotomist can draw blood from the arm like on an adult.

So now we give her Zantac which doesn’t stop the reflux, but makes it less painful. She’s not even minding the bitter mint flavor as much. We also started having to feed her more often but less with each feeding and keeping her elevated for 20 minutes after each feeding to let gravity help keep things down. I get a lot more early morning web browsing done now.

The hardest part is when Nicole will only do for comforting. On those days I come home from work to relieve Nicole and there is very little relief I can provide.

 

On August 11 Olive was born. She was due today, the 23rd, but for a number of reasons she had to come early. Despite being over 38 weeks gestational age she was small at 5 pounds 11 ounces, putting her in the 5th percentile for weight. However she is in the 75th percentile in length. She’s starting to gain some body fat, regaining her birth weight in a week and going strong. Nicole is recovering faster than expected too!

The only problem with her size has been with diapers and clothes. The compostable diapers the diapers the hospital used were too big so we switched to the newborn size we had Those were too big too. At this point they fit and it’s nice not having to wonder if something is going to come out the side. All of the clothes, even the 5-8 pound clothes tend to be very baggy on her. Some of them are starting to fit but I think having enough bod to fill out the clothes will make her too long to fit in other ways.

Going into this I figured the early weeks were just a process. Figure out what’s needed for feeding, cleaning, and sleeping and the rest will take care of itself until she became more interactive. That’s still true, but now I see that in some ways she is pretty interactive right now. She’s also often a sleepy lump, like right now with her laying on me like a frog. She’s happy, I’m happy.

Some things I’ve learned so far:

  • Beware the projectile poop
  • Girls can make a fountain with their diaper off too
  • The lack of sleep isn’t as bad as I thought it would be as we learn the patterns and wants and needs of the little one.
  • Baby limbs don’t really move randomly, but follow instructions like “move right” and get a “stop” when they get to something interesting
  • When she gets startled her arms spring out and her fingers open wide and it looks like she’s throwing up gang signs. I need to try getting video of that.
  • I think she’s great!

     

    Some of you know that Nicole is pregnant. The rest of you now know that Nicole is pregnant. I finally finished setting up a page for various critter (we’re calling it critter for now) related items. So if you like gray moving dots (not like Pong) this is the page for you!

    Critter’s page

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