We've been busy...
So Nathan’s been home for almost three weeks now – can you tell? (Note the date of our last blog post…) We can certainly tell! The living room and dining room are amazingly more orderly than they’ve been in a long time but they share a traveling pile of baby blankets and burp cloths, Nathan’s room continues to be the laundry room but now it’s full of baby laundry and our room has – count them – four different places for a baby to sleep depending on how independent / acid reflux-y he’s feeling. Every room has at least one pacifier lost in it and bottles & formula have taken over the kitchen.
Wait, did you just read the F word? Yup. Remember all those references to breastfeeding and pumping over the past three months? Well four days after we came home from the hospital, the FDA came out with a report that Nathan’s thickener is not safe for babies born before 37 weeks. UGH. And the new thickener can’t thicken my milk because the milk is just so powerful and amazing that it breaks the thickener down in three minutes (we timed it…). So, until he can swallow thin liquids, Nathan is on thickened formula. Do not even ask us about the state of our freezers, unless it is to offer space in yours – we just moved into a third East Arlington freezer this week and have plans to expand out to Bedford soon. The New England Mother’s Milk Bank says they’re really excited to help me empty our freezers, but they’ve been really excited for three weeks now with no real action. UGH.
In spite of the massive amounts of feeding frustration, it’s been a good three weeks. We’re learning how to get out of the house with a baby and Nathan’s learning how to smile. We’ve mastered the art of getting a car seat in and out of a two door Yaris and have managed to be on time to all of our doctor’s appointments (we’re still working on it with family and friends…). And we no longer feel the need to constantly check that Nathan’s breathing, although that might have as much to do with the fact that he’s developed a bit of a snore as our confidence as parents. Nathan also seems to be getting louder, which is a great sign for his vocal chord healing and a bad sign for the neighbors. Are we sleeping? Yes, I think. If he’s awake to eat at 11pm, Nathan then lets us sleep until around 4am and then again till 6am or 7am, so we really can’t complain. And we’re not against changing his diaper at 11pm as a polite way of asking if he’s like a bottle. Not much other than baby watching and bottle feeding and diapering changing is getting done around the house, but I’ve decided that’s okay. We have wonderful friends and family who have been feeding us (we are so in trouble when we have to learn to cook again…) and no one seems to judge us when we wear the same outfit all week (why is it that only Nathan’s laundry gets done?).
So that’s what we’ve been up to – wandering through the days, taking care of our little guy and letting the rest take care of itself. One of these days we might get into something like a routine, just in time for Nathan to change it. Until then, we may just try to fit in a bit more laundry and blogging.
(New pics to come in the gallery the next time Nathan agrees to sleep next to me on the couch – for now he says it’s time to eat.)
Success!
Nathan passed his swallow study today – yippee!!! He’s back on think liquids. So what did we do when we got home? Well, it wasn’t pump…
Another week with Nathan
Thoughts at the end of another week home:
I am even more of an introvert with a baby. When it takes an hour to get the two of us out of the house is so easy to just sit on the porch instead. Going to the store, even a super exciting store like Penzey’s, feels like an extrovert’s errand that should be put off for another day. (I’ve been trying to buy spices all week… maybe it will happen this weekend…)
A lot of projects have been started and then abandoned this week because I got distracted feeding / playing with / staring at Nathan.
I must be really good at making clutter look pretty. We had a few visitors this week express amazement at the cleanliness of our house in spite of having a baby newly at home. Truth is, I just hid the dust bunnies and made the piles of junk more attractive, but it was nice to have the house called clean.
Formula really does make everything, from burps on down, stinky and sticky. Yay for being back on breast milk!
I can’t wait for Nathan to become really interested in books and reading (there are books everywhere from the two of us reading in every room of the house) but in the mean time it’s nice that he’s not picky about which books we read.
Nathan has started cooing and making vowel sounds! Finally sounds from our talkative boy that can’t be mistaken as crying. Apparently he talks even more than his Aunty Sarah…
Emptying the dishwasher is my least favorite chore and Nathan is a great excuse for not doing it. (Okay, I like washing the floor even less, but we just don’t let people look at our kitchen floor and that solves that…)
There must be an NPR gene because Nathan already likes listening to it.
In spite of (or maybe because of) the fact that they make doing laundry and cleaning the bathroom impossible, snuggly babies are the best.
It’s official
Father’s Day is more exciting than Christmas. Nathan was up at 5am to wait patiently for Daddy to wake up at 8:30 to open presents. He never waits patiently at 5am - it was a good morning.