2-month appt!

We went to Tyler's 2-month appointment today. He is 9 lbs 14 ozs now - which is great! I can't remember exactly but I think he's 20.5 inches long now. He got his shots today too, so we can now go out and about in the world now.

The pediatrician says we are on the right track with his feedings, including being on the Gentlease. His fussiness and such should all settle down in the next couple of weeks, and if it doesn't then it might be reflux, but more than likely he will grow out of it. BTW, he is now pooping once or twice a day pretty regularly, which is normal for his age. We had several blowouts to get to this point though, which were quite messy! One required cutting his onesie off of him because there was poop all over his back and no way to get that off without spreading it more.

The nurse that gave him his shots was super quick at it; apparently she's been doing them for 30 plus years. They asked us a lot of developmental questions and he's dong well there too. Overall he got a clean bill of health and we have another appt scheduled for 6/29 (4-month appt). I'm sure we'll be there sometime between now and then since he starts daycare on 6/1.

After that, we went for his first shopping trip - to BJ's. We were out of all the household essentials - paper towels, toilet paper, etc, plus we needed meat and formula.

He's been sleepy all day today, we figure this is an after-effect of the shots. Hopefully tomorrow he'll be back to his happy little (ok, not so little) self. :)

Thrush & Fuss

Figured out earlier this week that Tyler has thrush (a very common yeast infection in his mouth), so we started treating that with oral antibiotics (Nystatin). It is administered by "painting" it on his tongue 4x/day and that's been going well, except for when I spilled it all and had to get a new prescription for it!

We've continued to work on the formula thing, and that's been a continuing challenge. Last I posted, we were on Similac Advance. He still seemed fussy so we called the pediatrician's office and the nurse recommended to try Similac Isomil (their soy formula), so we did. This was Wednesday. Since then, he hasn't had a real poop. Seems to be trying to work things out, but no progress. He is continuing to be hungry, so that is a good sign, but we're still concerned about the no-pooping thing. We called the pediatrician's office again today and talked to a different nurse. She gave us a couple of options for getting things moving, and also said to try the Enfamil Gentlease formula - she said she wouldn't have recommended the Isomil and would have recommended this the other day. I made a quick Target run to get that plus a few other things for him, and hopefully this will all work out soon.

Aggie went to the vet yesterday, and is all healthy. She had something wrong with her eye (I think one of the cats got her) but the vet looked at it, and it seems to be healing fine. The cats go today.

Tummy Time & other updates...

- we've been giving Tyler some tummy time over the past couple of weeks and he is a pro at turning his head from one side to another! He will do that on his own several times during a session - yay Tyler!

- he's now fitting in the 3-6 month onesies. I think Gerbers are sized slightly off, but he fits in the 3 month Carters too.

- We had a few tough feedings today - he would stop and just yell or scream for no apparent reason. So we tried the Dr Brown's bottles again and now he likes them. A few weeks ago (you might recall) he did not take to them well at all, so this is a new development. Which is good since we have a boatload of them!

- had my 6-week follow-up appt today - clean bill of health; yay!

Transitioning to Formula

The biggest challenge of having a baby for me has been breastfeeding. Tougher than 11 weeks of bedrest, childbirth with no meds, and even than powering thru on an hour or two of sleep.

Tyler had a tough time with feeding from the breast, which is normal since he was a preemie. (BTW, we past his real due date this past weekend!). They have a tough time learning the suck-swallow-breathe thing initially but usually get it by when they would have been full-term. For us though, we decided to have me pump exclusively, and then feed him the breastmilk from a bottle. This was double work for me, but it worked out well because Eric could help out with feedings. And, my production, up until recently, has been more than what he takes in a day. We've been freezing the breastmilk and then each evening I would prepare the bottles for the next day.

This past week we've moved his bottles up to 120 MLs per, and we're at the point that his consumption is more than I am producing per day. I'm already on Fenugreek to increase my supply, and given that he is now 6 weeks old, have decided to introduce formula. I thought this would be easy peasy, but not so much....

We were given formula samples at the hospital, which came in handy. Sunday I put 1 oz (30 MLs) of Enfamil formula in one of his bottles. He seemed to take it ok, he was a little fussier and maybe took a little longer to finish the bottle but that was ok. Monday I added the same amount to every other bottle, and he continued the fussiness plus took almost an hour on these bottles too (usually he takes 30 mins to finish a bottle). So yesterday, I used the Similac formula and put that in every other bottle, and it seemed to go down much better - didn't take as long, and he wasn't as fussy. Eric also gave him 30 MLs of pure formula, followed up by 90 MLs of breastmilk, for one feeding, and that went well. He's even eating more - hungry after finishing one bottle... Last night he was really fussy after his 2 am bottle (all breastmilk) so we gave him 50 MLs more of breastmilk and he seemed full but still fussy.

This morning we started the day off with one full bottle of (Similac) formula and he is snoozing. We'll see how this goes. The plan is to slowly move him to formula over the next few weeks, so stay tuned for updates!

In other news, I weighed him on our home scale and he says hes around 8 lbs! We've been on a couple more stroller rides and might try and fit one of those in today too.

Week two down!

Today's Eric's "Friday" (since he works S, M, T, W 10 hour shifts) so we have survived another week; hooray! Eric was home sick on Monday so it kinda doesn't count, but still. Today's schedule was a little messed up - he's taken to eating every 2 to 2.5 hours and that is throwing things off. Plus, I am meeting the girls for dinner and was trying to mentally schedule everything so I can head out as soon as Eric gets home. I think we're back on track for the most part now.

I have no bottoms that fit. And mostly t-shirts to wear. I didn't know that my maternity/post-partum wardrobe would be yoga pants and t-shirts but that's what it turned out to be! I would like to have something a little more presentable pants-wise but I still have a few pregnancy pounds (and my old jeans were tight to start out), so I'm stuck with the yoga pants.

I made appointments today to get my haircut (haven't done that since October!), and to get hte animals all to the vet. Cats are overdue and the dog needs her 6-month shots. So I got all that taken care of today - whoo hoo!

Off to dinner soon!

Accomplished!

Had a great week last week. Survived all week on my own while Eric worked, and went for the pedicure (and brow wax) on Thursday. We didn't do anything exciting - the week was more about getting a routine down. I added shows to the DVR list so that I have things to watch in the middle of the night for feeding/pumping time. Ordered a few things online to help make things easier. And later in the week (was it Saturday), we took Tyler out on a stroller ride thru the neighborhood. Tyler had his first easter this week and we didn't do much since he's just 5 weeks old. My friend Amanda got him a cute onesie that he wore, and that's about it for this year. Pumping is going well although his intake is going up too - so I think we'll be supplementing in the next month or so. He's at 100 ml/meal, and I weighed him on our scale - according to it, he's 7.5 lbs. Can't wait til the pediatrician appt later this month! My parents also sent an Easter card, and signed it "Grandma & Grandpa" which I thought was cute :) And Eric's parents brought us Easter dinner -yum! He's also gaining strength in his neck and back. We started him doing "tummy time" and today he lifted and turned his head several times.

In other news, we got our tax refund in already - well, our federal. Still waiting on the state of NC. Also got the credit reports checked, caught up on thank you notes, and cleaned the house on Sunday.

Moving forward day by day!