2 Month Appointment

Evan had his 2 month doctor appointment yesterday. Everything is looking good! His weight gain is great. He's 11 lbs, 12 oz now!! I can't believe he's gained almost 5 pounds since he was born! Well, I actually can believe it when I'm holding him. That child is heavy! He's in the 50th percentile for weight and 75th for height...he's 23.5 inches. Tall baby. :-) I'm pleased with his growth. I sometimes worry if he's getting enough to eat, I wonder if I'd be able to tell if my milk production decreased. But he's obviously doing great in the eating department!

For those of you who exclusively breastfeed, do you give your baby vitamins? I was told to give Evan the vitamin drops, but had never heard of that before! Although I guess the only other infant I've had close contact with (my ex-best friend's son) was formula fed so didn't need the vitamins.

Evan also had his shots yesterday. :-( Poor baby! He's so good at the doctor. He just lays there on the table and lets them do whatever they need to do for them. Except at his very first appointment, he did cry then when we took his clothes off..... now i need to share the pathetic (and cute) picture of that!
Anyway, the nurse gave him the first of 3 shots and he didn't seem to notice. I was hoping he wouldn't cry at all, but it was just a delayed reaction! After a couple of seconds he started crying so loud. His face turned bright red. It was so sad!

I was told by a friend not to touch the baby while he is getting his shots, only afterward. That way he doesn't associate you with the pain. We told the nurse that we didn't want to hold him or touch him, but she said we had to hold his hands, it is a safety policy there. So Matt held his hands while he received the shots and then as soon as they were over I cradled him and Matt put his arms around both of us and we comforted him. He cried for about a minute and then settled down. He went to sleep pretty quickly and was fine the rest of the day.

Everything else is looking good with Evan. We had a couple of questions about a rash on his neck (caused by being too moist, we just have to put some baby powder on it sometimes to keep it dry) and about his fondness for having his head tilted back at a weird angle (which is fine since it isn't due to breathing problems).

Anyway, we're looking forward to Halloween coming up. Evan has a cute outfit that he's going to wear. I've already been having fun with his pumpkin bibs the past couple of weeks! Fall is a fun time. :-)

2 Months Old

My baby boy is 2 months old!

Highlights.... man, it's hard to keep track of developments and what I've already written about. Last week Evan went to see his first movie in the theater. My friend and I took him and he was really good! I fed him during the movie and surprisingly that went smoothly as well.

Places I've breastfed in public so far:
1. Grocery store parking lot (in the car).
2. Hotel lobby bathroom while a lady took a dump in the stall nearby for 5+ minutes...awkward!
3. Fast food restaurant parking lot (in the car).
4. Airport parking garage (in the car) all alone with people walking by every time a flight came in.
5. Movie theatre

Haha, there have been some interesting experiences already!!!

My in-laws came over earlier this week and brought us an infant scale! We weighed Evan and it showed him being 11 pounds 4 ounces. We aren't 100% sure it's completely accurate since it's used, but I have a feeling it is completely accurate or very close. Evan is so big and HEAVY! It's hard to hold him for long.

Speaking of which, I had very little back troubles while I was pregnant in spite of my scoliosis, but now it is killing me. My chiropractor says my scoliosis (the curve in my spine) is worse since I delivered Evan. That's caused all of the ribs on my right side to go out of place. OUCH. It hasn't improved much, so I'm going to start going to the chiropractor every week now.

I also have yet to start exercising. I think if I can get into a stretch and exercise routine that will help my back too. But when I have the time to exercise I'm too tired to do it. I need to start forcing myself to though. I feel like exercising helped A LOT during pregnancy, during delivery, and helped me get back to my pre-pregnancy weight and size. I want to tone up and get back into the shape I was in before I was pregnant, especially since our plan so far is to TTC #2 fairly soon.

We took Evan to the pumpkin patch the other day! It was beautiful weather here this week (mid to high 70s) and it was perfect for visiting the pumpkin patch. Evan would have preferred it to be cloudy because he hates the sun in his eyes, but I was happy to get out in the sunlight. He was so good and only started to fuss a couple of times and I couldn't really blame him, the pumpkins were cold and the ground was slightly damp and we kept leaning him against pumpkins and sitting him on the ground.

I'm starting to pump breast milk in the mornings to save up milk to start giving Evan bottles so I can avoid breastfeeding in public quite as much. I'm hoping that we can get enough for him to have a full feeding with 2 mornings worth of pumping. I was originally going to pump after every feeding and have enough for a lot of bottles, but for now I'm only going to do once a day and have a couple of bottles a week. Eventually I'll probably pump more because I want to save up breast milk since I'm contemplating weaning him around 6 months old if we do decide to TTC starting then. It would be nice if he could keep drinking breast milk from a bottle for as long as possible after that. We'll see if we can buy a small freezer for more storage room.

Oh yeah, the day after my last post about Evan he started cooing while I was in front of him! He "talks" quite a bit now and is smiling more often as well. :-)

Remember

Remembering Our Babies

I'm keeping all of you who have suffered a miscarriage or infant loss in my thoughts and prayers today. I'm so glad there's a designated day for miscarriage remembrance although I remember mine every day.

Yay!

Congratulations to The Wife for receiving a BFP!!! I'm so happy for you!

7 Weeks Old

And the thought at the forefront of my mind is: I can't believe it's been 7 weeks since my house was clean. After that I think: Wow, I can't believe my baby is 7 weeks old already.

I watched A Baby Story today. I used to never watch those baby birth shows before I got pregnant because it made not having a baby even worse. Then I didn't watch them while I was pregnant because I didn't want to get scared. Now that I've been there done that I find that I can watch birthing shows and am even interested to see how other women's births went.

Thanks for all of the anniversary wishes! We had a great time in Charleston this past weekend. Friday evening we arrived and checked into our very nice hotel in the historic downtown area. We ate HERE, which was a lot of fun and delicious! We then walked up and down King Street since the temperature was great. The shops were closed, but it was neat to see the window displays. I would never actually buy anything from any of them anyway. Then we went back to the hotel and relaxed.

The next day Evan and I slept late while Matt scoured the area for drug stores that sold saline drops and a nasal aspirator since Evan had a stuffed up nose. He finally came back and watched Evan while I slept some more. We went out for lunch and then went to the Battery to walk around and take pictures. We walked past Rainbow Row. It was SO HOT, 90 degrees. The sun was beaming down and so we stayed on the sidewalk in the shade instead of walking next to the water. Evan did great. He woke up at one point when we stopped and started fussing, but he stopped after we started walking again. Poor baby was probably really hot.

After that we left Charleston and headed to my grandparents' house. My grandparents LOVE Evan. :-) It's so neat to see them interact with a baby. I never would have imagined how much my granddaddy would love Evan. He couldn't take his eyes off him. He held him a lot and would baby talk to him. I guess you'd have to meet my granddad to understand how odd it is that he loves babies so much. It was such an awesome experience to see him playing with and talking to Evan. I'm glad we only live 3 hours away so that we can hopefully see them more often. They never leave Charleston now, so it's up to us to go visit them and that hasn't happened as much as it should in the past.

Evan is starting to grab things more. I noticed it late last week and thought it was funny that that was what my 7 week email newsletter talked about...babies grabbing things and swatting at things. He hasn't grabbed his rattle yet, but it's kind of thick. He grabs my hand if he feels it and has started grabbing the blanket. I put one of his toys in his lap today and he kept grabbing parts of it and moving it. He has no clue what he's really doing, but I guess it's a reflex that will develop into better hand/eye coordination.

He's amped up the cooing and "talking" when I'm not in his line of sight. He never coos when I'm in his sight though, only when I'm not in the room. It's adorable!!! I only wish he would do it when I'm interacting with him. I've also noticed that he's been laughing in his sleep more. That's the only time I've ever heard him laugh. It makes me wonder what he's dreaming about. I'm glad they are happy dreams. :-)

No pictures right now, but I'll post them tomorrow!!

Anniversary

Yesterday was our 3rd wedding anniversary! It's crazy to think that 3 years have gone by since our wedding! I used to imagine our future...imagine when we'd have kids and what it would be like. And now here I am living that dream. The road here wasn't anything like I thought it would be, but the destination is everything I wanted and more.

October 7, 2006:



First anniversary: backpacking in Linville Gorge, NC



Second anniversary: Atlanta, GA & Stone Mountain


Third anniversary: celebrating with Baby Evan! Plus we'll be traveling to Charleston, SC
Last night we went out to dinner while my mom watched Evan. I was sick and Matt stayed home to help with Evan and pamper me. He bought me 3 red roses (for 3 years!), a sweet card, and a picture frame to hold one of the pictures of us that my dad took a couple of weeks ago. Tomorrow we're heading to Charleston where we'll spend the night and Saturday. Saturday evening we'll drive my my grandparents' house and stay overnight so that they can meet Evan and spend some time with us.

One Month Checkup

Evan had his one month doctor appointment on Monday the 28th. He weighed 9 lbs, 5.6 oz. Big baby!! The pediatrician was very pleased with his weight gain. He gained over 2 pounds in just 3 and a half weeks! He's 22 inches long, 2 inches longer than he was at his last appointment. Everything looks good with his development, no heart or lung problems or misshapen head. ;-)

I talked to the doctor about his spitting up and while he did assure me that spitting up is normal, he also said that if it looks like Evan is in pain (arching his back, screwing up his face, crying, etc) while eating, then there could be a problem with acid reflux. Well, that pretty much completely describes how Evan was acting during nursing times. So the doctor prescribed him some medicine to take that will hopefully help. He's been taking it for 3 days and already seems to be doing better.

For a couple of days we had a lot of problems with Evan being very fussy in the evenings and early nighttime. Not fun! We've been so used to a good baby that it was hard to listen to him fussing and crying. The other night he also had gas pains in the middle of the night and started screaming. I've never heard him cry like that before. :-( Needless to say, that was rough, but last night he was MUCH better and I only hope he'll go back to normal now. I don't know if it was gas problems or a growth spurt that caused all of the fussiness, I just know that the one middle of the night screaming episode was gas because after he passed gas he immediately stopped crying and went to sleep. Whew!

He has officially grown out of his newborn clothes and is in 0-3 month clothes. It makes me feel kind of sad that he's growing so fast. Part of me is excited, but part is melancholy to think of my baby growing up and getting bigger. At the doctor's office the other day I saw some very new newborns. I was like "Wait! MY baby is supposed to be a NEWborn too!" But it's obvious now from looking at him that he has grown out of that teeny tiny stage.

We're getting more and more comfortable with each other. I don't feel like I'm going to hurt him or do something terribly wrong all the time. I don't constantly worry and wonder if he's too hot or too cold or uncomfortable, I just know.

As for me...I went shopping the other day for some clothes. I'm actually officially back to my pre-pregnancy weight and fitting into my pre-pregnancy pants. But I still wanted to buy bigger size pants (one size bigger) and larger shirts. It's fun to have new clothes! I also had my hair cut today. I'm still trying to grow it out (remember my boy haircut?), but it needs to be trimmed to make it look less ragged as it grows. Now it has more of a style and I'm pleased with it although I can't wait to have long hair again!