Peanut's Post: Ghost Mom and the Single Dad

You may remember a time when I was really into Mommy.  For whatever reason, Daddy just didn't exist to me.

Well I was really glad to have Daddy at the doctor a few weeks ago when I got my shots.  He makes a nice pillow, which made me feel better....

And Mommy's been doing a lot of this lately.... 

I know she's around, but holy cow does she stare at those books all day long!!  I'm pretty sick of it.  Anyway, with most of her focus on "passing" these days (whatever that means), Daddy and I spend a lot of time together, which I've really enjoyed.  When he walks by, I drop what I'm doing and crawl over to him.  I reach up and moan until he picks me up.  Daddy says it's great at home, but not so great when he's dropping me off at daycare. 

In case I slip back into my "obsessed with Mommy" phase, I thought I'd document some of our Daddy-daughter activities.  A typical day might look like this....

Daddy will get me up in the morning.  Usually I'm in my favorite sleeping position....on my knees with my butt in the air, blanket tossed aside.  I don't know what it is about this position...I guess it's just super comfy.  Don't knock it 'till you've tried it. 

After breakfast and some crawling around, he likes to put me in the backpack and take me on walks.  But sometimes I just fall asleep.

Sometimes we'll do random projects around the house.  Apparently it's important to "baby proof," but I cry when I hear the sound of the drill.

We eat some lunch together.  He tells me I'm a mess.  I put my hand on his shoulder, point my baby finger, and say, "Ad bahdvheal dafma," which loosely translated means, "No I'm not, I'm a baby."  He'll get it one day.

"Daddy, how come the stuff on your face doesn't come off in the bath?"

I get worn out faster than he does, so he'll put me down for a nap.  I'll, of course, work myself into my favorite sleeping position.

After some rest and a bottle, it's time to play.  Sometimes, we go to the pool. 


"Ok, I'm ready to go to the pool....let's go!"

"Will anyone take me to the pool?  Anyone?"


My bathing suit is a little small, but the bottom still fits.  So on this day, I went topless.  But Daddy says "we can't have that" so he's going to buy me a new suit.


"Maybe if I get on my tiptoes I can find someone to take me to the pool."



"Mommy, so good to see you!  Are you coming to the pool too?"



"Mommy can't come to the pool with us!"

Towards the end of the day, Daddy gives me a bath.  I like to watch him fill the tub as I throw all of my bath toys on the floor.

Then I get my last bottle for the day, and lately I get some yucky medicine too (which sometimes winds up on Daddy's shirt).  If it's been an especially exciting day, I'll fall asleep on Daddy's shoulder, although usually I squirm until he puts me down. 

BA's Corner: Hospital Nursery Story

Here's a funny story from the night Leah was born.  We've been telling it to friends and family ever since.  So we figured we should immortalize it by putting it on the blog. 

After Leah was born and we moved to the recovery room, I got to tag along with the nurses to watch Leah get her first bath in the nursery. This was my first time in a hospital nursery. While it wasn't like TV or the movies, it was still pretty cool.

One of the things we liked about this hospital was that the baby stayed with the parents during the entire visit. As new parents, we didn't want to think about leaving our new baby in the nursery, and of course we were afraid of a baby mix-up! So we thought this was a good approach. But when I walked into the nursery, there were babies lined up along all sides of the hallways. I couldn't believe it. I asked myself, "Where did all of these babies come from?" There were babies of every size, shape, and color. I thought, "Wow, all of these parents have the option to keep their babies in their room, so why are they all here? Bad parents, I suppose.

On the second full day, we were talking with the nurses and trying to figure out how we could best take advantage of some of the advice they'd all given us, as well as the full battery of hospital resources, before we were on our own for good. We had a revelation...if we sent Leah to the nursery for the night, we could get some sleep, and they'd just bring her to us when she was hungry. Pretty sweet deal. Every few hours, they'd knock on the door, roll Leah in, and tell us how she was doing. After she ate, they rolled her right back to the nursery and we tried to get some more sleep.

So now we understood. All those babies in the nursery during our first night....those were 2nd night babies (or just second babies)! Not bad parents...smart parents.

Cha-Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes

Things are moving along around here.  The biggest and best news of all, BA got approved to transfer to Atlanta!  Ever since Leah was born we had been assuming that we'd move back to the southeast to be closer to family.  We didn't know for sure that BA's company would transfer him, but we thought it would be a very good possibility.  So I went ahead and applied for the Georgia bar and paid my $500 fee (and bought three, one-way plane tickets) in hopes that we might be approved to transfer.  And this morning we got the go ahead!  Next step - find a realtor.

Leah broke the news to Froggy

The other amazing change that has taken place around here is that Leah is sleeping through the night - well not exactly, but close enough!  About 10 days ago I decided that I was tired of feeding her in the middle of the night.  And since she is exclusively formula fed, I happened to know that she didn't need to be fed overnight.  So two Fridays ago, I put her in bed at 7 p.m., moved BA to the guest room, and steeled myself for a long night next to Leah (her crib is still in our room because she'd been having so many coughing fits and throwing up so much last month and we just never moved it out).  She woke up three times that night.  She woke up the first time around midnight and fussed/cried for about 20 minutes.  Sometimes her cries were intense, but just about the time I was ready to give in, she'd back off.  So I laid in bed, trying not to move a muscle so she wouldn't know I was there.  She woke up again at 3 a.m., and fuss/cried for about 10 minutes.  The she woke up at 5:30 a.m. and just rolled around her crib "talking" to herself.  Now, 10 days later, she still wakes up a couple times a night, but if she can find her pacifier she'll put herself back to sleep in 30 seconds or less.  Unfortunately, she's an early bird and the 5:30 a.m. wake-up time hasn't improved - but I'm not complaining!

Yay for sleeping through the night!!!

The last big change is that we bought a car.  BA and I had been planning on this and saving up for it for a while.  For the past two months we crunched the numbers and looked online for the best deals.  We had planned to buy a Jeep Cherokee, and because I'd hung on to my car for 7 years at 140,000 miles, we were able to buy a new one! 

Here it is!

Ironic that we bought a Prius when we moved to the westside of L.A. and are buying an SUV as we move back to Atlanta :)

BA's Corner: That's My Girl

How many books do you read a month?

This was one of the first questions my Senior English teacher asked us in high school. My answer? Zero.

There were a few of us with this answer, and we quickly called ourselves "The Zero Book of the Month Club." When given a choice of assignment, we always chose to watch or make videos rather than read books and write papers. True to our mantra, we told everyone that our club met once a month, outside the library.

Rest assured, when I met AA, this was not the first thing I mentioned about myself. I'm pretty sure I had the ring on the finger before I let that cat out of the bag.

We recently discovered that Leah's daycare has a Facebook page and has been posting pictures of her class from time to time. Most of the pictures are of children lounging around, playing with toys, looking cute and cuddly. But when the camera came to Leah on this day, she decided to let everyone know that, indeed, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.



Falling asleep in the crib ... nada.
Falling asleep in the pack-n-play ... nada.
Falling asleep on the king-size tempurpedic bed ... nada.
Falling asleep in the middle of the day, sitting upright at a table in the middle of a sunlit room filled with crying babies ... no problem.

Seven

It's been a week since our last post, and things have been pretty good around here.  We were actually having so much fun just playing with the Peanut that we didn't take time to stop and blog about it.  Leah decided about two weeks ago to drop a night feeding so we are now down to just one feeding a night. Yay!!! And she is sleeping so much better in her crib. We have almost completely stopped having to soothe her to sleep. We just look for an eye-rub, and then put her in her crib with her pacifier, and she does the rest. She still thinks that 5 a.m. is a proper hour to wake-up, so I still feel like a walking zombie most days, but things are really getting better and we're grateful.

And my beautiful baby girl turned seven months over the weekend. Since it was so close to Valentine's day, BA got her a heart shaped cake. She is just so much fun right now. She has an amazing amount of energy in her little body and she is always smiling at us.  She still puts everything in her mouth, but she's also acquired some new tricks - like waving hi and bye, and jumping up and down in her exersaucer.  And I think she gets more and more beautiful everyday, but I'm her mom, and you'd expect that :) 

Waiting with bated breath for her seven month cake.  "What will I get, what will I get ....???

Exhibit A: She puts everything in her mouth - including her 7 month sticker

The flowers and balloon were for mom, but we didn't tell Peanut.

 

Happy Seven Months Baby Leah!!!

Seen around L.A.

As we drive around town, we sometimes see things worthy of a picture or two.  For example, the other day BA snapped these two gems ...

Classic L.A. sign

And our favorite L.A. sign

Isn't a three-year time span your definition of "temporary," too???

Haha.  Isn't that sign the best?  I first saw the sign at the Santa Monica Blvd exit ramp off the 405 when I was driving to the doctor twice a week for ultrasounds, and I groaned because I thought, "great, another traffic hurdle."  But then I realized that the exit ramp was only closed at night, you know, temporarily, for 3 years.  Ah, L.A., you make me smile and laugh sometimes.  And isn't that Hollywood sign shot amazing.  BA found a lookout point to take this photo - it's not zoomed in, he's actually that close.  And it's really hard to get close to the Hollywood sign.  I think it's a super cool shot.

Leah has been sick this week with a bad cold that has started to sound like the croup.  She is basically coughing through the night, usually every 10 or 15 minutes and it started to sound pretty violent, and sharp.  So last night, I took her into the shower for some hot steam for 15 minutes at 1:30 a.m.  It seemed to calm the cough a little.  She's also back to throwing up her bottle when she coughs, but I think that's because of the cold and not the reflux.  I actually think we have the reflux under control.  (Yippie, Yeee-haw, Ya-hoo!!!!)  God bless Prevacid!  She doesn't seem to be having any more signs of pain from the reflux (arching back, waking up screaming in the middle of her naps or the night, and she'd stopped throwing up her bottle for a week until her cough started which, again, leads me to conclude that the cold is causing the cough, which is causing the throwing up - not reflux!)  And here's a big announcement ... we moved her to her crib this week and she's sleeping in it without the wedge!!!  We were scared to do it.  The reflux flared last month right around the same time that we first tried to take her off the wedge, and it was an awful three weeks before we finally gave up and put her back on the wedge.  Because the two occurred around the same time, we felt like maybe we were chained to the wedge and could never take her off it.  But then we got her on Prevacid and I felt like maybe we could try the crib again.  BA was content to leave her on the wedge because at least it worked - she didn't cry that much on it and she would sleep - kind of - unless she dropped her pacifier, which happened every 10 minutes, and then one of us would have to give it back to her.  She just seemed so confined on the wedge.  I could tell that she wanted to stretch out and I also suspected that she'd be able to soothe herself if she could roll around and find her pacifier.  As long as she was on the wedge, she'd never learn to self-soothe.  So I wanted to try the crib again.  Before we made the switch, we upgraded her crib.  First, we decided to buy bumpers.  We hadn't done this earlier because all the literature on SIDS recommended against it for newborns, but I decided that we needed to give her something to snuggle up against.  We found these super plush, chocolate brown, velour bumpers for $30 at Babies-R-Us and Leah loves them.  She will snuggle up next to them and run her hands over the bumpers to feel the fabric and I think it calms her down.  Another great side bonus is that they block out more light so she doesn't wake up when I walk in the room.  We also got one of those slight wedges that inclines about 3 inches and goes under the fitted sheet.  It elevates her head just a little, and she seems to like that as well.  This crib looks so comfortable now it makes me want to get in and take a nap.  And so far, she seems to like it too. 

This is huge for me.  For some reason, I've felt like a bad mother because I couldn't get my baby to sleep in her crib like all the other babies.  I know that's a silly thought and I shouldn't compare our situation to other babies who didn't suffer from reflux.  But I did.  Reflux is a whole different ballgame.  Even accepting that fact, I had expected to move her to sleeping flat in her crib at 3 months.  That never happened with us because at that point we had to use the wedge.  By 6 months, I felt like I'd failed because we were still using the wedge and I could tell that she was outgrowing it.  And now, when I watch her in her crib, stretched out and usually snuggled up against her plush bumpers, it just makes me so happy.  She looks so comfortable.  I love to watch her sleep. 

New Formula, New Food

Since all our renewed problems with reflux, we've put Leah on a new formula, Similac Alimentum.  It's a hypoallergenic formula that stinks (really, it smells awful) and costs twice as much as the regular formula that we still have five cases of.  I hope she outgrows the reflux in time to use the old formula otherwise that's about $200 down the drain.  For a while she was refusing to eat the Alimentum because I was making the powdered kind which smelled even worse than the liquid ready-to-feed kind.  Finally, I broke down and bought the ready-to-feed kind and Princess Leah is willing to eat that.  The good news is that her eating habits are pretty much back to normal.  She is gulping down six ounces at a time and wants more (this kid has no portion control).  We are slowly increasing the amount for fear that we'll overfeed her and get thrown-up on again.  But so far, since we started the Prevacid and the Alimentum, she has had zero throw-ups!  Yay!!!!  She still coughs a lot in her sleep - which is incredibly distracting, but not necessarily disturbing because I've read that reflux babies do that.

In addition to new formula, we started solid foods!  Leah LOVES the rice cereal.  I should clarify - she loves the action of eating, not so much the consumption of the rice cereal.  She will see me coming with that bowl and spoon and she will start kicking her legs and swatting her hands with excitement.  She attacks every bite and is just having a ball eating the food, and then spitting most of it back out.  I don't know that it's helped her sleep any longer at night; she is still waking up around mid-night to eat, but she's only eating once overnight, which is an improvement.  She has started waking up around 4:30 a.m. to whine and fuss and we're not quite sure why she does that.  So we are back to plugging the pacifier every 15 minutes from the wee hours of 4:30 a.m. for as long as we can stretch her, usually until 6:30 a.m. when we give up and feed her. 

Needless to say, neither BA nor I are well.  We've both been sick for about 3 weeks now.  He's had a non-stop cold and I started out with a cold and then added the stomach flu on top of that.  I'm pretty much nauseated throughout the day and am sick of eating saltines and dry toast.  Here's hoping the weekend brings us both restored health.

Reflux is Back

I am so discouraged.  For the past month we have been trying to get Leah to sleep flat in her crib, not on the sleeping wedge.  We wanted to do this because (1) she is 6 months old, (2) she wants to move around a bit, and (3) she cannot self-soothe on the wedge which results in a lot of nighttime soothing for BA and me.  So about 3 weeks ago, we decided to take her off the wedge.  She did not take to this well.  She fussed/cried all night for the first week, and then she started coughing all night.  After about 30 minutes of coughing, one of us would give up and get out of bed to pick her up and soothe her.  The minute we picked her up, she'd throw-up all over us.  This week we have spent the hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. every night cleaning up the mess.  There would be spit-up everywhere - on her crib, our comforter, our carpet, her sleeper, our clothes.  It is terrible.  And this week she started refusing her bottle.  At this rate, I'm not even sure how much she is eating.  We can only get her to eat about 4 ounces at a time and she is literatlly throwing-up every other bottle.  I'm estimating that she is eating half of what she was just two weeks ago.  We called the doctor today after she threw-up twice in four hours and he put her on Prevacid.  I was so excited about this - despite the $180 price tag for 30 pills - hopeful for any improvement.  She took it a lot better than that nasty Zantac she was on, and she ate 4 ounces at dinner, but then 10 minutes later she threw it up.  BA ran to the bathroom and held her in the bathtub while she threw-up two more times.  

Aside from how worried I am about Leah, this has turned our life upside down.  We get thrown-up on at least 3 times a day.  It's disgusting.  We are constantly doing laundry.  BA and I are averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a night for the past 3 weeks.  I am sick and he is having allergic reactions due to a weakened immune system.  We are lucky to have my Dad visiting us and helping out but even he isn't immune from the mess.  He hadn't been here 24 hours before Leah spit-up all over him during a morning feeding.
 
And I am constantly trying to figure out what to do next.  I am a problem-solver by nature.  I will sit awake at 5 a.m. and google "reflux" looking for a solution that we haven't already tried.  I incessantly pose new ideas to BA and he's seriously tired of my problem-solving because everything we try seems to fail.  But I can't stop thinking about solutions and formulating action plans.  It's just so confusing because we thought the reflux had eased up a bit when  just last month she seemed to be doing well, spitting up less.  And now everything is back, worse than ever before.

Through all of this, Leah has had the best attitude.  She will throw-up her entire bottle and then look up at us and smile.  She is just the sweetest baby and it kills me that I can't help her.  And I suspect that most of her aversion to naps and the non-stop crying that we were fighting has to do with reflux.  She doesn't want to lay down when the acid is just going to cause her pain.  I feel so bad for getting frustrated at her when she won't sleep but we are all so tired and desperately need the rest.   

So I don't really know where to go from here.  We are going to keep her on the wedge and give the Prevacid a try this week.  Hopefully this will settle her stomach and stop the constant throwing-up.  I am going to add rice cereal to her bottle and we are starting solids soon.  I can only hope for some improvement.

The Crying

I am really losing my mind over Leah these days.  Since we are trying to transition her off the sleeping wedge and into sleeping flat in her crib we have not had a peaceful night.  She really hates sleeping alone in her crib.  The wedge became a substitute for her parent's arms and she would sleep pretty well on it - waking once or twice a night to feed (since she was born she has never slept through the night; she went 7 hours once but that still included a 9:00 p.m. feeding and a 4:00 a.m. feeding - in other words, our standards for a "peaceful night" are extremely low).  It was predictable and manageable.  But since we've moved her off the wedge she is not shy about telling us how much she hates this idea.  She is still in our room because we had company over the holidays and we have more company coming, so this is a small part of the problem because when she cries it is at full volume and no matter how hard I press my hands over my ears I cannot dim the noise.  It is so loud in there my ear drums start hurting.  Last night she woke up crying at 9:30 p.m.  So I tried to feed her thinking she didn't get enough during the day, but when I tried to give her a bottle she turned away.  So I changed her diaper and put her back in her crib where she slept until about midnight.  Then she woke up screaming at the top of her lungs and did not stop for an hour.  There is no logical reason for all the night waking.  I know this because the minute we picked her up from her crib, the crying ceased, and she started smiling at us - like she was thinking "gotcha!"  I am so frustrated with this.  She cannot, or will not, calm herself down in her crib.  This has been going on for too long.  And at this rate, I don't feel sorry for her - I feel sorry for me.  I cannot take this anymore.  Plus, after she cries for an hour in the middle of the night I cannot calm myself down.  By that point I have so much anxious energy over the crying that I am literally unable to fall back asleep because I am just waiting for her to start crying again in 10 minutes and wake me up again.  So I lay in bed with butterflies in my stomach over this.  I didn't fall back asleep until 3 a.m. after her hour of screaming at midnight.  BA is being much more patient about the whole thing but even he is cracking.  She woke up again at 4:00 a.m. last night, this time just fussy and whining, but BA was able to ignore it until 6 a.m. when he got up to feed her.  There just seems to be no break in sight for us.  Every time I think we are turning a corner we relapse.  It's just so hard right now.

But, let's think back to happier times ...  We did so much over the break that I couldn't blog about everything at the time, so here's another one of our adventures from the holidays.  

My mother has been watching the Rose Parade every year for as long as I can remember.  So this year, during her visit, we decided to attend the float decorating that is open to the public in the days leading up to the Parade.  It was so cool to see how they are assembled.  The floats must all be covered in some sort of natural, organic material and even though it takes over 6 months to build the floats, people work round-the-clock to decorate them in a matter of days just before the parade so the flowers don't die. 

A sample of some of the organic materials used to cover the floats

Check out the path made of potatoes

Taking a break with Grandma

Yay for the Rose Parade!

Updates in General

Well, life is moving along nicely.  There hasn't been a whole lot of excitement in our lives the past week, which is a good thing really, but it means I don't have a lot to blog about.  But I do have some mundane updates in general that I thought I would share.

We are working on sleeping.  Always.  Two weeks ago we got to the point where we'd put her down and she would fuss/cry for at least an hour while we took turns running back into the room to give her the pacifier.  I finally said "enough!" and we started letting her cry it out.  So far we've spent one week fighting it and now it seems to be working. We haven't taken her off her sleeping wedge yet because she still has reflux (and BA and I only have the energy to fight one battle at a time) but we are probably going to start transitioning to a flat crib in a couple weeks.

About a month ago she got a cold.  She learned how to cough with this cold and after she got better she would not stop coughing - I think it was due to reflux - she had found a new way to clear her throat.  But the coughing was constant, even through the middle of the night.  Cough, cough, cough, gasp for breath, then sleep for 10 minutes, then cough again.  Aside from the fact that no one was getting any sleep with her coughing, she would start coughing so forcefully that it would cause her to throw up half of her bottle.  She would literally soak her sleeper, and blanket, and sometimes the crib sheet and sleeping wedge.  This was terrible.  So we put her back on Zantac.  And so far it seems to be working!  Halleluja.  There's still some coughing after meals but she hasn't throw-up anything since.  Since we did that she's stopped throwing up her milk and she's sleeping in longer stretches. 

Other cute stories ...

She's started smiling in a new way - with a full grin but with a closed mouth.  And she makes these humming noises when she smiles.  It's really cute.
When she falls asleep with her pacifier in her mouth, she continues to make little sucking movements with her mouth as if the pacifier is still there.  

She is rolling over consistently, and is really trying to sit up on her own. Still doesn't have the strength for it yet, but we're getting there.

And she loves her exersauser!  She kicks her legs frantically like she just can't handle the excitement as I'm carrying her over to it.

I am enjoying my Christmas break, baking cookies for the daycare teachers, catching up with friends, running errands that got put on hold during final exams.  And BA recently discovered that he is allergic to dust.  He went to an allergist and got tested and everything.  So it looks like there will be a lot more cleaning in my future; and perhaps a maid.

She loves her exersaucer!

It's a good thing too because it took BA 2 hours to put this thing together

"Look at me growing."

Working on sitting up

Here's her new closed-mouth grin

BA's Corner: Hold my Hand, Part 2

As AA finishes up her last few finals of the semester, here's the continuation of "Hold my Hand."

On Leah's first day of daycare, AA couldn't handle it. She cried too much and I had to take Leah that morning. Leah seemed okay, but she also seemed like she knew something was different. After all, she'd been at home pretty much the whole time since she'd been born, except for some doctor visits. So she knew when we were getting out of her "routine." I walked her out, loaded her in the car, and headed off. She was pretty quiet, and I couldn't see her. So I reached my hand back into her car seat to see if I could feel her moving around or something. She immediately grabbed my finger. I smiled.

There are other times too....strapping Leah into the Express and heading out for a walk, middle of the night feedings, etc. And the first night we officially put Leah in her crib for the night, I had to keep running in to soothe her. She held onto my thumb until she was finally snoring away.

Secretly, when I'm soothing her back to sleep in the middle of the night, I like to hold her hand. I think it makes a difference. I know she won't want to do this forever, and I just love how small and soft they are. Plus, one of the first things I discovered about her (and that I still love) is that she has AA's hands. When I picked her up from daycare that first week and all the babies looked somewhat the same to me, I could be sure I had my Leah by looking at her hands.

BA's Corner: For the Record

The past 3-4 weeks have been a blessing! Thanks for sleeping in your crib during the evenings so that your mom and I can have a few hours to get work done, relax, enjoy some TV, etc. Big change....thank you!!!!

Progress and the Pot Doctor

We are making slight progress in the daytime sleeping department.  Leah is now taking naps for up to one hour in her crib.  I know that doesn't sound very long to some parents out there, but for us, it's progress.  I'm trying to stretch it a little each day, but she usually requires a mid-nap soothing session around 45 minutes.  Unfortunately, when I hear her stirring in her crib and go in to check on her, she pops her eyes open, looks directly at me, and smiles at me like she's thinking, "okay, mommy, it's play time now?"  Game over, kid.  You win.  It's so hard not to pick her up and interact with her at that moment.  I try and just rub her belly and give her a pacifier but she is not so easily fooled.  Right now I still have to pick her up and rock her to sleep again, but I'm hoping that I can start dropping that soon because I don't want that to become a long-term habit.

Nighttime sleeping is still a great challenge for us.  She will go 4 hours between feedings her first stretch (that's really only 3.5 hours of sleep max) and then after that she'll wake up every 2.5 hours overnight to eat.  As you would expect, we are beyond exhausted.  The other thing that is adding to our exhaustion is that I have been sick for over a week.  It started as a slight fever with chills, and has developed into a monster cold with a cough that is so persistent I found myself at urgent care last Thursday evening.  I would cough and cough so much until I couldn't breathe. 

This urgent care clinic was, let's say, unusual.  It was located in a very normal looking strip mall and on the outside it appeared to be a medical clinic located next to a medical marijuana dispensary (ah California, and your wacky laws).  However, once we were inside the building it appeared to be one in the same.  There was one, very old, doctor shuffling around, a couple of nurses, and one slender, young, bald guy in blue jeans and a plaid button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  The younger bald guy kept walking up and down the halls, sometimes talking to the older doctor, but he always made his way back to a room at the end of the hall that was painted, ahem, green.  Our theory is that the young bald guy convinced his grandfather, the old legit doctor, that medical pot was profitable and that he would "supervise" the operation.  I don't really have an opinion on whether or not marijuana is an effective medicine for people with chronic pain, but I do know that medical marijuana is extremely easy to get in this state, and that it's likely abused.  Apparently you can walk into any medical marijuana clinic, complain of back pain, and snap, you've got yourself a prescription for some pot.  In any case, I did not ask, nor was I invited, to visit the green room, but I did walk out of there with a prescription for antibiotics and lots of cough syrup. 

I'm still trying to kick this cough, but it does not want to go away easily.  BA has been handling almost all the night feedings for me and he's really ready for me to feel better again.  I am so grateful for his help and hopeful that I feel better soon.

The Snoring Peanut

Leah snores.  Just like BA.  Lucky me.




** producer's note: This video is 58 seconds of just snoring.  For the grandparents out there, we've provided the full extended cut.  For the rest of you, you can get the jist in about 10 seconds :) 

BA's Corner: The Night Shift

Before I start a "shift," I make sure I've got everything I need for the next few hours within arm's reach. As I type this (1:55 a.m.), here's what I have nearby:

1. 3 pillows
   
2. 2 blankets
3. 1 swaddler
4. 3 remotes (with DVD player and DVR loaded, just in case)
5. clipboard ("Event Log") with pencil...so if she starts rustling, you have a better idea of whether or not she's hungry
6. glasses
7. water (you want this handy, but you don't want too much of it!)
8. hat
9. pacifier
10. burp cloth
11. 1 sleep sheep
12. 1 musical seahorse
13. cell phone
14. laptop (with power cord ready)
15. baby carrier

Because you just never know what's going to work, and you don't want to wake up any 8-pounders while reaching for what you need. (Well, 7 pounds 7.5 ounces, last time we checked).

BA's Corner: ZZZZ

You know you need some sleep when you start asking yourself where you can take naps while getting other things accomplished.

For example, I pulled up to a stoplight the other day. As soon as my car came to a stop, I immediately thought to myself, "I'll probably be here for a couple of minutes. I wonder if I can squeeze in a nap? I'm sure if I roll into the middle of the intersection, somebody will let me know."

The lines are blurred these days. I'll wake up and think Leah is still on top of me, or that AA just asked me to wake up and hold her for a few minutes while she uses the restroom. Over the next 15 seconds of wake/sleep/dreaming/confusion, the situation will rapidly deteriorate until the Peanut has vanished into thin air, fallen off the bed, or disappeared into the sheets. Before I can live my life again, I'll have to rush out into the living room to make sure that AA still has Leah and it was all a dream. So far, it's always been a dream. Whew!

The truth is, Peanut, you're worth every sleepless minute.

A Comparison

BA took Leah to her appointment with the real pediatric GI yesterday.  I couldn't go because I had school.  The good news ... there's no permanent damage being done due to her reflux and she doesn't require further treatment.  The bad news ... her symptoms are a combination of colic and acid reflux and there's really nothing we can do about it except try to make her comfortable for the next 3-6 months until she outgrows it.  The doctor said that her symptoms are considered "normal" in a small percentage of babies and that we just got unlucky here and will have to wait it out.  So basically, BA and I have given up on the idea of getting her to sleep at night without being held.  We've decided to create an overnight schedule and go back to taking shifts holding her all night.  Even though this means I'll be lucky if I ever get more than 3 hours a night, it's also a relief to just quit fighting it.  There is satisfaction in just accepting the situation as it is, and moving on.  We'll be sleep-deprived, but hopefully happier because we now know there's really nothing we can do about it except wait.

On a lighter note, I got some sleep last night because BA decided to stay up and work late (while Leah was strapped on him in the baby carrier - at least she'll sleep this way so he can get some work done around the house).  Then BA's mom took over holding Leah at 5 a.m. so I only had to wake up for about 45 minutes in the middle of the night to nurse her.  It was great!  I think when you combine it, I got almost 6 hours of sleep!!! 

And just for fun, we took some Daddy-Daughter photos of Leah at 6 weeks in comparison to a photo taken of me at 6 weeks.  What do you think?  The nurses at the hospital all thought that newborn Leah looked like BA, but I think she's starting to take after her mom :)

AA and her Dad at 6 weeks --- Leah and her Dad at 6 weeks.
(click to enlarge)

6 Weeks

Leah is 6 weeks today.  6 weeks is some sort of baby milestone.  I have a baby book that says at 6 weeks babies begin extending their nighttime sleep.  Yeah right.  Not my child.  Actually, I think that if we didn't have the acid reflux to deal with, she probably would be able to sleep 4-5 hours straight right now.  I'm kind of ticked that there really is no solution to this problem except to let her outgrow it.  That could take another 6 months!  That's a lot of sleepless nights ahead of me and a lot of discomfort for little Leah.

But aside from her sleeping challenges, Leah is excelling in a lot of ways.  Just yesterday she was laying on my chest and she lifted her head to look at me and held it up for a good 10 seconds.  Then she relaxed for a couple of seconds and she did it again, and again.  She is so curious.  She spends all of her awake time with the widest, biggest eyes, just taking in everything around her.  Her little fists have started grabbing my hair and holding on very tightly, and I think yesterday she discovered that she has a hand.  She was flailing her arms around, and then all of a sudden she focused on one of her hands and her eyes got huge like she was thinking, "Whoa! What's this attached to my arm?!?!"  Still not sure if she's aware that she has 2 hands yet.  She recognizes her mom and dad, and she still loves the bath.  And she is the sweetest most adorable little baby ever. 

6 weeks is a major milestone for me too.  I go to the doctor today for the first time since I delivered.  This is the point where I will be declared officially "recovered" although I've felt fully recovered since about 3 weeks.  And today is also the beginning of a new school year ... my last school year to be exact ... but more on that later ...

Baby was born to ride.