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2008-03-11 - 11.34pm��previous entry��next entry
Nathan is 2 months old!
My baby boy was 8 weeks old on Saturday, and is 2 months old tomorrow! The time is FLYING! Oh, wouldn't you know, now that I've opened the "add entry" box, I hear him stirring for the first time in a couple of hours! ;) I might just leave this till tomorrow, or otherwise I'll go and breastfeed him and then be right back! :)
Hmmm, stirring has stopped. I'll continue for now.
Nathan is smiling more! He didn't have any more smiles for us since those first two at 6.5 weeks old. These last few days he has been smiling at me once or twice each day, usually when I am being extra gooooey over him and holding him about 10-inches from my face, making good eye contact, etc. It helps also if he is in the right frame of mind to do a bit of charming, hehe! The perfect time to try to encourage him to smile and "chat" (he is now starting to make huuuge efforts to produce incredibly cute little cooing sounds at me, including very concerned brows and focused eyes, etc! Sooo adorable!) is when he has just woken up and had Side One (breastfeeding, that is!). After Side One, I burp him, and after he burps, I change his nappy. He has ALWAYS done a poo. Day or night, never mind how recent the last change was, he has ALWAYS done a poo. The doctor isn't sure about that. I'm hoping he starts to space them out a bit more soon! Anyway. I change his nappy, and right before Side Two is the Golden Window for chatting and smiling! He's well rested, not hungry or thirsty, and comfy and clean and dry!
So lately he is smiling big open-mouthed smiles at me! Not lots of them though. I am lucky to catch one or two a day. I can't wait to see more! Neil has never seen him smile! Poor Neil. I am focusing so much on Nathan right now, with Neil home doing lots with the older boys. It's wonderful for me, soooo wonderful.
I wish I could know what he weighs again! He seems so big now. He is outgrowing some of his 0-3 month sleepsuits and vests, and it's nowt to do with a big cloth nappy this time because we are (sadly!) using disposables at the moment. Nathan poos so incredibly much and has to be changed so frequently, and we have two other children full-time in nappies as well. We are barely (read: not remotely!) keeping up with other laundry like clothes, bath towels, and the all-important burp cloths, and we would just go totally under if we were washing a million nappies per day as well. I'm sad about it, but oh well. He is fitting his clothes nicer than the others did, because most clothes are made for slim disposable-wearing babies rather than big cloth bots! I definitely plan to use cloth on him again asap. I need him to space out his poos more, and to get rid of this awful sore bottom :(
The doctor gave us Daktarin to treat his raw open wounds on his bottom, and she said it might take as long as 2 weeks to get better. Well, two weeks were up yesterday and I have noticed NO improvement whatsoever. Nada. So, I'm a bit worried about that. It's not a nappy rash as such, just raw open (sore) skin between his buttocks. About 8 or 9 patches of it, each one about 3mm by 2mm, although some bigger than others. Poor baby. It must be so sore, but he doesn't seem to complain other than flinching when I put cream on it :(
So I am going to take him back to the doctor tomorrow. He WAS on the high-dose IV antibiotics with me during labour, so he's ever so prone to thrush and such, as a result. THAT'S the reason I didn't want the IV antibiotics in the first place, but I would have them again if I could go back and do it over. They were protective (since I'm GBS +) as he was early and my waters broke 24 hours before he was born. THANKFULLY I haven't had thrush at all, so we haven't had the dreadful scenario of thrush while breastfeeding. But his poor bottom... I don't know what she'll suggest we do, if he hasn't responded to the Daktarin. Maybe it wasn't thrush, though? If he didn't respond?
Anyway. He is getting big! The disposable nappies we're using WERE Eco ones (Natural Baby) but nappies are just so darned expensive (the money we've saved, seriously!) that we ended up going for Tesco's own brand as they are like HALF the price of all the big names. They are absolutely the best performing disposable I've used, and by far the best fit/most comfortable, so that's a bonus.
I am wondering if Nathan may have doubled his birth weight yet? It seems awfully early! But I worked out that double his birth weight would be 11lbs 10oz (I think??! He was 5lbs 13oz). He was 10lbs 4oz at just under 7 weeks, and certainly doesn't seem to have slowed down since then! I might try weighing him on the not-so-accurate kitchen (digital) scales for an approximate idea. I haven't got an appt to get him weighed - I have to wait till he goes in for his first round of immunisations, which is meant to be this week, but I haven't told them I'm delaying his jabs till he's 12 weeks. They told me he should still have his jabs at 8 weeks, even though he's early, but everything in me said, "Are you CRAZY?!" or something like that, hehe! He's so tiny, his system is so little and there are six vaccines in one, so yeah. I'm waiting another 4 weeks.
Here are a couple of photos of my lil chubbly man, taken last week (7 weeks old) - he's waiting for me to search the zillion piles of clean laundry, searching for a replacement sleepsuit for the one he just returned some milk upon! I covered him with his fleece Coorie sling (oooh wore him round Tesco's in that last week, and he slept the whole time! I got lots of looks, which made me want to hide somewhere, but most of them were very friendly!) to keep him warm, and then I just had to take a photo or two:
Well, it's now the middle of the night, pretty much (1.45am), and I'm holding my sleeping tiny boy against my chest with one arm, and typing with the other. He just had a big feed and burped, so he's ready to put down upstairs again. I should go, but I forgot to say one other thing.
Nathan has had his first cold :( Arthur came down with a horrible cold in the middle of last week, and then Matthew got it. Matthew loves to kiss Nathan's face allll the time (he's such a sweetie!), and I tried to keep him away from Nathan, but I guess I didn't try hard enough because he got the cold. I got it the next day and so far I just ache like crazy, feel weak, and have had a horrible sore throat. Methinks the congestion part approacheth. I feek sucky and it makes me feel so bad for my poor boys, especially my tiny one. He has been fairly easy-going about it, just some more fussing than usual. Except for the congestion. I sincerely hope last night was the worst of it. He woke every minute or so all night long, in a complete "Help! I'm suffocating!" panic, poor love. And he didn't breastfeed too wll either. I did not get to sleep till 5.30am with trying to soothe my boy and being at the gag-every-time-you-swallow stage with my sore throat. I'm still gaggy/scratchy/sore, but Nathan is breathing waaay more clearly, just this evening. He hadn't slept or nursed well all day, so at 9pm he finally had a good easy-breathe feed and promptly slept for 3.5 hours straight!! Which is a record for Nathan, let me tell you! When he had had a good Side One just now, I changed his nappy, and for the first time EVER.... no poo!!! After all those hours, too! I was so excited that my voice went squeaky as I talked to him! Ahhh the things that thrill you once you have babies, haha! Also. to my amazement, I went to put cream on those poor sore patches and they are all but gone, just since the last nappy change!!! So I wonder if it's just his frequent poo that has kept his bottom from healing? I hope he keeps up these longer gaps! Before we all got ill, I gave him a whole AFTERNOON with no nappy on! He had some tummy time on a pile of cloth nappy-making fabrics in the playpen - PUL layer on the floor, two absorbent towelling layers, and a soft fleece layer that he was lying on! Every time he weed or pooed, I cleaned him right up and whipped the soiled layers away, replacing them with yet more nappy fabrics from my stash. He eventually went to sleep there for an hour or two, and I just covered him with a little sheet thingy and made sure he was warm enough. So he got some good air time. I did take pics, but he's too nudie ;) I planned to do that for him every day but then we got ill and yeah.
Oh! I almost forgot! Nathan lifted his head and shoulders today while on his cot on his tummy! He was actually cross and crying, as I had to leave him there for a few minutes while I tended to Arthur (poor boy has had his first EVER bout of awful diarrhoea for 30 hours straight now :( He is otherwise fine, hungry, eating, drinking, mischievous, energetic, with no pain or nausea - just loooads of diarrhoea that won't go away. Tonight he is in pain with bowel cramps that are making him scared but seems empty at last. Poor baby :( Any advice, people? He has been indoors a lot with his cold, and only gone to a big open park otherwise, so can't have picked up a viral bug recently :S). Anyway, when I finally rushed to get him, he was angrily stuggling to prop himself up on his elbows to look ahead at the doorway!! He didn't get to his elbows, but he's pretty stong, it seems! He could look at me for a brief moment, straight ahead, with his face at 90 degrees to the mattress.
Okay I really must go and get some sleep while I can! Will update again soon.
[edited to add: I totally forgot to write about taking Nathan to the chiropractor about the fact that he seems uncomfortable sleeping on his back (he NEVER sleeps on his back, he is a tummy sleeper, which makes me nervous!). I should write about that - this is a reminder to myself to try to remember next entry! It's too late tonight.]
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