Ian Free - 8 and 9 months

Sorry for the pictureless post!  We haven't had internet for the past 2 months since we've moved, so I have missed Ian's 8 and 9 month posts and pictures.  I am feeling the need to record some things down before too much time passes so I don't forget.

As I'm writing this, he'll be 10 months in 2 weeks, so most of this stuff is current for this age.

Weight:  18 pounds at his 9 month checkup

Height:  I can't remember, but I know it was a little bit over the 50th percentile

Waketimes: 2.5 hours for the first one, 3 hours for the second one, and 2.5 hours before bed.

Sleeping: 2 hours for the morning nap, 1.5 hours for the second nap, and 12-13 hours at night.

A note about naps: Ian will sleep as long as I'll let him for his morning nap.  I used to let him sleep for 2.5 hours, but then we began to have to wake him up after 2 hours because he was having trouble sleeping in the afternoon after taking such a long morning nap.  Recently, I've begun experimenting with waking him up after an hour and 45 minutes to see if that helps to extend his afternoon nap a little more.  Even though he sleeps better in the morning, as my other boys did too like an extension of nighttime sleep, since the afternoon nap is the one we'll end up with when there is only one nap, I like to try to preserve it's length as the longer one if I can.  Since he has waketimes that are on the long end of average, he is needing to shorten his morning nap at a slightly younger age than my other boys or even most babies.

Bottles: I have noticed that he has started taking in less milk over the last month now that he is eating more and more solid food.  He will usually eat around 4-6 oz for his first three bottles of the day and then usually closer to 7 for his bedtime bottle.  However there have been many days recently that he's only eaten 3-4 oz at bedtime and it has no result on his nighttime sleep whatsoever.  Shows he's growing up!

Solids:  The boys and he eats a lot.  The only thing I have served him that he hasn't enjoyed is chick peas.  He eats everything else that we eat most of the time just like we eat it.  With some things like oatmeal I will serve his only lightly sweetened before adding more brown sugar for the rest of us, his cereal is dry, and if I make chocolate chip muffins, I will make a few of them plain without the chips for him.  If I serve soup, I usually spread his soup on toast sticks.  Also I usually serve his veggies to him before adding butter and salt for the rest of the family.  As he's gotten older I don't stress if I forget to do that as his body and digestive system is maturing.  I have tried to feed him applesauce and a few other things with a spoon, and he does not like it.  He wants to hold the spoon himself.  It amazes me how he just eats it all....with no teeth. 

Speaking of his teeth, he has his first tooth barely breaking through right now!  It's his lower right tooth.  I can also see the lower left tooth under the gums. He has been the roughest teether of the three boys.  He's been very clingy and mildly grumpy lately, and drooling buckets.  With the other boys I don't remember keeping bibs on them or changing their clothes from drool, but I have do both for Ian daily for the last couple of weeks.

Movement: He is most happy sitting up or standing.  He has also begun scooting about 2 weeks ago.  The first thing he scooted across the floor for was one of the little penny whistles that the big boys got for Christmas.  Ian loves those things so much!  So much he was willing to move.  He gets up on his knees some, but hasn't actually crawled like that yet.  He scoots with his upper body and then drags his lower body behind him. 

Eczema:  It is coming back worse now that the air is cold and dry.  It has showed up on his back, which is new.  I have started using Aquaphor on him, which seems to work better than anything else I've tried.  I use hydrocortisone and then Aquaphor on the red spots, and the Curel all over the rest of him.  I do that morning and night.  His scalp has remained dry as has the back of his neck.  I've been using Burt's Bees wash on him lately, which seems to be a little more moisturizing for him than the Aveeno I used to use on him.

Lastly, the diaper rash:  Poor Ian has had a diaper rash since Thanksgiving!  And it's now January.  I can't figure it out.  My first thought was that it was detergent buildup on my cloth diapers that was irritating him.  So I stripped them and washed all of the buildup out.  There was indeed lots of buildup.  However, even while using disposables for the last month, the rash is still not going away.  My next thought was that it's a yeast rash.  But the Nystatin isn't getting rid of it completely either.  And I read that yeast is almost never on the tush cheeks themselves, which his is.  Now I'm wondering if it's eczema related.  It doesn't look like a normal rash.  It begins as broken skin in the folds of skin.  It was almost better at his 9 month well check, so his doctor said it looked fine. But then as soon as we left it came back with a vengeance.  We are going back to the doctor tomorrow and it will be the main topic of conversation!

Along with the pesky diaper rash, he also had his first ear infection and a cold since Thanksgiving as well.  He can't seem to shake the cold, so hopefully his doctor will have some thoughts on that tomorrow as well. 

And that's a wrap on the last two months! 

The one about the weirdest thing ever

The summer after we bought our first home

Who keeps adding boys to their family and can't seem to stay in one home for more than a year?  Why, it's Scott and Ashley of course!

I've been saying this every fall for the last 3 years, and I'm about to say it again...we're moving!

We are facing our 5th move in 3 years.  If we could just stay put for at least 2 years it would be glorious.  Seriously.

The weird thing is that this time we are moving back into our old house in Lawrenceville.  I mean, really, who does that???  I've only ever heard of one couple doing that, and they planned it.  This was totally NOT our original plan.  Not that we didn't like the house or the area at the time, we just hadn't planned on moving back into that particular house. But simply put, we all know that God's thoughts are not our thoughts.   

It will be interesting.  It will be odd.  It will quite possibly feel like a shoebox.  We are moving back in there with 3 years and 2 more kids' worth of stuff.  And for this girl who is resistant to change, even though I grew up in that area, I will have to re-adjust all over again.  

Ian Free - 7 months

Sorry about the blurry and grainy.  I'm not known for photo skills.

Weight: 17 pounds

Height: No idea!

Eating: 7/11/3/6:30 or 7:00 before bed (the difference depends on whether he has a third nap or not.)

 

A note about his bottles:  He eats 6-8 oz at each feeding, usually closer to the 8 oz mark.  I still get (very mildly) sad sometimes that he wasn’t able to nurse, but bottle feeding definitely has a few perks (aside from the cost--good grief!!!!!)  He has just begun having an interest in holding his own bottle, and I think it’s so cute!  He did it a little bit before his surgery, but with having his arms restrained for 6.5 weeks afterwards, he hasn’t really gotten much practice.  I don’t want to take advantage of that though, and I still want to be the one to feed him the majority of the time so that I can have the same special times with him that I had with the other two boys who were breastfed and had no choice but for me to be the one to feed them.  He is pretty picky about me being the one to feed him.  He will eat for other people, but only enough to take the edge off of his hunger. That is most especially true at bedtime.

Solids: After being cleared at his appointment with Dr. Yu I began his real food food.  He has had roasted sweet potato (with skin on to make it easier to hold), banana, avocado, pancakes, eggs, broccoli, and pears so far.  He loves it all, and hasn’t made a face at any of it yet.  The avocado and banana are hard for him to grip, but he’s working on it and getting better each time I serve it.

 

Waketimes: 2 hours before the morning nap, 2.5 hours before the afternoon nap, and 3 hours before bed.

Sleeping: 2.5 hours for the morning nap, 2 hours for the afternoon nap, and 12-13 hours at night.

Dropping the 3^rd nap: He is in the process of dropping the third nap.  Most days he doesn’t need it, but if one or both of the other naps are short for some reason, then he will need a 30-45 min catnap.  On catnap days, bedtime is closer to 7:30 or even 8, and on non-catnap days bedtime is closer to 6:30.

His newborn hair is almost completely gone now.  He still has 2 clumps (I can’t think of a better word to call it!) of 3 inch hair in his crown that lays flat so it’s not noticeable most of the time.

Squeaky G. AKA Sophie the Giraffe.

Eczema: It is so much better now.  He still has it behind his knees and in the front crease of his ankles.  Sometimes it flares up in front of his ears.  There is a direct correlation between the frequency with which I lotion him and the severity of each flare ups spot. I still use Curel Itch Defense for him and really like it.

Vaccines: I have been becoming informed about vaccines.  Right before Micaiah was born I was just beginning to learn about some of their controversy.  It was extremely overwhelming and in praying about it, I just felt like I shouldn’t be concerned.  So I wasn’t.  Fast forward to Ian, and I have been feeling the need to learn more about them.  I’m not sure if it’s the Holy Spirit stirring me to it or just me, but either way I am working my way through several books and loads of other information about them.  And yes, it is still very much overwhelming.

I looked back at Caeden’s 7 month post and realized that he had 3 teeth at this point with one more about to break through.  I have to say that I’m glad Ian doesn’t have any teeth yet; I’m a sucker for a gummy baby grin.

He his super happy to be reunited with Squeaky G and chew on him again.  He still loves the jumper, the swing outside, anything that shakes and makes noise, and chewy things.  We just brought out our gumball machine toy and he has really taken a liking to that lately as well.

Ian wants to move along the floor so bad.  Again, having his arms straight for 6.5 weeks didn’t help.  It took him 3-4 weeks post surgery just to master being able to roll over fluidly with straight arms.  He can sit up for a little while on his own before flopping over, and LOVES to stand up (I guess it goes without saying that he needs help with that).

 

Ian is so giddy and joyful most of the time, showing his joy by kicking and squealing.  He is still very social and does not hesitate to engage almost anyone.  He loves nothing more than to be included in family happenings.  He will grab anything that is in his path, and has knocked over drinks on more than one occasion when I've been holding him and looking the other way.  He loves bathtime as long as he’s not overly tired.  He is very much a wiggle worm and, unless he’s sleeping, he is in constant motion. 

Micaiah asked for his shoe to be in the picture too.

 

 

 

Random musings...

-I tell people it took me a good 4.5 months to adjust to having 3 kiddos.  Now that I think about it though, I was pumping full time to feed Ian for the first four months of his life.  That probably had something to do with it taking me so long.  Now with Ian being 6 months, I definitely feel like I've got my groove.  I'm having to re-establish some of my daily routines and find a new system that works, but at least I'm able to keep up with stuff again.

-I am so happy that it is fall again! My feelings about fall are similar to springtime in the sense of it being a season to clean, organize, and purge.  Basically to reorganize my life.  So I'm happy that my need to figure out new homemaking routines for my life now with 3 children comes at this time of year!  If you know me, you know how I just eat that stuff up!

-Micaiah had his 4th birthday last week.  I never buy hot dogs...like maybe twice in the last 5 years, but still somehow in the last few months Micaiah has decided that he likes them.  So he asked for hot dogs, baked beans (which he doesn't love), raw carrots and strawberries for his birthday dinner.  Since I was making a cake for his party 2 days later, I didn't want to make another one for his actual birthday.  I totally would have, but he had a better idea.  There's this cupcake shop up the road from us that we walked to one time months ago.  He's been asking to go again, so we decided to do that.  The boys didn't realize that the shop only having 3 cupcake flavors to choose from on that particular day wasn't many.

-This is just a random shot of all the fellas playing music while I cooked dinner the other day.

-Ian has been sucking his lower lip in a lot lately.  It's cute.

 



-Ian seems to be getting increasingly frustrated with the bats on his arms.  It's probably due to the fact that I've been increasingly lenient on taking them off and letting him chew on his fingers from time to time.

-He has been sleeping a full 12-12.5 hours at night for almost two weeks now!  I wondered if we'd ever get there.  Happy day for this mama.

- Micaiah would wear fleecy footed pjs every night of the year if we would let him.  We haven't been letting him over the summer because I've noticed that the warmer he is when sleeping then the more likely he will wake up in the night scared.  I know I dream more if I'm too hot, so he must be the same way.  He told me that he would like some new fleece footed j's (caeden used to call them j's when he was a bit younger!) and then he said "I will wear them to bed that night and I will go to sleep soooo happy!!!"  So his birthday ushered in the next season of footed jammies.

 

 



-We went apple picking in Ellijay the other weekend.  It was perfect weather, and the boys loved it of course.  It's a tradition I grew up doing, and so I've enjoyed continuing it on.

Afterwards, we needed to get on the road for Ian's sake, so I had the boys eat their candied, sprinkled, messy apples in the car. Thankfully it wasn't too terrible of a mess.

 

-I myself am quite interested to see where our little family ends up in the coming months.  God is changing some things up.  We know that much, but we're still waiting to hear more of what it will look like.





Ian Free - 6 months

Oh our sweet boy is 6 months old!  His life is pretty simple and straightforward right now.

Weight: 16 pounds and 4 ounces

Height: 27 and 3/4 inches

Eating: He eats 6-8 ounces at 7:00/11:00 or 11:30/3:00 or 3:30/and 6:45 or 7:00 before bed.  He still eats a little bit in the night (more on that below).

Sleeping: In the morning he will sleep at least 2 hours.  If he's still sleeping after two hours, then I almost always let him sleep 2.5 and occasionally 3 hours.  In the afternoon he will sleep 2 or 2.5 hours.  He still takes a 30-45 minute catnap around 5:30-ish. 


When we take the "no-no's" off, the first thing he does is scratch his head.  Only after doing that he puts his fingers in his mouth!

Since the surgery, he got back on his normal daytime routine within the first week.  But nighttime has been a whole other story.  He has been all kinds of messed up.  Initially after surgery it was expected and understandable to wake up 4 times a night.  He was in pain and he also needed to eat as much as possible since he was only taking in an ounce or two at a time.  As the last 3 weeks have gone by, his night wakings have gotten better, but still not back to how it was before the surgery.  Most of the time he wakes up twice at night, but that's by no means without exceptions.  Just one day last week he woke up every 2 hours throughout the night.  And once or twice he's only woken once.  I still always feed him when he wakes in the night, although I'm not super convinced that he's actually hungry.  I have my reasons for that.  Mainly, he doesn't eat very well at breakfast time if he eats more than 3 oz in the night.  And 3 oz is not considered a full meal.  It's like he's just wanting a little something to help him get back to sleep, but he's not needing a full belly.  I'm just not totally sure he *needs* it, but I still do it.



Last week I took him for his 2 week post surgery checkup.  Everything was fine.  Although I will say that Dr. Yu did not even look in Ian's mouth.  I guess as a doctor he's just that good.  I thought that Ian would be able to take the arm restraints off, but no.  We have to wait until the 18th of October for that.  Dr. Yu said that I am allowed to start feeding him solids today if I want to as long as I am super careful not to let the spoon get to the back of his mouth.  I'm going to try some oatmeal.  I think he will love it.  We'll start the Baby Led Weaning and stop the mush after his next checkup in October.  Dr. Yu said if everything looks fine then, then Ian will be considered all healed and ready for anything.

*An added note about baby led weaning* The method has been around for ages, but the term was coined by the author of the book who is from the UK. There, and in other parts of the world, weaning is meant by the introduction of solid foods whereas here in America we use it to mean the subtraction of milk feeds. Basically to do it you offer the baby a healthy variety of foods and he feeds his own self from the very beginning. In that way it is baby led instead of the parent leading with the spoon. As the baby's ability to eat grows and they finally realize it not only tastes good, but it also fills the belly, then they take in more and more food and then, in time, less milk. Make sense?

In just the last few days, if he sits just right, he can sit up on his own for a few seconds.  He loves jumping in the jumper thing and the Johnny Jump Up.  He also likes toys that makes sounds and music, the mobile, the playgym, and anything else he can grab ahold of with his little no no's on.  He is super social and will smile and cackle at anyone who pays him any attention.  He also really loves being outside.  Like super loves.  But far and away his favorite "things" are his brothers.  His affection for them runs deep.


Ian and Micaiah on the day we brought Ian home (with a great shot of that ol' yucky tube)

Ian and Micaiah now.  What a difference 6 months makes!



Ian Free - 5 months

This month was such a blur.  It's now a month later and I'm trying to remember when I forgot to take many notes.  I'll just try to do my best.

 

 

Eating:

In the ballpark of 7:00/10:30/2:30/5:30/7:00.  I switched him to a 4 hour routine by the end of the month, and that works soooo much better for him!  I knew he was ready for that because he just was not eating well any sooner than 4 hours.  His waketimes were extending, which I'll talk about next, and I just knew something needed to change.

 

Waketimes:

At the beginning of the month they were about an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes.  By the last few days of the month, it was apparent that he needed to have closer to 2 hour waketimes.  So it's 2 hours before the first nap, 2 hours before the second nap, and 2 hours before his evening catnap. 

 

Sleep:

2+ hours for both the morning and afternoon nap.  The catnap is about 45 minutes. 

 

The swaddle:

Last month we had just begun the transition to no swaddle beginning with leaving one arm out for a week or two.  The next step after leaving one arm out for a week (or two, I can't remember!) was to swaddle his second arm in loosely.  I did that for several days, then left it out totally.  So by the very beginning of this month he was totally done with it.  He did great. 

 

 

Temperature:

It really baffles me, but the boy loves to be roasty toasty while sleeping.  I always feel so hot in the house and feel like he shouldn't need the heavy sleep sack that he likes, but he sleeps better with it, so we'll go with it.  I was hoping to not even fool with a sleep sack for him, but since he likes being so warm, I knew he would probably sleep better with one.  And in fact, he does.  He prefers the long sleeve fleecy ones.  In the middle of summer.  Whatever!

Solids:
So I know I mentioned last month how I wasn't planning on doing any solids with Ian until after his surgery because I wanted to do the Baby Led Weaning "method" (which I LOVE and can't wait to do!) BUT the boy is a hungry dude.  I didn't feel comfortable doing the baby led weaning stuff with a hole in his mouth, nor did I feel comfortable doing it so early.  So I decided to give him some baby cereal.  Homemade millet cereal to be exact.  He gobbled it up for a day or two, but then decided he didn't want anything to do with it.  I didn't push it.  (I'm writing this into his 6th month and after his surgery.  I'm glad I didn't push it, because I was told not to put anything into his mouth, including a spoon.  So if he was used to the food, we'd have been in trouble.)

His little infant life is FLYING by!

Our Surgery Journey

This is one of those life events that, although it's been super hard, I want to remember all of the details and remember God's faithfulness to us in the midst of it all.  Also, it has been great, great, great having my parents as a resource who went through the exact same thing with me.  They have eased my fears and made me feel much more confident in caring for Ian through this.  If I can remember how things went for us and how I felt throughout this journey, then hopefully I can do the same for someone else someday.  I plan on adding to the post when all is said and done.

 

 

Because I had a cleft palate as a baby, and because it can be genetic, with our first two boys, we had a specialist look at each of their palates in a detailed ultrasound to see if they could tell if they had the same.  Clearly both of them were born without it.  Fast forward to Ian.  Being our third baby we didn't feel a strong need to have him checked out in utero by a specialist.  Even if they were able to tell if he had a cleft, there's nothing you can do beforehand besides prepare yourself mentally, which wouldn't have been all bad.  Interestingly enough, my midwife also had a cleft palate as a baby and together we just decided it really isn't all that necessary to know beforehand.  So we didn't.  I think that was God's way of protecting my heart.

 

The night he was born, everything happened so quickly and Scott had the falling incident so it was all very much a blur.  My mom and Scott's mom were in the room with me when Ian was born since Scott was not able to be there.  It wasn't my original plan, and I could probably be mortified if I let myself think about it too much, but it turned out to be quite a blessing.  They had to whisk Ian away because there was meconium in the fluid as he was born.  Once they got him all cleaned up and checked out, the doctor next to me was talking to the baby nurses across the room attempting to be discreet about the subject of bringing him over to me to nurse.  I thought it was odd but didn't think a whole lot about it.  But then I think I overheard someone say something about Ian having a cleft palate and potentially not being able to nurse.  Mama was there by me and was the one who told me, yes indeed, he did have a cleft palate. 

 

I tell people it was just one of those mama moments, like when a child gets hurt or something, where you just rise up and take care of it because it's just what you need to do.  There's no sense in wallowing and crying about it.  You just need to take care of the baby and do what needs to be done.

 

I tried all night to get him to nurse (and several times in the following weeks!)  The pediatric resident and lactation consultant were both hopeful that he would be able to.  But he just never could get good enough suction to latch.  He was born at 11:50 pm, and they said if he didn't nurse by 6 am then we would need to supplement him.  He didn't, so we did.

 

He was fed by an NG tube for the first week of his life while he figured out how to drink from a bottle.  Once he figured out the bottle, he was good to go and never looked back.

 

 

He only had a cleft of the soft palate way in the back of the mouth.  Mine was both the hard and soft palates.  Thankfully neither of us had the lip.  Dr. Yu said about 1 in 700 babies has some sort of cleft at birth.  When there is a first degree relative with one, it jumps to 1 in 20.  Many, many times I have sat with Ian in our glider and thought, "Seriously, what are the odds?!?  Actually, they're pretty good, but seriously!  Really??"

 

For the night before, I was told to wake Ian 6.5 hours before we needed to arrive at the hospital and feed him one last good feeding.  They didn't understand that waking him up like that only makes him wake up even earlier in the morning.  I was envisioning a baby waking early and crying non-stop from hunger until they put him under.  I may, or may not, have a problem with being a bit extreme and jumping to a worst case scenario in my head.  On top of that, he got a cold a few days before the surgery so he was waking up multiple times in the night, and feeding is always my go-to method to get a baby back to sleep in the night.  He ended up doing great though.  He woke up on his own about 12:30.  I was planning to get him up at 1:00, so I thought 30 minutes shouldn't make a huge difference.  He took a full bottle, went back to sleep and didn't wake up again until it was time to leave for the hospital.  I was so thankful.  Mama and I watched him on the monitor when he woke up, playing with his toes and cackling to himself.  He had no clue what was about to happen to him.

 



 

He did so great, and only got a little fussy a few times while we were waiting to sign all of our consent forms, but was easily consolable.  He enjoyed seeing all the of the doctors and nurses.

 

It took about 2.5 hours to complete the repair.  Then he had his circumcision done.  Followed by tubes in his ears and an hour long hearing test.  They began the surgery at 9:00 and he wasn't finished until close to 2:00, I think.

 

When they brought us back to the recovery area my heart just broke into a million pieces.  Seeing my baby all swollen from being worked on and bloody and trying to wake up not knowing what in the world happened to him was so hard.

 

The nurse encouraged me to hold him.  As he was trying to wake up, I don't think I've ever seen him so mad.  He had 4 or 5 episodes of just being so completely m.a.d.  And I didn't know what to do with it.  I remember looking up at the nurse who was with us and saying in tears, "Am I just supposed to let him cry like this?!?"  I mean, he was arching his back, thrashing all over the place, and I felt like there's something I should have been able to do to make it better.  I don't remember the nurse responding at all.  But then I remembered how two dear friends of mine, who are about to finish nursing school, had told me beforehand that it was normal for babies to be fussy coming out of anesthesia. So then I felt a little less helpless.  Oh, and his cry was so pitiful.  Since the back of his mouth was worked on, his voice was hoarse.  It was so, so sad.

 

                                     

 

They took him to his room pretty quickly and we began the road to recovery.  He didn't eat at all on Tuesday.  We survived that night with morphine and little sleep.  Thankfully I was so tired that the 1.5 hours I did sleep felt like much longer.

 

When Dr. Yu came to check on him Wednesday morning he told me it would get better.  I told him he would need to tell me that often.  And then truly, each time he came to check on Ian after that he told me again that it would get better.  In fact, lots of people told me that.  I needed to hear it. 

 

I had been under the impression that he would need to be eating a full bottle, which for him was 4-6 oz, before we could go home.  He was not anywhere even close to that.  Late on Wednesday Dr. Yu and the nurse encouraged us in the fact that most babies do better at home.  It will get better.  He was taking in close to the equivalent of an ounce an hour at that point, which is really what they wanted.  So we decided we could feel comfortable enough to go home that evening. 

 

Again having my parents tell me their story was so wonderful!  Hearing that when they brought me home I was not eating much either made me feel like maybe Ian wasn't so unique in that.  Having Mama tell me how terrified she was and thinking she was going to have to feed me with a syringe for the rest of my life validated the fact that I had had that EXACT SAME thought about Ian too.  Again, maybe I can be extreme in my thoughts sometimes. :)

 

He loved playing with his "Rudolph toe"

 

When we got home there was just enough time for him to reacquaint himself with the house and enjoy playing in a more comfy environment for a bit.  I got him ready for bed, gave him the trusty Tylenol dose, and got him to eat only a little under 2 oz.  I didn't have super high expectations for him going right to sleep for the night because of the pain and things just being different now.  However, he surprised me once again as babies like to do.  He looked up at his name sign on the wall.  If he could have sighed a big sigh of relief I think he would've.  He knew he was home and back in his own bed.  He went right to sleep without a peep.  If Scott and I didn't work so hard to train our babies to fall asleep on their own, I know it would not have been that easy for us.  But in fact, he wanted to just be put in his bed and be able to drift off to sleep in his own space. 

 

 

Those first few days we had to fight Ian a lot to get him to eat.  He usually wouldn't take more than an ounce at a time.  We used a lot of distractionary tactics in those early days to get him to focus on something other than the fact he was hurting while trying to eat.  We went through an entire bottle of bubbles in about 3 days.  Micaiah liked the job of blowing bubbles for Ian while I tried to feed him.  We used a burning candle a good bit.  He loves staring at those.  Even in the middle of the night when he would wake...I'd give him his Tylenol and then we'd plop down in the living room in front of a candle and try to get him to eat even just .5 oz I'd be satisfied with.

 

Early Thursday morning Scott got up with him around 3:30.  When I woke up for the day a few hours later and saw that Scott had written down on our log that Ian had eaten 3.5 oz for him, I knew that maybe we were beginning to turn  a corner.

 

Then Friday came.  Before we had left the hospital, the nurse had told us that in her experience day 3 after any surgery is always the hardest.  At first I didn't like that she said that because I thought I'd be expecting it and thinking things were worse even if they really weren't.  But in the end I'm glad she told us that because really, things were worse and it made us feel much better about it. 

 

By the way, thankfully he was napping perfectly ever since we got home even though he wasn't eating much!

 

Friday night I was getting him ready for bed.  Scott had the big boys out at the grocery store, so the house was nice and quiet.  As I was fixing his bottle, I thought I'd go ahead and fix a whole 4 oz and have high expectations for him.  I could always save what he didn't take.  Before sitting down in the glider I had the idea to hook his mobile to the outside of  his crib so that he could focus on it while trying to eat.  It worked!  He kept eating and I kept on squeezing (we have bottles that squeeze while he's healing so that it makes it easier for him to get the milk out).  I poured some more into his bottle.  He kept sucking and I kept squeezing.  He finished off the 4 oz, so I held my breath and went to the kitchen to fix more.  He kept on and I kept on.  My hand was getting sore from squeezing, but Ian said I couldn't complain about my hand being a little bit sore.  :)  The boy took 6.5 ounces!  I was floored.

Love from big brother in the hospital

But then Saturday he didn't eat anything until 1:00 that afternoon.  Interestingly enough I wasn't concerned about it.  God had proven to us that He would sustain Ian and we didn't need to worry.  When he started eating again Saturday afternoon, he just increased more and more.  By Monday he was consistently eating 4-5 oz at a time and was back on his pre-surgery eating and sleeping routine.

 

Speaking of his routine, I was a bit worried that the routine I had worked so hard for over the last 5 months was all going to go to shambles.  But truly, he bounced right back.  And in fact, I think it has really served to make things better, and even easier in some ways, for us post surgery.

 

Now it has been almost two weeks.  We go back to see Dr. Yu on Tuesday to double check everything and he said that usually the arm restraints can come off at that point.  He'll go again 4 weeks after that.  From there he should be home free. 

 

He's not super frustrated with the "bats" on his arms, but he will be glad for them to come off.  He smiles at me huge when I take them off to change his clothes.  And he fusses for half a second when I go to put them back on.  But then he just moves on with life like a champ.  When I had arm restraints as a baby, my brother thought they looked like baseball bats, so he called them bats.  Growing up, whenever I would look at the pictures or we would talk about that time of life, we called them bats.  So that's what I've always known them as.  So Ian's are bats too.  At least Ian can use his fingers.

 

Me and Daddy

Way back when

So happy to be home and getting back to normal!