True Life: I'm a [Mommy] Blogger

A few weeks ago I linked-up my general/catch-all blog for the "True Life: I'm a General Blogger" link-up that Tara and Mrs Monologues were hosting... this week they're hosting a "True Life: I'm a Mommy Blogger" link-up!

For all the newbies from the link-up, welcome!

I'm Rachel, we live in northern Illinois and I am a new mommy to 6 and a half month old Jaydran Alexander (we call him Jay for short), born on February 4, 2011.

August 14, at his 1st county fair!

My son's name is quite unique (our last name is Johnson, so we felt he needed a unique 1st name since there's a million and one Johnsons in our town!) and if you do a Google search you'll find that he's the only one with that name too! The story behind it is that my husband came up with it. He writes sci-fi as a hobby (and hopefully professionally someday!) and when he played baseball as a kid, one of the boys on his team had a sister named Jaydra. Liking the unique-ness of the name, he decided to make Jaydran the male version of it and use it for his writings. And yes, it's also the name of his World of Warcraft character, which caused me to initially veto the name but it grew on me and it seems to fit Jay as well, as he's quite an awesome little boy!

So this is my mommy/personal blog, as I chronicled our journey of trying to have a baby, my pregnancy and our adventures of being a family!

Having dealt with quite a bit so far (gestational diabetes, "failure to thrive" and eating troubles, breastfeeding woes, hydrophrenosis and a UVJ Obstruction requiring eventual surgery), I hope that by sharing my experiences and struggles I might be able to help other moms experiencing what I have and give them answers and insight to things they might be wondering (I know I tend to Google a lot when I'm looking for an answer or someone who's been there, done that and can offer insight on what I can expect).

Anyways, Jay is a special little guy who's had quite a rough start in life.

He LOVES Elmo!

Before he was born they were concerned about his femurs being a little a on the short side and his left kidney appeared to be enlarged. Due to a lack of growth between weeks 30 and 37 they decided to induce me at 37weeks, 5 days so he was a few weeks early. To be honest, labor was pretty easy - took just under 9 hours and was natural (but with a dose of dilauted to help with the back labor) and I honestly didn't feel much of anything until the last few hours, not to mention I went from 7-10cm dilated in about 10 minutes and the last half hour just flew by (you can read his full birth story here). His kidney was still enlarged though so they diagnosed him with hydronephrosis and had us start seeing a local urologist.

We also tried breastfeeding for the 1st few weeks however instead of gaining weight he lost weight! Then he gained a little back but not much so the doctor had us spend a week in the hospital while we tried to figure out why kiddo wasn't eating enough to grow. I found out at my 6 week post-partum check-up that they failed to mention to us that there was a knot in the umbilical cord, which would explain his eating problem - he got used to eating just enough to survive and his stomach never got big enough to take in more! Ever since the week in the hospital with him hooked up to a feeding tube to stretch his stomach out he's been quite the eater now, eating several full bottles a day, 2 servings of rice cereal for breakfast and veggies and fruits for dinner (he hates peas though, lol...).

He had a little too much fun
with his peaches!

As far as his enlarged kidney... the local urologist sent us up to the children's hospital in Madison for further testing where we learned that the blockage is at his bladder and not up at the kidney like we initially thought but that there is no reflux which is good. They referred us to a pediatric urology specialist at the children's hospital up there who has us coming up there every 3-4 months to check on it, saying that it appears to be a UVJ ureter obstruction. He'll most likely need to have surgery by the time he's 2 to correct it though, as his left ureter tube is pinched off at the bladder and they'll go in, take it off, snip it and reattach it to the bladder.

The idea of my baby having surgery so young is something I try not to think about, as I don't want to worry about it until it's time, however the specialist was very comforting and made me feel confident about it, saying he's done it plenty of times and has always been successful so far. I am not too thrilled though that he'll have a surgery scar though. Not gonna lie, with his week long stay in the hospital and all the testing they've done on his kidney, it's been really hard having to watch them do all this stuff to him... fortunately he's so little he probably won't remember it when he's older, although it wouldn't surprise me if it's what causes his monthly night terrors (he's had 1 a month since he was born, where he freaks out in his sleep for several minutes and won't wake up out of it).

Chillin' with daddy!

My hubby works a lot (he has both a day job as an inventory & purchasing manager for a Verizon authorized retailer and works 3rd shift as a part-time UPS supervisor - we're hoping he goes full-time there soon though so he can quit the day job) leaving me to take care of Jay most of the time during the week. I do work part-time though at The Children's Place which is pretty nice as I get 25% off Jay's clothes (and sometimes 40% when they do employee appreciation weekends!) on top of whatever the sale price is - he is quite the well dressed little guy! Fortunately my parents don't live too far from us so my mom babysits Jay when hubby and I both have work so we don't we have to worry about daycare.We also have a domestic Egyptian Mau kitty named Tiger and she will be 3 years old in October and we just bought and moved into our first house back in April! Needless to say, it's been quite a year for us!

Showing off his shades!

For now, Jay is our only child and we've discussed it and decided that we'll most likely wait until after his kidney/ureter issue is resolved before we decide to try for another (so probably when he's close to 3). Ultimately we'd like to have at least 1 more kid and maybe a 3rd (I love Jay despite my lack of experience with little boys however I would like to have a little girl too).

Jay is quite the well-behaved baby though, only really crying when his mouth hurts (due to teething - he currently has both his bottom front teeth) or he's hungry or overly tired - he behaves very well in public! He loves Elmo and anything with Elmo's face on it, he enjoys staring at pictures and playing in his baby walker. He is also VERY curious about electronics such as smartphones, computers, the remote control and the PS3 controllers! He doesn't crawl yet, but is very close (he drags/scoots himself across the floor instead!) and he does like to roll EVERYWHERE! His bedroom is being painted to look like world 1-1 from Super Mario Bros and he has various Mario Bros and Star Wars collectibles throughout his room!

 And some more pictures of Baby Jay:

One of his 1st pics, 6lbs 7oz, 19inches long & a full head of hair!

One of my favorite pics - Jay & daddy

 

He was soooo little!!

My poor baby with his feeding tube in,
pumping his tummy full of milkies

Being all cute during our move from
a 1 bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom house!

Our little family (minus Tiger our kitty!)

4 Month Check-Up and then some!

4 months old already!

Just realized I haven't really posted too much on here lately.

Honestly, there hasn't really been much to post about.

Jay's still flipping from his tummy to his back and he's been working on going back to tummy and getting pretty close! He gets stuck on his side though, as he doesn't seem to be quite able to get that last push over.

He's fascinated by our smartphones still - hubby found this app, Multi-touch Visualizer - where when you press the screen a colored circle and line crosshairs pops up. You can touch several fingerrs to the screen at once to get multiple colors. Jay loves it.

He also loves this Youtube video of Elmo playing "Elmo's Song" for Big Bird and Snuffy, although he tends to get fussy when Snuffy's on screen and Elmo isn't, lol...

He's still working on that first tooth coming in so not really much progress there.

Today (Wednesday) we had his 4 month check-up. He's up to 13lbs even, which means he's doubled his birth weight and is in the 25th percentile. He's also 25inches long. Doctor said he's looking healthy and was impressed by how well he was holding his head up and keeping control of it, as well as how strong the rest of his muscles seemed.

He said we can start him on the rest of the solid foods, as it seems like he's eating just fine, so we gave him some sweet potatoes to eat for dinner. I think what we'll do is give him the full serving of rice cereal he's been eating at breakfast, bottle for the afternoon, sweet potatoes for dinner and then just a bottle before bed. He seemed to like the sweet potatoes pretty well though, eating about half a jar before not wanting anymore and just drinking the rest from the bottle.

He also got boosters of the shots he had last time, which he wasn't happy about. Took a good minute or so to get him to calm down afterwards - I let him cuddle with me, Elmo and his binky for a minute or so before I get him ready to leave the doctor's office. He's been sleepy most of the night, taking a long evening nap and going to bed a bit early - we're pretty sure it's just the shots making him sleepy.

But the doctor said he's doing well, which is good news, and he said the only issue we seem to have to worry about now is just his kidney blockage as his growth and eating are just fine!

Also, tomorrow I have to call our insurance company and maybe bitch them out.

A week or so ago we got a rather high bill for Jay for the testing on his kidney they did up at the children's hospital in Madison back in April. We were a little confused as we had already met his out of pocket expenses this year due to the week long stay in the hospital back in February, but today we got an "explanation of benefits" notice which explained it. Apparently, the children's hospital in Madison is out of our network! The problem, is that when Jay's urologist wanted to send us to one of the nearby children's hospitals to do the testing they had me call our insurance and find out which of the 2 nearby (Madison and Chicago) were in our network, as they would prefer us to go to Madison, but said that for some people it's out of their network so we could do Chicago instead if that was the case. So I called when we got home and the male representative I spoke with confirmed that the children's hospital in Chicago was in our network but had to check the one in Madison. He spent a minute or so pulling up the information and confirmed that both were in our network so going to either one was fine.

So yeah... not sure why they're saying suddenly it's out of network now when I had called and specifically asked if it was and was told that it was. Obviously if it wasn't we would have gone to the one that was! Kinda miffed... and right now I don't know what we're going to do about his appointment up there on Monday as his urologist in town is now referring us to the one up there since Jay's case is a little more uncommon - if this new doc isn't in our network I'll have to cancel and let the urologist's office here know that and have them set us up with a doctor in Chicago (despite the fact I had *just* confirmed his appointment on Monday earlier today! Grrrr).

Oh and his doctor said we can give him water or pedialyte too while we're out to keep him hydrated, as he said he doesn't have any problem with that.

So that's how things are with us!

Some late night thoughts

Several thoughts I've been meaning to post about:

1. Remember when pregnant how they were concerned about Jay's femurs measuring small and started scaring me into the possibility that he might have Downs Syndrome? Well, as I mentioned when he was born, he's perfectly proportioned. They did briefly also mention that it could just be his height would be in his torso and not his legs, like me and mom rather than his daddy. Turns out, that's just what it is! Jay seems to have a long torso while his legs... he can still fit in newborn size pants while a good bit of 0-3 size ones fit a bit long on him. See though? No big deal and they me got worried over nothing.

2. Thinking it over and knowing after the fact (having been told at my 6 week post-partum appointment) that they discovered a knot in his umbilical cord when he was born... that's probably the cause for why his growth slowed and is likely the reason why we had that "failure to thrive" stuff. Somewhere between weeks 30 and 37 it got knotted up (no surprise really as he was quite the active bugger in there, which hasn't stopped since he was born!) and slowed down the amount of food he was getting. He was still getting enough to survive, but because he wasn't getting as much his stomach probably shrunk and he probably just got used to not eating as much to be full which carried over after he was born - his stomach shrunk so much and couldn't take in much and needed to be stretched (which the continuous feeding in the hospital did) in order to hold more so he could eat enough to grow! I'm almost positive that's what happened. And if that's the case, it explains a lot!

It's almost time!

So we're in full swing of pre-moving!

Mound o'boxes

Boxes are taking over my living room!

Thursday while I was out running errands hubby had me pick up a bunch of boxes from U-Haul and we've been busy boxing stuff up since. Right now we've just have left the bathroom, the stuff in the kitchen we use, Jay's stuff, and the stuff in our closet to pack up, as well as a slew of stuff in the storage unit and of course decorative stuff that I need to get newspaper from my parents so we can wrap it up so it doesn't break.

Kitty is quite confused, although she enjoys jumping up on top of the boxes and even in some of them!

I was also productive today and got a lot done as far as moving preparations.

I secured a quote for homeowner's insurance through Farmer's (they had the best rate), got electric (ComEd) setup in my name and starting on the 6th, got our gas (Nicor) set up and just waiting for confirmation, and reserved a U-Haul truck for the day we're moving all the big stuff over to the house (the 9th). I also setup a new Comcast account over there and got their awesome online special for new accounts (basically what we have now, plus the HD channels and HBO for 6 months so we can watch True Blood and Entourage this summer!) and setup an appointment for them to come out and "install" it. I also learned that our water and trash are on the same bill and were started on the 16th - apparently the realty company that was selling our house had them put the water/trash bill in our name then as we were going to need to have the water on for the home inspection.

So aside from finishing up packing we just have to write up and leave our 30 day move-out notice and purchase our fridge and washer/dryer which we're planning on doing tomorrow (Tuesday) as well as purchasing some stuff we're going to need around the house - yay shopping!

In other news, Jay has been downing 5.5oz bottles - at least 2 a day! And he definitely feels a bit heavier too.

Baby smiles!!

His next check-up is his 2-month one next week (can't believe he's already 2 months old on Friday!) and I'm pretty sure the doctor is going to have us reduce his calories per oz from the 24 down to the normal 20 and if not I'm going to ask, as he's averaging a little over 20oz of food per day which I'm sure is a lot more calories than he needs!

On the 14th we're going up to the children's hospital in Madison for further kidney testing, including a more advanced ultrasound (which his urologist said in some cases they can tell what's causing the blockage from this ultrasound) and some test I read about that involves a catheter and they give him some liquid and watch how it empties from his system or something... I forget the specifics! Not going to be fun for him and it's likely to be a long day too - we have to be there at 9am and it's a little over an hour drive so we need to leave a little after 7am... the said the ultrasound could take up to an hour while the catheter test is obviously going to take awhile.

Jay's been a little farting machine too lately! It's actually quite amusing!

Oh! And his birth announcements arrived today too - we'll probably send them out next week or the week after we move and get somewhat settled.

He peed the bed - or should I say our bed - the other night. I was laying down to relax and was snuggling with him when I sat my arm in something wet underneath him... mommy fail! Apparently I didn't fasten the one side of his diaper tight enough and he leaked a nice size puddle on our bedsheet! Doh!

He also seems to enjoy watching/listening to daddy play Call of Duty as he was sitting perfectly fine in his bouncy seat while daddy was playing but the second he was done he got fussy! LOL... He also LOVES looking at himself in the front-facing cameras on daddy's phone (an HTC Thunderbolt) and tablet (the Samsung Galaxy Tab) - it's pretty funny! Take that mirrors! lol...

Passed out on mommy

He's been sleeping a good 3-4 hours a night in the bassinet most nights before he ends up sleeping on me for the rest of the night. It's progress. I'm hoping maybe his crib will be more comfortable for him once we get it setup after the move.

I've also resorted to letting him sleep on his tummy in there too. He seems more comfortable than on his back and he sleeps a lot longer too - on his back he doesn't last long before he's awake and howling. Plus, if he sleeps with his binky in his mouth, it doesn't fall out as easily. While they ingrain the SIDS guidelines and warnings, I'm not too worried about him on his tummy as he's got lifting and turning his head down pat and when he is on his tummy he's automatically got his head turned to one side or the other. I do check on him throughout the night though just to make sure he's okay and before I drift off to sleep I often look over and make sure he's not faceplanted everytime I hear him move around in there. They also say co-sleeping is a no-no too, but we've broken that "rule" plenty and we're doing just fine with it - sometimes you have to do what you have to do so everybody wins and is able to get a decent amount of sleep! We'll try his back again when he's sleeping in his crib in the upcoming weeks - a friend suggested it could just be the Pack n Play mattress isn't comfy (her kids hated it) and that he might sleep better on an actual crib mattress, so we'll see.

End of week wrap-up

So Jay is 5 weeks old this morning.

Mommy's Little Monkey

The visiting nurse came Tuesday evening and weighed him at 7lbs, 11oz (despite the doctor's office scale the day before clocking him at 7lbs, 6oz) and then she came for the last time this morning and he weighed 7lbs, 13oz! Either way, he's growing!

Once he hits 8lbs we can start fitting him into some of the 0-3month sized clothes he has plenty of, as those are good for 8-12lbs - I'm guessing after next week he'll be into them (which is good cuz the St. Patrick's Day onesie I bought him is newborn size!)

Last night he slept a good 3 hours in the bassinet (from about 430am-730am) before waking up to eat. He's also been eating 2.5-3oz per feeding on average and sometimes he'll down as much as 4oz! I'm thrilled!

Today was a nice day - we woke up by 1030am as the visiting nurse was supposed to be by a little after 11... well she didn't get there til almost noon, but whatever. Then we took a nice nap together on the couch til about 230pm and then got ready to go out to the mall for a bit to do some mall walking with mommy's friend and her 2 young kids (one's 4, the other is turning 1 this weekend). Jay fell asleep as soon as we got to the mall and didn't wake up til almost 2 hours later when we left. Then my inlaws came over for a bit to spend some time with Jay and now we're just hanging out the 2 of us like we usually do late at night.

Jay's latest thing this week, aside from being alert and looking at everything, is faking sleep. When he wants you stop trying to burp him he'll pretend to fall asleep. When he doesn't want his binky anymore, he'll pretend to fall asleep. His honorary aunt Jeny who's in town this week to do some wedding planning came by and soon after she started holding him he pretended to fall asleep as he didn't know who she was. How do we know he's faking? He over exaggerates his breathing, will creep open one eye to peak out and see if you notice him "sleeping" and he'll give this big silly grin if you catch him with his eye open, lol... it's pretty funny!

So tomorrow Jay gets to spend the evening with Grammie and Grandpap as mommy and daddy are going into the suburbs and then Sunday Jay has his first birthday party to attend (my friend's daughter who's turning 1). Next week I have 3 doctor appointments to go to - Jay's follow-up at the doctor's office on Monday, his follow-up urology appointment on Thursday, and then on Friday I have my 6 week post-partum appointment - hopefully I'll get my birth control prescription filled and a note saying I'm good to go back to work as I need to make some monies so I can spoil Jay some more and get us furniture and decorative stuff for our new home.

Hospital follow-up

Today we had our follow-up doctor's appointment since being discharged from the hospital a week ago.

They weighed Jay as being 7lbs, 6oz, which seems to be consistent with the scale the visiting nurse has been using and continuing to show that it seems Jay is putting on an ounce a day! At the rate he's going, we should be out of newborn sized clothing and finally into the 0-3 month sized ones within 2 weeks or so! How exciting as we have a bunch of 0-3 month sized stuff as that's mainly what we were buying as we thought he was going to be a bit bigger, like at least 8lbs!

Doc was looking over all the lab test results that came back too - he was going to double check with the doctors we had at the hospital, but he said from what he could tell everything looked fine.

He said that Jay looks a lot better than he did last time he saw him and that he said he finally feels a lot better about him too now that he's put on some weight and is finally growing like he should. He wants us to come back in a week just to see how he's doing, if he's continuing to progress. Then hopefully we'll be back on the regular doctor's visit schedule.

Tomorrow we're signing the final contract to the offer on the house and then we just have to wait for the loan to go through and then we can close on it. Our lender said it shouldn't take more than 3 weeks, but you never know. Hopefully we'll be closing by the end of the month if we're lucky and moving in right away too!

A day to celebrate

Today we had a number of things to be happy about!

First, we had Jay's first appointment at the urologist. Since the hospital did an ultrasound on his kidney last week while we were there, today was more just a meet and greet with the doctor as he said there was no need for another ultrasound on it so soon. He did say though, when I asked, that it doesn't look to be severe at all - more mild in fact - and so we don't need to talk or think about surgery at this point yet. So yay for that! He has coming back in 2 weeks for another ultrasound on it though and it looks like we're just going to be monitoring it that way for awhile in hopes that as Jay continues to grow it'll just naturally unblock itself.

Then, throughout the day I had several interactions with our realtor. He called me back this morning while I was feeding Jay, apologizing for not getting back to us yesterday as he somehow missed the message that we had called when his meeting ran long and he just got it this morning. We told him the counter-counter offer of $70k was fine, but he did said he was going to push for the later closing date just because he wanted to make sure we had enough time for the loan to go through. At lunch I got an email from him with an attached amendum from the bank/seller saying for us to look through it and call him to set up a time to sign it. Then he called me a little while later going over a few things in it (I hadn't had time to read through it yet) and also said that he was able to get them to accept our previous offer of $68k! How neat! Also, hubby dropped off the rest of the paperwork the bank lady needed and she emailed me to confirm that we were good to go!

So it looks like we'll be moving by mid-April at the very latest! How exciting!

Also this afternoon we had our next visit with the visiting nurse to check Jay's weight - he's up 3 more ounces (now 7lbs, 3oz)! Yay! I hope the doctor is pleased with his weight gain when we go back in for his post-hospital follow-up on Monday.

Jay update!

Today we had our first visit from the visiting nurse as they said one would be coming twice a week for 2 weeks to check Jay's weight and make sure he was still making progress, growth-wise.

Well, as of this evening, he's up to 7lbs even! Woot!!

The visit went alright it seemed - he screamed bloody murder when I had to strip him down so she could weigh him and he ate 2.5oz while she asked me a bunch of questions about him and my pregnancy and delivery, etc.

She'll be back Friday for another weight check up.

I ran into our landlord today for the first time in months. He saw me carrying in Jay in his carrier and helped get the door for me, asking if he was our baby or someone's we were watching. I said he was ours and the response was "Really?! I didn't even know you were pregnant!" I told him Jay was almost 4 weeks old and he was surprised too! Guess our landlord's been out of the loop! lol...

I also realized that the house we put an offer in on today is in the city and not the county so that means we can finally get library cards!! I'm so excited - I haven't had a library card since I was a kid when my dad would take me a few Saturdays a month. See, here if you live in the city, your library card is covered by your city taxes, but if you live in the random county patches well, it's $100 annually that you have to pay upfront so obviously you can see why I haven't had one in years. I'm really excited though and I look forward to taking Jay to get a library card in a few years too!

And on a sidenote...

Jay is NEVER going to have clean sleeves again. This weekend at the hospital he figured out that he can wipe his mouth off on his sleeve and he was regularly beating me to wiping the milkies off his face! We started him back on his medicine tonight and while we had a bib on him, he attempted to wipe his mouth off with his "good" shirt sleeve... this is bad because the medicine is pink and stains! We kept having to grab his arm to stop him from doing it! lol...

Additional thoughts from our "vacation" at the hospital

Friday evening (right before I was about to take a shower too) they had to bump us out of our single room into a shared room as the pediatric unit was filling up and they needed our room for an isolation case. I was kinda sad too as hubby was finally able to stay overnight on the weekend and we lost the pull-out couch bed that was in the single and got stuck with a small pull-out chair bed. We made it work - one of us always had to be laying on our side and it was an excuse to get some much needed snuggle time in too!

When we moved rooms, there was another younger couple, close in age to us, with a baby - maybe a year and a half old, as he could watch Mickey DVDs and grasp what was going on. They had brought him in earlier in the week for a fever, but the doctor's couldn't figure out what was causing it. Saturday they did an MRI on him and turns out he had a huge abscess on his hip that was bigger than his bladder and they needed to do surgery to get it drained! Poor guy! He was crying in pain a lot too and scared of any of the hospital staff in uniform! They had them move to a different room for recovery while he was in surgery though. I saw the mom a few times in the hall the rest of the weekend - she looked like she was doing okay so I'm assuming the surgery went well.

Our next "roommates" for the remainder of our stay... well, I feel bad for their little guy! Apparently the baby - about 4 months old I gathered - is a twin who was born 10 weeks early, but has had one health issue after another and was on oxygen when they brought him in Saturday evening. Also, since he was born he's been in the hospital the majority of the time - the longest stretch at home was just 2 days! This morning one of the doctors that's been working with them came in and was telling the nurse how annoyed he was that they brought him back in again as there seemed to be nothing wrong with him this time, other than the mom freaked out over something that was nothing. Like I said, I felt really bad for the little guy as his parents just kinda left him there! They were there til about 11pm or so Saturday night before leaving to check-in to a hotel nearby (guess they didn't want to try the pull-out chair like we did!) and they came back a little bit briefly Sunday afternoon but left by 6pm - soon after they left, their little guy woke up, crying, like he was lonely. I was holding Jay as hubby went to go get us dinner, and I just felt so bad for the guy I called for the nurses, letting them know his parents had left recently and he was just crying so much - one of them came in to hold him for a bit til he fell asleep again. They had doctors in and out throughout the night checking in on him... we left today just before noon and his parents still weren't back!

I couldn't imagine leaving Jay alone in the hospital like that! Yes, he's not even a month old yet and he won't remember any of this when he's older, but still... I couldn't bare the thought of my baby waking up, crying, in a strange foreign scary place like the hospital without a familiar face there to comfort him and hold him! I'd feel like such a horrible parent!

Also, the nurse we had our last night there... yeah, not a fan. All the other nurses were great and really helpful, this one was just really young and seemed a bit inexperienced - it showed. She also got on my nerves a little bit later in the night, as she had offered to feed Jay for his 3am feeding so I wouldn't have to wake up and could catch some extra sleep since hubby wasn't there to help me. Well I put him down around 130am but he woke back up by 2. She walked past in the hallway and saw us and came in to check up on us. She thought he was hungry despite his feeding not being for almost an hour and she offered to feed him early so I could climb back in bed. I hesitated at first but ended up agreeing due to my tiredness and her insistence. I was half awake, half asleep but I had a bad feeling he'd spit up while she fed him because she wouldn't make him slow down (Jay starts out acting like he's starving and downs the first .5-1oz like it's no one's business and by the end of Sunday he was wolfing down 2oz bottles in 10minutes or less!). And I was right... she gave him 1oz and burped him, but I could hear him gulping like crazy, not stopping to actually swallow, and he "threw up." I was kinda pissed but too tired to get up or say anything. She stopped the feeding, cleaned him off, and put him down without offering him anymore to fill himself up (I noticed that if he spits up a little, after a few minutes for his tummy to settle he'll eat a little more to make up for what he spit up)... he started fussing again 20min later and I got up with him. We gave him more to eat at 4am and I insisted on feeding him myself this time - he ate all 2oz, no problem for me. The nurse was shocked. Clearly, mommy knows how to feed her baby. He ended up sleeping on my chest that night - I think the doctors and nurses coming in every hour or so to check on oxygen baby was waking him up when he was sleeping alone in the crib. I woke up at 8am, shocked that 1) the nurse didn't wake us up for his 7am as she was so anal the night before about us waking him up at the 3hr mark so he wouldn't get off schedule, and 2) she didn't tell us at the 730 shift change that she was leaving and inform us who our daytime nurse would be as they did every morning! Yeah... the rest of the nurses were great... but her, she kinda got on my nerves as the night/morning went on.

Home from the hospital

We were finally discharged from the hospital late this morning (Monday).

Since my last post on Wednesday, Jay's made quite a bit of improvement!

Jay's first wagon ride!
When they discharge the kids from the pediatric unit, they wheel them out
and down to the entrance in these wagons! How cute!

Thursday they started upping the amount of formula he was continuously being fed every few hours, trying to get him back up to 20mL as they had bumped him down to 10 after the first night of the continuous feeding as he was spitting up still. We got to about 15mL on Friday evening when the stomach doctor that started seeing us decided to go ahead and have us start feeding him by bottle again (50mL of 24 calorie formula) every 3 hours as he felt that the continuous feed wouldn't help get us out of there any quicker as with Jay constantly having food in his tummy, he wasn't getting that sensation of being hungry and wanting to eat. They had us do that for the rest of the night and all of Saturday before Sunday just letting him eat as much as he could/wanted every few hours - 50mL is just under 2oz, and when they let us, he was averaging 2oz per feeding on Sunday and he was keeping it down for the most part too!

Since he was eating fine on his own and keeping it down pretty well and gaining weight they let us go today - much to my pleasure as I was sick and tired of sleeping on the hospital pull-out furniture and just being there in general.

They have us feeding him Enfamil's Lipil formula, mixing it a special way so it's more concentrated giving him 27 calories per oz. He weighed 6lbs, 12.1oz this morning when we left - a huge improvement from the 6lbs, 1oz he came in at!

Because he has to be on the higher calorie formula, obviously I'm not breastfeeding. There's no telling how long he'll need to be on the higher calorie formula and my supply already seems to have depleted. I'm fine with it though so don't think I'm beating myself up over the fact I can't breastfeed him - I'm not and like I mentioned in a previous post, I kinda welcome the fact that we have to give him formula as with all the post-partum crap (I was dealing with the depression and emotional stuff of it to a lesser degree), the stress of breastfeeding wasn't helping it any.

He's been doing good since we got home though - he ate 2.5oz for his afternoon bottle before taking a 2.5hr nap IN THE BASSINET!!! It was a shocker to me too, as he fell asleep after eating and I put him down in there so I could at least do some stuff before he woke up... and Little Man was passed out! He's napping in there right now too - I expect him to wake up around the time daddy gets home from work for some more food before we try putting him down for the rest of the night/morning. He did spit up a little tonight though - he drank 1oz that was left from before and then I made another 3oz bottle... there was a lot of foam but from what I can tell he drank nearly 2oz before spitting up probably 1 (all over himself and me - fortunately none got on the couch!); I cleaned him off though and he ate maybe another half ounce before tiring out. I'm not too worried though - he had already met his ounces for the day (for his size, he needs about 15oz of the normal formula and about 12oz of the higher calorie stuff).

Failure to Thrive

Those that follow me on Twitter and of course family and friends that are on Facebook already know about what's been going on this week... for the rest though, here's an update - thoughts and prayers for us and little Jay are much appreciated!

As I mentioned over the weekend, we switched Jay to formula as at his doctor's appointment on Friday showed that he had LOST weight rather than gained any and the doctor wanted us to supplement with formula to see if that would put the weight on him, thinking maybe my milk supply just wasn't doing the job.

Well first thing Monday morning we went in for a follow-up again just to see if the formula was doing the trick... well he hadn't lost anymore weight, but he didn't gain any either, holding steady at 6lbs, 1oz, which was the same as his hospital discharge weight after he was born.

Our doctor said that wasn't acceptable and had his receptionist call over and get us admitted at the hospital so they could look into why he wasn't gaining any weight despite us feeding him every 2-3hours.

Jay with feeding tube & pump

Well, Monday we met with the pediatric doctor here who explained that it's possible Jay just has what is called "failure to thrive" meaning that for whatever reason he just "got behind" and hasn't seemed to catch up. He looked him over and said that Jay appears to be completely healthy - he was very impressed at his strength too, despite his small size, and how well he was already holding his head up! They ran another renal ultrasound on Jay just to check and make sure his left kidney (the enlarged one) hadn't grown any in the past 2 weeks, possibly putting pressure on his stomach causing it make him feel full when he actually isn't, and they drew some blood for some blood work tests too. They also had us feeding him formula via a bottle and then pumping the rest in via a pump hooked up to his feeding tube, as he needs to be eating 2.5oz per feeding to get in the calories he needs to grow (at home we were doing good if we could get him to take 1oz per feeding - getting anymore than that into him before he fell asleep or spit it up was rare!).

About 1am on Tuesday we had a bit of a scare too - Jay started spitting up and coughing up A TON of mucus! It was really scary as at one point it seemed like he was choking trying to cough it up and the nurses had to suction a ton of it out of his noes and the back of his throat... seemed like it was taking forever to get it to stop coming up and yeah... it was just really scary!

Tuesday morning we had the results of the ultrasound, which came back fine - his kidney hasn't grown or changed since so that's not the issue, and all the tests they did with his blood came back fine as well. They suggested we do this barium x-ray where they mix barium in with formula and feed it to him and watch via an x-ray to see how it's going through his system, down his throat, into his stomach and through to his intestines, making sure there's nothing blocking or obstructing the flow that would cause him not to eat much or spit up when he eats more than a certain amount. That came back fine though too - nothing abnormal, everything was going through him fine.

He kept his 11am feeding down pretty well but spit up most of the 2pm feeding. They hooked him to an IV bag with formula in it that is slowly continuously pumping the food into him via his feeding tube. He spit up a little at 8pm and again at 130am. I fell asleep around 3am and they said he spit up again at about 4am so they turned down the amount he was getting per hour from 20ml to 10ml and he hasn't spit up since (as of 930pm Wednesday night).

Today (Wednesday) we had a pediatric GI specialist come in and take a look at him to see if she could think of any other reason that what we've already ruled out that could be the cause for this. She said the same thing the pediatric doctor did - he seems perfectly healthy! She said it just seems he "got behind" and needs the push to get him to eat more and hold it down. She also increased his calorie intake from 24 to 27, so it seems like going back to breastfeeding won't be an option for us as he needs high calorie formula to catch up and push his growth.

Keeping calm in mommy's arms with his
binky while continuously being fed via
feeding tube.

The pediatric doctor said that for tonight they're going to keep him on the continuous feeding to see if he continues to grow more (he's gained 4oz since we've been here, now at 6lbs 5oz, up from 6lbs, 1oz) and then tomorrow we'll try giving him a bottle again and pumping in what he doesn't finish every 3 hours to see if he can stomach it now that he's been having it continuously going into his system for over 24hours. He said we'll be here at least through Friday if not through the weekend and it's possible they might send us home with his feeding tube still in him so we can give him a bottle and pump in the rest via a syringe - hopefully he does well enough though the next few days with the bottle though that we won't have to do that. He also said the feeding tube can last for several months before needing to be changed out, however he said he doesn't see Jay needing it for more than a few weeks after we go home if at all. He also said that they'll leave us alone as much as possible, meaning they won't be doing anymore tests or poking/prodding of Jay unless there's an absolute reason for it as he'd rather just see how he takes to the feedings.

I must say though, this pediatric doctor has been great! I like his approach of let's not do anything unnecessary when it comes to the testing and all that and he's very easy to talk to - I think when our family doctor retires (we believe he's in his early-mid 60s) I might try to see if we can get on under this guy.

Jay has been quite the little trooper too, taking everything so well! Sure, he cried when they put the feeding tube in (which was hard for me to watch too) and got a little fussy near the end of them drawing blood from his heel and at the end of the ultrasound and while they took the big scary x-ray of his belly, but for a barely 3 week year old he's been doing very well! He's been sucking on his binky quite a bit too, using that as his security item it seems, as Monday while everything was going on he was sucking on it like crazy while holding onto my finger. He had a little bit of a crying fit earlier - nothing seemed to comfort him for about 10 minutes, but then he was fine - I think he's just a little stressed, having to be back in the hospital and hooked up to a machine with nurses coming in throughout the day to check his vitals... I don't blame him for having a good cry - the situation sucks.

My mom's been coming up during the late morning and staying through the afternoon so I can get a nap and shower in (I've only been getting a few hours of sleep at night here in the hospital as I don't want to leave Jay alone up here - he's too little and only a few faces are really familiar to him) while hubby's been coming up after work in the evenings and staying til around midnight - fortunately he took this week off as his vacation from UPS as we were expecting Jay to be born this past weekend so he doesn't have to rush off to his night job this week.

So that's where we are with things - we'll be here at least through Friday, possibly through the weekend, all depending on how much Jay grows and how well he does with the bottle the next few days.

Thanks in advance for your prayers and thoughts - hopefully things continue to progress and get better and he's able to eat as much as he should be on his own!