Sleep and big boy baths

Since Thursday (June 25th for my own records!) the baby has slept through the night. I am not getting too excited yet though. He barely napped at all on Thursday but was still in a great mood. Friday, again, he barely napped. Now when I say barely napped, he probably slept for a total of an hour and a half each day. Friday he continued to be in a good mood until the end of the night. However, I think by Saturday, the lack of sleep had finally caught up with him. He was not a happy camper on Saturday. He was spitting up constantly and just seemed miserable and tired all day. The problem was that for those three days I had taken him out all day and he doesn't like missing anything so he just wouldn't sleep. So today we are keeping him home for most of the day and hopefully he'll get some rest! It is nice that he's sleeping through the night but for about a month I had a nice predictible schedule as far as feeding and naps. The feeding is still pretty consistant but the naps are a mess!

Thursday morning I had given him a bath. He has this hammock for his little bath tub that's meant for babies who aren't quite ready to go in just the little tub itself. Thursday I finally decided that that would be his last bath in the hammock. His legs were hanging off the end and he just didn't fit in it. It seems like just yesterday we were giving him his first bath at home!

Saturday I gave him a bath without the hammock. He did just fine. Hopefully soon he'll start splashing and enjoying the tub. He doesn't mind taking a bath but he's so serious when he gets one. He doesn't smile or laugh, he just sits there. I woke up Eric to take some pictures of him. I should have checked the quality of the pictures before I took him out of the tub. I would have taken much better ones considering I'm pretty sure Eric's eyes were closed when he took these:

This is how tired the baby was come Saturday!:

This is serious tub time:

Father's Day, etc

Although Mother's Day was a fiasco, I decided not to retaliate and I tried to make Eric's first Father's Day a good one. I made him a card with a bunch of pictures of him and the baby (turns out I had taken quite a lot!). I put the baby's hand print on it and wrote "To: My best friend Daddy, Happy first Father's Day, Love Eric (aka Booger)." In the morning I somehow managed to feed the baby, give him a bath and then make quite a breakfast! I put the baby in his papasan chair in the kitchen and he talked to me while I cooked. I made my first omlette ever. I wanted to make an omlette that is Eric's favorite from the restaurant Mom's that we like going to. It is called a farmer's omlette. I had to ask my gramma for the ingredients to it and she got a few wrong but needless to say Eric ate the whole thing so I must not have done too bad of a job! I also made sausage and bacon and I had french toast because eggs are gross to me. It was a nice meal. For dinner we went to my parent's house for hamburgers and hot dogs. It's always fun to be around everyone, especially with Dylan and Eric there and soon baby Ryan (currently in my sister's tummy). Dylan definitely makes things more humorous. My favorite Dylan moment was when he spun around in circles in the kitchen and got so dizzy that he got scared and remarked "What happened to the house??" because it was spinning he was so dizzy. Poor little guy!

Ok picture time:

When the baby was finally feeling better, Eric was so excited that he went and bought him a cute outfit consisting of khaki shorts and a button down shirt. When I put the outfit on the baby, Eric decided to match him (surprise surprise for anyone who knows how much Eric likes matching my outfits!). Here are the cute pictures:






Eric and I have been a little stir crazy because we haven't left the house much since sunday and with that and all the rain I think we have gone a little loopy. Eric was getting a little camera happy today. Here are all the cute pictures he took:

Love Love Love this one!!!:

The baby loves sucking on and cuddling with blankets. During the day if he gets a hold of his burp cloth he goes to town sucking on it and hugging it. At night he gets his silkie. Here he is cuddling it like he does every night:

The 6 day Fever

Today (knock on wood) it appears that the baby's fever is finally gone...6 days later! It has been so frustrating because everyday I think his fever is gone so I cut back on the motrin and tylenol all for him to end up with a fever again. The last time he had a fever was at 2am and it was 101.5. The doctor said the fever is good because it helps fight the infection but it doesn't make the baby very happy! I feel like all day I'm feeling him and praying that he does not have a fever. I took his temp before he went to bed tonight and had a nice sigh of relief when I discovered that it was 98.4. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the fever is finally gone. This must have been one heck of an infection.

We went to the doctors yesterday for a follow up. I have my moments when I do not like this pediatricians office but I really enjoy them when they give us a TON of free formula and free tylenol samples. It saves us a lot of money! The doctor went over with us the tests that the baby needs to get done. He has to have a dye injected in his bladder through a catheter and then X-Rays will show whether his bladder is emptying correctly and that urine is not going back into his kidneys. They will also do an ultrasound of his kidneys. We're hoping that this UTI is just a fluke. Otherwise he will have to be on antibiotics for a long time until what's called "reflux of the bladder" cures itself when he grows some more. It feels like this whole nightmare will never end. I wish we could just give him the antibiotics until it cures the infection and move on with our lives. We will have the tests done at the beginning of July and then we will have a conclusion to all of this.

On the up side he is doing very well. He is happy (when he's not super gassy from the antibiotics) and chatty... his usual goofball self. And the thing I'm most thankful for is that he's started to get back on his regular sleep/eat schedule. The last thing I wanted was to go back to getting up every 3 hours with him! I did increase him to 6 oz bottles. It seems to be going better this time. He still is spitting up a decent amount but I'm sure a part of that is that his belly doesn't feel so great. He just has seemed so hungry after going through all of this. He also did not lose any weight. He is 12 lbs 5 oz.- he gained a pound since his last appointment!

Tonight should be a good night with no fevers!

The weekend from hell

I was so surprised when the baby slept from about 9pm thursday night until 8:30am on friday. I was very excited as well! I went in and got him that morning and gave him a bottle. After that I took him downstairs to play. He was doing his usual talking and laughing and yelling at his toys. He seemed completely fine. He started to get cranky so I knew he was ready for a nap. Normally he fights taking a nap and will cry and cry until he falls asleep. However, that day, I laid him on my chest and his whole body went limp and he was out in about 3 seconds. I thought that was kind of odd but I put him up in his crib in continued on with things that I needed to get done before he woke up.
He is not normally a long napper and I was pretty surprised that he napped for about 2 hours especially after he slept all night. When he woke up he would not stop crying but just would not open his eyes. This was again something he'd never done before. So I took his temperature and he had a fever of 101.5. I immediately gave him tylenol and called the doctor. The nurse there told me it was common for babies to have fevers (What???!!!) and that I should just give him a bath and continue to give him tylenol. So of course that's what I did.
Later on that day he still seemed horrible. Very lathargic and warm. I took his temperature again 2 hours after I gave him tylenol and it was 102.2. I went with my mother's instinct and said that we needed to go to the ER since it was after hours for his pedi office. We were at the ER for 6 hours. It was the longest night ever with a baby who couldn't sleep well because he was on fire. When they finally saw us they gave him some motrin and took a urine sample from him. They also gave him an IV and took blood and pumped saline through his IV. It was aweful. He was so miserable. Once the motrin kicked in he seemed to perk up and even smiled a few times. This is what he looked like with his IV in:




The test results came back and he has a urinary tract infection. They said it's not as common in boys and if it becomes a chronic problem we have to get tests done to see if his bladder is not emptying completely or if his urine is going back into his kidneys. That's a scary thought. They gave him some antibiotics in the hospital and a prescription and sent us on our way. They told us to come back on sunday for a re-eval.
Saturday was aweful. I was so worried that there was more than just a UTI causing him to feel this way. His fever didn't drop all day. It seemed like the tylenol wasn't working. He was so pale and tired but would just moan all day in discomfort. It was a long day.
Long story short we made it through the night and brought him back to the ER today. Thankfully they took us right in and told us that he definitely had a UTI but gave us a different antibiotic to put him on. They gave him tylenol and motrin again and he again perked right up and was almost his regular Eric self. His fever got down to 99 degrees which was the lowest it had been in days. They told us that we could give him motrin and tylenol at home since the tylenol just didn't seem to be enough. I wish they had told us that on friday!!! So as of right now his fever still seems to be down, he is drinking his bottle, and sleeping a whole lot after a long weekend.
There was much more to this story but I just don't feel like re-living the whole thing. Thanks mom and dad for coming over last night and giving us some company, it was much needed!

pics from photo shoot

My friend Marissa pointed out to me that I can save the pictures from the Sears photo shoot to my computer. I wasn't impressed with the job the woman did but here they are:

This is the one I chose for our package:

After looking at the pictures when I got home, this is the one I wish I had chosen:

Lots of pictures

Last Sunday we went to Connecticut to visit my friend Heather. We went to a beach down the street from her house for the baby's first trip to the beach. She took some really good pictures. I was waiting to get them so I could put them on the blog.

Sleeping has been going great this week. He continues to be on a schedule. Somedays he goes to bed a little later than other days but for the most part things are pretty consistant. Friday He went to bed at 8pm and slept until 7:30am, it was sooo nice! I don't expect him to do that again for a while but it was nice when it happened!

Yesterday we went to Sears and got some pictures taken of him. He did a good job but the photographer didn't do quite as well. We had a coupon for a $5 photo package so I just ordered them but I ordered a ton of pictures on snapfish for way cheaper than I could have gotten at Sears.

Now for a whole lot of pictures:

The baby has been sleeping on his belly for naps. He just sleeps better. The doctors are so adamant that babies sleep on their backs because of SIDS but he sleeps so well on his belly and I just make sure to check on him constantly. Here's a picture of him sleeping with his bum in the air:


My Gramma came back from Canada with this teddy bear. Her husband's daughter has an embroidary machine and she put the baby's name on the teddy bear and put rock star on the jean jacket that he will eventually be able to wear when he gets older. Here's the baby dressed like bear, sitting next to his teddy bear:



This is our little peanut three months old:

And here are all the pictures from CT:

Getting ready for the long car ride:

This picture made Heather contemplate quiting her day job and becoming a professional photographer:

A routine.. finally!

So it looks like the baby has gotten himself into a nice little routine finally... and now that I've said that it'll probably all change! Last Friday he had a bottle at 8 and slept until 5:30am, that was very exciting! That has not happened again. However, he has been hungry consistantly since then between 7:30 and 8. He then goes to sleep shortly after until about 4am. I feed him and he goes back to sleep. He wakes up again around 7ish. He is in a great mood when he wakes up. We either play or he gets a bath or both! Then we go downstairs and I eat breakfast while he plays on his mat. Then around 8:30 he gets hungry and has a bottle and passes out until anywhere between 11 and 12. This makes me very happy because long naps like this were non-existant up until a few days ago. At first I was worried that these naps would mean that he would be up all night but that is not the case. It is so nice for me because I am actually able to get stuff done in the morning. And speaking of that, it is 11:09am and he just woke up :) Gotta go!