11 weeks young

The nurse practitioner finally called me back on Wednesday but by then it was kind of a waste of a phone call. I had taken the baby off the medicine, he wasn't spitting up much any more, and about an hour after I got off the phone with her he had a BM and has been regular ever since. The only thing is that he is not sleeping long hours at night at the moment. I guess it was good while it lasted! Once he does start sleeping long periods of time he will have a set bed time. Now it's just whenever he happens to fall asleep but I feel like it would be next to impossible to set a bed time right now because he simply is so wide awake most days and doesn't stop until at least 10pm. Maybe I'll tackle this next week!

Every thursday I go to my parent's house because they watch Dylan on thursdays and will eventually watch the baby whenever I go back to work. It's a nice chance for Dylan and the baby to bond and my parents and sister to see the baby. Dylan doesn't dislike the baby, he just doesn't particularly like going near him. My mom did get some really good pictures though and we finally got a picture of the baby smiling. He is so gigglely all the time but for some reason, every time I pull out the camera he freezes! Here he is smiling away and some pics of him and his big cousin:

On Wednesday we decided to set up the baby's high chair. Since he's always awake all day, we figured that instead of putting him in his swing while we ate, he could come join us at the table. At first he wasn't a big fan but then he just decided to hang out and listen to the conversation.

Pepe Ray came over for a visit today and we had a nice visit. The baby slept through most of it since he was a party animal all night long. He woke up right when Pepe was leaving and Eric gave him a bottle. He was up for about an hour smiling and laughing but then he started to get tired. He fell asleep in my arms and I decided to put him in his crib to nap which is always a risk since he never sleeps in his crib for more than 45 minutes. When I laid him down he woke up fussing. I put him on his side so that maybe he'd be a little more comfortable. I went downstairs to make myself some lunch. When I came back upstairs I found him like this:

Yup, He rolled right over onto his stomach. The other day he almost rolled on him stomach while playing on the floor but his arm got caught so he gave him. That time he had done all the work, I hadn't rolled him on his side or anything. With a head start from me, It looks like he figured out how to get his arm out of the way!

Holy spit up

Last week was a rough week. The day after the baby got all of his shots he was spitting up on a constant. It's most likely a coincidence that it happened right after his shots but I'll never really know since the doctor's office apparently has no interest in calling me back. But anyway...everyone keeps telling me that it's probably not as bad as it seems. I get this. I get that he was not spitting up his entire bottle. The problem was that he was spitting up more than he ever has and it lasted for four days straight. I was so stressed from all of it and worried about him. He would spit up every ten minutes for an hour after his bottle and then three hours later he would spit up right when he should have been ready for another bottle. On Saturday I called the doctor's office, again a useless phone call. The nurse who seemed to have no affliation with that office so I don't know where she came from, told me that it's probably reflux and to put him on medicine and cut back an ounce of his formula. I refused to cut back an ounce, he would be too hungry. I was hestitate to put him on his reflux medicine because we have been so back and forth on whether he has reflux and one of the potential side effects of the medicine is constipation which just seems so much worse than reflux. The only reason why I finally decided to give him the reflux medicine was because the only nights he was sleeping for long periods of time was when I gave him tylenol which to me indicated that he must be in pain. I had given him tylenol on friday night when he just would not stop spitting up and he finally ended up just passing out. But you just can't give a baby tylenol every night! So I started the medicine on saturday. Needless to say he was still spitting up, a little less but still spitting up. He also has not had a bowel movement since Sunday and he is not very happy about that (he's going to love it in about 15 years that I posted things about his bowel movements!). Today I made the decision to take him off the reflux medicine as quickly as I had put him on it (with some advice from my mom! Thanks mom! At least you answer my phone calls!). I tried at least and hopefully he's not in pain from reflux, just from constipation which will pass eventually. He has barely spit up all today despite not getting any medicine. I really hope he has a BM at some point between now and tomorrow because I really don't want to deal with the doctor's office. We so need a new pediatrician...

On another note... When Eric was born my sister gave him a silkie blanket because my nephew has several and loves them. It's just a tiny square blanket. One side is silkie and the other side is like a fleece material I guess, I'm not sure what you'd call it. Anyways the instructions for it said that the silkie side reminds babies of being in the womb. It also said to hold it when cuddling the baby so it gets my scent on it and when he sleeps at night it will be comforting. I have been giving him his silkie almost his whole life and he kind of has had no interest in it but lately he has been snuggling more with it. I normally cover his legs up with a blanket at night and put his silkie on the left side of him. The other night he had moved his silkie like this:




Too funny!!!

The other day we went to West End Creamery for the first time this season and I am so bummed because we didn't get a chance for anyone to take a family picture. We were all in navy blue red sox shirts and khakis. It would have been a cute picture. We will wear the outfits again soon when someone is around to take a picture!

Doctor's visit

Eric had his two month doctor's visit on Tuesday. He now weighs 11 lbs 4 oz and is 23 inches long. He is getting so big! The nurse practitioner was very pleased with how he is doing. He is in the 50th percentile for weight and height. He got two shots and had to drink something for immunizations that day. The nurse kind of messed up the shots because she gave the first one and went to give the second one and realize he was bleeding and getting it on his shirt and she kind of panicked. She gave him the second shot and cleaned up his shirt but he was screaming so she felt really bad. The good thing out of it was that in her guilt she gave us a ton of free formula and a free sample of baby Tylenol! I felt kind of silly because it has never crossed my mind to have baby tylenol on hand at the house. I am not one to take medicine so it kind of slipped my mind. I had to realize that they baby may need it so I need to get some just in case! He had a slight fever after he got his shots so we gave him Tylenol before bed that night.

Yesterday he did not have a good day. He was as Sydney would say a "fuffy baby" (fussy baby). He spit up a ton with every bottle and was having a hard time sleeping. I felt so bad. We spent most of the afternoon at Marissa's house and on the drive home I had to pull over twice because he had spit up. He pretty much screamed the entire ride home. It was the longest car ride home ever! When we got home I decided to give him some Tylenol again. I hadn't given it to him that day because he didn't have a fever and didn't seem to be in pain but who am I to say how he was feeling. I need to work on this whole giving him medicine just in case business! I also gave him his gas drops and hour before he needed to be fed so his stomach would be nice and coated and then he got another dose right before his bottle. Eric fed him at 10pm and he did a much better job not spitting up. I really thought he was going to be up all night spitting up so I was prepared for a long night. I would hear him fuss now and then so I would jump up and check on him and he'd still be dead asleep. He didn't wake up until 5:30am! We both got a full night's sleep! So now it's 6:30am and I'm wide awake and he went back to sleep after his bottle. Who knows how often this will happen so I am just going to enjoy it!

Here are some pictures of him in his new sleeping arrangements!

Mother's Day and the novelty of sleep

My mother's day was of course nothing like I anticipated. I was looking forward to a good night's sleep, breakfast in bed, etc etc. Unfortunately it happened to be the first night where the baby was up most of the night. I found myself giving the baby a bath at 4:30am just because there was nothing else to do with a wide awake baby. Eric was supposed to take care of him all night but he does not wake up well so a part of me feels like it's safer for me to do it even though I really need sleep. We didn't have anything to make breakfast with that morning so Eric and the baby went off to the store to get breakfast stuff and so we had breakfast at noon. Eric tried but I was so miserably tired I was pretty hard on him about his efforts. So this is the baby on mother's day crying as a symbol of how I felt on mother's day (or maybe how he felt about me, yikes!):

This week has been so exhausting. Mid-week I thought I would lose my mind if I didn't get some sleep. Eric woke up with the baby one night this week but first I had to wake up Eric so I didn't get a complete night of sleep but I felt a lot better in the morning. We are having a problem with the fact that the baby will sleep ANYWHERE but his crib. I don't know why. I even laid on his mattress and it is something I could get a good night's rest on. This is what I woke up to one morning:

He loves our bed! Eric brings him into our bed almost every morning and he sleeps very well in our bed, go figure. My sister used to have her son sleep in his car seat and he would do a lot better sleeping through the night. I was very hesitate to try it because I just was so set on him sleeping in his crib. He does sleep better in his car seat, about 5 hours or so, however I wasn't convinced that he'd sleep much longer than that. However, 5 hours of sleep sounded much nicer than the 2 that he got in his crib. So I finally caved. I wasn't feeling very confident that it would work since most of the car ride to and from my parent's house yesterday he was wide awake in his carseat. We fed him around 7:30 that night and when he fell asleep I put him in his car seat. However, he did not sleep for more than 10 minutes in it. I brought him downstairs and put him in his swing and he fell asleep. Around 9:15pm I carried sleepy baby Eric upstairs and put him in his car seat and went to bed. Eric kept waking me up at night worried that the baby hadn't woken up yet. I was sleeping just fine content with the fact that he was still sleeping. He slept until 3:15am!! What a relief! I fed him and was a little worried that he'd be up for the rest of the night but he fell back asleep until about 7:30am. This was the best night of sleep I have had in a long time. We'll see what tonight brings...

On another note, starting Wednesday night, he started cooing and laughing and smiling a whole lot. It is very cute!

lucky pajamas

I put the same pajamas on Eric that I did when he slept for 5 1/2 hours straight the other day. Last night he slept from 7:30pm to 12:30am (5 hours). Then he was up at 3:30am and then 7:30am. So he did go 5 hours between bottles at one point! I'm just so happy he slept after a miserable day yesterday.

Today I was able to take some better two month old pictures. His hair is all a mess in these. He gets the curlies in this weather!

I think I surprised him when I took this one:

I also didn't mention that my sister found out on Thursday that she is having a boy. It didn't really come as a surprise since boys are so common in my family so that's probably why I didn't mention it, it was kind of a given! But congratulations Karen, Mike, and Dylan!

two months old

Tuesday night was by far the most hopeful night this week. I fed the baby at 2:15am (technically Wednesday morning). He woke up I think at about 3am upset and then went right back to bed... until 7:45!!! He went 5 1/2 hours between bottles. He was fussing around 6:30am but everytime I went in there he was still asleep. So I never went back to sleep after that but the thought that he could sleep that long made me look forward to the next night. Needless to say that was the first and last time that he's slept that long during the night but I feel a whole night of sleep in my near future!
Here he is sleeping in his chair on that very exciting morning!



Thursday we went to meme and pepe's house for a visit. I got the baby all dressed up in his cute bear outfit:


It turned into a nice afternoon so myself, Eric, Eric Charles, Meme, Pepe and Dylan all went for a walk down to Meadow Pond. We stopped at the pond so that Dylan could throw rocks in the water. I took some pictures with my cell phone which apparently takes better pictures than my camera!

Meme and Dylan throwing rocks in the water


The baby's first trip to Meadow Pond


Eric had to go to a meeting so he left and I stayed and had Harry's pizza with my mom and dad. While I was eating I put the baby in the pack and play. He screamed for a little while and then surprisingly fell asleep around 6:30ish. He slept until 10pm that night!

So today Eric Charles is 2 months old. I wanted to take a bunch of pictures of him but unfortunately he did not have a good day. For some reason he was awake ALL day. He was mostly fussy during that entire time so it was hard to get pictures of him not crying. He probably slept for about an hour today.

I happened to get one smiley picture because he was watching his mobile.

He was so tired all day today but just couldn't catch any shut eye. He looks like a zombie in this picture.

Needless to say tonight I put him in the same patriots PJs that he wore the night he slept through the night in hopes that they will bring good luck and lots of sleep tonight. We're hoping that with him being up all day he will sleep better during the night. Here's to wishful thinking...

It Happened...

No, he didn't sleep through the night... he pooped in the tub. What a mess! I was waiting for that day to come and it came today! He was not even phased by it. I however was trying to figure out how to clean him and the poop up without making a total mess. I somehow managed but unfortunately his tubby time was short lived and he didn't get a complete bath.

Last night I started feeding him 5 oz bottles. I did this because lately he seems to be more fussy, not as sleepy, and more importantly, more hungry. He definitely sleeps more on a 5 oz bottle and when he wakes up hungry he's not screaming bloody murder. He just kind of coos in his crib and laughs at his mobile. I know at his age he should be sleeping less and less and he definitely is. I'm not trying to get him to sleep more during the day, just at night! Hopefully I"m not over-feeding him. I got this little chart that says at his age he should be getting 5-6 feedings in 24 hours. He's probably getting closer to 8. I think this chart is for babies who sleep through the night. It also says that he should be having 4-5 ounces and a total of 20-30 ounces a day. Well it is now 11:00am and counting the night time bottles he has had 19 ounces so far. Yikes!