We are terrible bloggers!

Megan here! Alright, I will admit that we are not particularly diligent bloggers. It's always forgotten with the huge list of other things to get done! Having a baby in need of eating, changing, bathing, or entertaining takes up a surprisingly large amount of time! We will try to post at least a few times a month - I swear!

Watching Silas grow and change is amazing. Every week he's doing something new that just blows our minds. He's grasping for things now and having little sporadic bursts of laughter. His favorite things to do right now are to stick his tongue out and to hang out on his changing table kicking his legs around completely naked. I sometimes get a very loud protest when I have to dress him again!

Early intervention came last week with our developmental specialist and the director of the program. The director, who was super nice, couldn't say enough good things about Silas! She was really impressed with his movements and social interactions with us. We were very happy to hear that from someone official! Early intervention will be visiting with Silas every 1-2 weeks for the next 6 months to a year. We are happy to have specialists to give us suggestions of how to help Silas meet necessary milestones. I'm having fun doing right and left brain connecting movements with him during diaper changes! I even make up little songs about it (shocking, I know).

We are working hard to keep him on a nighttime routine to try and encourage longer stretches of sleep. He gets a bath (some nights), baby massage, PJs, and a bottle or nursing, then bed by 7:30. It's working out pretty well so far! He usually fusses on and off for an hour or so, but last night he slept from 8PM to 1:15AM straight! That may sound like not long, but it was heaven for us! He then just eats and goes right back to sleep, so it's not too bad. He then usually wakes up 3-4 hours later, and gets up for good around 7AM. It's keep us functional, but I can't wait for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep! When he gets bigger and can eat more it will happen.

Grandpa Warren visited Friday to Saturday and my mom is coming tomorrow until Tuesday. Silas likes to take snuggly naps on all of these visitors!

Silas has a quick doctor's appointment on Tuesday to get his synagis shot (antibodies for the super-scary RSV) and early intervention is coming on Friday. Otherwise, just lots of songs, smiles, playing, and love!

I'm sharing a couple great pics from bath and bedtime tonight!

February

I realize that we've been delinquent about blogging for the past few weeks, so this will probably be a long catch-up post. I can't believe it's February, which means that Silas has been home for more than a month! Our household entered the new month with a bang, as poor Megan was completely down for the count with some awful bug on Saturday. That meant that Silas and I hung out on the couch for most of the day, watching all of the shows on Tivo that I've missed. Well, I watched and he slept on me under the new blanket made by my cousin Chessie (thanks again!!).

Sleeping- our favorite topic of late. I think Megan and I have both become acclimated to sleeping only 3 hours at a time, which is slightly disturbing. Silas did not nap AT ALL yesterday, but did mostly 3 hour stretches in the night. There just seems to be no real pattern to what he's doing, but then we haven't imposed a schedule on him yet either. We've read and heard different things- some friends resisted sleep training for a long time but then finally were happy they did it, some started their newborn on a sleep plan immediately, some parenting sites say to wait until the baby is 6 weeks old (with adjusted age Silas is not quite there yet) etc. etc. We haven't decided what to do yet, but I think some consistency would be nice!

Early Intervention came last week to set out a plan for the next 6 months. One of the main goals is to help us understand where Silas is in terms of development, and what we should expect. We can't really go by the "typical" baby timeline because yes, he's been out of the womb for 4 months now, but only reached a full term 5 weeks ago. We're pretty impressed with him so far, haha, but it will be nice to have some sort of benchmarks for him, and to know what things we can do to help him.

Silas has had some important milestones in the last few weeks- being home for a month, being 4 months old, smiling at his mommies for the first time (we cried), and having a giant diaper blow out while sitting on my lap! (Nonnie was visiting at the time and thought that was hilarrrrrrrrious.) Megan got him to mimic her sticking out her tongue, which he now does all the time. He seems to be "talking" much more now- in between crying and his noises that alternately sound like a baby goat, a goose, a cat and a dinosaur, he's making many more babbling noises. The soundtrack in our house is pretty funny on a daily basis.

Cooper is still obsessed with the baby, and barks at us if he's crying. On Friday night we put Silas to bed upstairs, and came downstairs, leaving the dog on our bed. (It's his favorite place; he's so lazy.) We could hear the baby start to cry through the monitor, but before we could even make a move to go to him, Cooper came flying down the stairs to find us and tell us something was wrong with his baby! It's ridiculous. At least he doesn't want to eat Silas, and as you can see, lets himself be used as a baby pillow.

We have some various appointments coming up- more ophthalmologists, an otolaryngology specialist and our regular pediatrician visit. The otolaryngology appointment is in response to a letter we received from Children's Hospital shortly after Silas had his PDA ligation surgery. Apparently, there is a high incidence of vocal fold nerve injury following that procedure, so researchers at Children's are reaching out to the parents of patients who have gone through that surgery so the kids can get screened for any problems. I figured we might as well check out everything, so we made the appointment. Speaking of research, we received the video from the women who were performing the brain study in the NICU. For those of you who don't know, we let Silas be used for science, muahahahahah! :) Really though, it was a totally non-invasive procedure that will help researchers understand the blood flow in the brains of preemies, and might help some other kids in the future. The researchers decided to use Silas as their spokesbaby, because he's awesome, obviously, and their work has been accepted to an academic video journal. He's only in the video for about 15 seconds, but it's pretty neat. We'll share the link when it goes live! It is strange to see him so small in the video, since he's now our giant 11lb baby.

Megan's musings from maternity leave

Hello blog followers! I figured that it was time for me to finally write a post. I've been solely residing in the sweatpant-wearing, unshowered, sleep-deprived world of stay at home moms. It's been an adventure! Silas is generally a very sweet and happy baby, up until his little devil comes out around 5pm. Even the sweetest of babies want to be held, fed, changed, and burped on repeat, all day long. So that is pretty much my life and I weirdly love it. The thought of having to leave him and return to work in a few months makes me very sad. I swear, if our student loans were gone and my salary wasn't as essential, it wouldn't take much convincing for me to be a full-time mama. That being said, I would also need a maid, because I get very little done during the day other than take care of our guy.

As most people who know me can attest, I'm a bit of a crazy researcher. I spent hours researching every single baby item on our registry, because I wanted the perfect stuff for Silas. Now that I'm actually home with Silas, I'm realizing how individual every single baby is. Silas doesn't care what the *best* reviewed thing at Magic Beans is. He just likes what he likes and you better let him have it. I spent a nice chunk of change on the *best* bottles before he was born and they just haven't worked yet. In fact, I've been trying pretty much every bottle on the market for over the past month or two. (Someone needs to invent a bottle-trying service.) After lots of trial and error, we finally found bottles that don't turn Silas into a fussy, gassy monster. They were the bottles I said I would never buy because they have too many parts and we don't have a dishwasher - Dr. Browns. He seems more comfortable, so that's all that matters.

I've quickly learned that having a baby is mostly trial and error. Your baby is an individual and what works for him might not work for everyone. That being said, since I have so many friends expecting babies, I figured I'd share a few things we are loving in Silas' first month at home!

#1: Cloth diapers. Absolutely the best decision we made. Easy, good for the environment and Silas, and just so cute! We are also using cloth wipes, which are great as well and clean up nicely! Cloth diapering is very affordable over the long-term as well. Of course, I bought the best reviewed kinds and didn't really hold to any budget, but we will still save lots of money over the whole course of diapering our kids. If you are considering this, feel free to ask me about it. It's quickly become my favorite topic.

#2: Fisher Price Rock & Play Sleeper. sort of a last minute purchase before Silas came home because his bouncy seat couldn't be used until 8lbs. OMG...I couldn't live without it. It cost under $40 and keeps Silas snug and up at an angle so he won't throw up a recent meal. Folds up and can hide away too,

#3: Nosefrida. It is sort of disgusting, but so worth any potential gross outs. Basically, it is a long tube, with a filter, and you put into the baby's nostril and suck out any mucus. No fiddling around with bulb syringes. Babies have more snot than I anticipated.

#4: Miracle Blanket. My child is like the hulk and can bust out of a swaddler in about a minute and a half. When he busts out, he then wakes himself up in the night by flailing his arms around. The miracle blanket is pretty much a baby straight-jacket. It's the only thing that has worked for baby Houdini!

#5: Boppy. A fairly standard registry item if you're nursing. I also put him on his tummy on it when he is gassy to make him more comfortable and try to get something out. We have an extra cover too, because they get dirty very quick!

Thanks for reading. Silas is now awake and hungry yet again!

Fun with hernias

We brought Silas to Children's Hospital yesterday for a follow up appointment about his possible ingiunal (groin) hernias. There was a major difference in opinion in the NICU about whether the hernias were actually there- our esteemed nurses thought it was just fluid, but a couple of doctors thought they felt the intestines poking through. Hernias in that area would mean surgery, so we were anxious to hear the final determination.

As someone who spends half her day thinking and writing about Boston Children's Hospital (they're one of my clients), I'd never really been there. (I don't count the strange, hallucinatory hours we spent there waiting for Silas' PDA ligation surgery to be finished- we might as well have been sitting on the moon, we were that terrified.) Imagine Disney World combined with the international terminal of a giant airport, and you have a pretty good picture of what the lobby of the hospital looks like!

The great news is that the surgeon could find no ingiunal hernias, yay! Silas still has the umbilical one, but that's very common and will most likely go away on its own in his first year. Little man did very well with this umpteenth time that doctors have poked and prodded him, and he even managed to barf all over my work clothes (again!) much to the amusement of Megan! I swear I saw a little smirk on his tiny face afterwards.

Silas is 9lbs as of yesterday, and eating like crazy this week. We're having more "fun" sleep challenges- Tuesday he slept 6 hours in a row which was a minor miracle, but last night was barely 2 and a half. Thankful for this long weekend so we can all try and get more rest!

First walk

Hello friends, family and Silas' fan club! Many of you expressed that you missed our Caringbridge updates about the little guy, so we decided to start a blog so we can keep everyone informed about his progress. Thanks for following us on this crazy journey, we really appreciate it!

Silas had what turned out to be his last weigh-in with the visiting nurse today, and he's now 8lbs 11oz! He has been growing so well that the nurse discharged him from the program, since her main objective was to make sure he continued to grow and gain weight once he left the NICU. Mission accomplished so far! Silas also had an eye exam late last week, and things are progressing slowly, but in the right direction. Megan had quite an adventure taking little dude to Children's Hospital in the midst of Boston's flu epidemic- she kept him in his car seat with the shade up the entire time they were in the waiting room to ward off the germs! We're being kind of psycho about germs in the house; I change out of my work clothes and do some vigorous hand washing before I even hold the baby when I get home very night. Who knows what germs are lurking on that gross commuter rail! So far we're all healthy; fingers crossed that continues.

Megan took Silas and Cooper on the first walk around the neighborhood today, to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather. Silas really likes to be up high in his stroller to look around, and the movement eventually puts him to sleep. Poor neglected Coopy also enjoyed getting some time outside!

We're trying to get Silas into a better routine during the day, to hopefully minimize his evening fussiness. He's been sleeping fairly well, or as much as we can expect at this point, about 3 hours at a time. There are definitely times (like, oh, right now) where we go through the entire upset baby checklist- is he hungry? wet? tired? and can't come up with the what the problem is, except maybe gassiness. No fun to have a cranky baby, and we also get nasty looks from the dog who gets upset when Silas cries!

We'll be trying to go to bed early to start the week off right- good night!