Sleeping

Papa Nat , Honey and Hoss

(Edit: Apparently, everyone knew how to spell Hoss but me. I suppose it was the German in me that made it Hauss, which is almost house but with an extra s. There, it's fixed!)

We just had our 1 month birthday and doctor's visit where our little man received one of his shots. It used to be at 2 months, but they bumped one of them up to 1 month. He also was weighed, and our little man, well, now we're calling him Hoss as he weighed in at 10 lbs 2 oz! Clip off of the old block! The doctor was quite pleased. I'm frightened that we are already half way through our infant seat!

Although Ginger certainly threw down the gauntlet, we are happy to say that all of our visitors are doing a great job helping out! (I had to say this so my dad would stop nagging me. Can't wait until he reads this...)

Here's Papa with Hoss


Honey and Richie...oh, I mean Hoss


ML check to see if he's hungry


I found these little events too cute





Hoss being bathed in the Gozansky-family tub. Apparently, cleaning generation after generation of Gozansky...



Nap time with Mommy!


Tia Chi

Nana's visit!

I realized that I failed to take any pictures of Aunt Giniger with Richie (other than her hands massaging his head the movie below) and I felt so bad that it helped me remember to document Nana's trip!


I woke to this image the other day.


Completely staged, but still cute! Richie sure does sleep a lot when I've got the camera in my hands. Actually, he's starting to stay awake while not requiring feeding, changing or burping! But, this was not one of those moments.

New Pictures and More...

At the request of my older sister, here are some more pictures....and a couple of videos!

He does not look terribly happy here. He did JUST eat. Maybe he wasn't finished?


Getting ready to BURP. He burps like a sailor! I'm hoping to record it one of these days.



Hanging on!


Crunckled in his swing.



Contemplating life...or, really, just contemplating eating again.


The first video is Richie eating while being massaged. The second is the lurid sounds of Richie eating.

Two weeks in review

Some of you know, others may have figured out, that ML and I spent the first week alone with our little-man with no outside help. Ha, well, not exactly. We did have my close friend Kiki come and help out one morning so I could run to the store to get some supplies.

When people found out that we were flying the first week "solo," there was a polarized response. Half thought we were absolutely nuts and the other half thought it was the best idea they had ever heard.

Now, we have experienced a week of having ML's sister here to help us out and I am happy to say that both situations are wonderful! It was great to have a ton of time with Richie and know that I actually could not DO anything else other than sleep when he sleeps and feed and change him. Being there as he experienced his new world was/is priceless. Wondering what he dreams about. And wondering, when he's having what looks to be a bad dream, what on Earth it could be about other than traversing the birth canal.

By the same token, having Ginger here to help has also been fantastic! She has been such a trooper and has given ML and I some real opportunities to sleep. She has been so helpful around the house, too, it has been a real treat. Of course, this also means she has set the bar really high for all of the family that will be following her. :-)

I am happy to say, that ML and I are still happy with the dicision to have the first week to ourselves. Even with it as exhausting as it was. We were really able to get into our own rhythm of things as new parents which I think will help us incorperate new ideas and suggestions.

I am also happy to say, that we are VERY happy to have family and friends come and help us out! Maybe the week alone helps us appreciate the extra assistance just that much more!

He's Back!

As any good father would do, I was dutifully changing my new son's pee-pee diaper when ML walks up to me and yelps SH!T! He's back! I look puzzled at her as she explains that the little brown mouse just ran behind me and into the bathroom! We've had traps set up for weeks with no luck so far thus we figured the little furry guy had left. Well, maybe he did, but he's back. We reoriented all of the traps since we now know where he is hiding out. Maybe tomorrow we'll have a new furry friend for Richie!

Two weeks.

On his second week birthday, our little man weighs in at 7 lbs and 15 oz! What a little eating champion! And he's doing just fine in all other aspects, too. The pediatrician was very happy and we are, too.

New Pics

We have these old tops that were probably from my sister and me when we were babies. It looks like a baby straight jacket! Check out that BIG ol' tummy. First, there's a button on the inside:


Then there are two on the outside:




A recent bundling:


I Love this child! He can already hold the bottle himself and he's not even two weeks old!


First bath


Our baby has been swallowed by a frog! YIKES!

Poor thing!

Looks like my brand new baby has his first cold...poor thing! That might help explain the 5 hrs of sleep he gave us last night....poor baby! Doesn't seem too serious: not febrile, still making wets, just a little off of his feed, ]a little fussier than normal when awake and a little sleepier than normal. (As if he has a normal already!)

Stray and new photos

You can tell things are starting to get a little better. I have time to put up some more pictures!

This was taken the morning of our last day in the hospital. ML is in a standard hospital bed.

I have no idea what you call what I get for a bed. Fortunately, you're sleepy enough by the time you get a chance to sleep you don't care where you do it. But, you would think they'd put a little more effort to help Daddy feel a little more comfortable. After all, we're responsible for getting everyone home safely.


We have taken to the double baby burrito. Or, maybe it's a challupa. We do an inner swaddle (baby burrito) and wrap that in the tortilla. He still demands to have his hand outside!

Such a coy camera-shy look!


The second or third time Richie has smiled!

Such a BIG yawn!

One Week Old

It's time to explain why we were so busy up until Richie's one-week-birthday: Richie was born at 7 lbs and 0.9 oz, as some of you might remember. We decided to have the circumcision performed at the hospital and they wanted to do it on the day of discharge. We were originally told it would happen in the afternoon, but at 8a they called to see if we had been withholding feeding for an hour so he could have the procedure. No, we said, as he was feed at the time they called. No one had told us about the change of plans. They decided to do the procedure at 9a instead, which was fine. However, they did not come get Richie until 11a and they did not bring him back until 1:30p. What was worse, is the nerve block they use did not work, so he did a considerable amount of crying. By the time he came back, he was very dehydrated and drowsy from the Tylenol. Once he woke around 3p, he breastfed for over an hour. ML had done some pumping and we knew she did not have much production, but the nurse was convinced that he was getting what he needed and as long as he was feeding. We had already discussed with the pediatrician that he might need to be supplemented with either pedialyte or formula. Since they were convinced that he was getting nutrition from breastfeeding, we diced to try the pedialyte. By the time is was 5:30p, he was still breastfeeding, and, once the nurse was gone, we decided to remove him from the breast so we could get home and rehydrate him. Knowing full well that if we did not succeed we'd be turning right back around.

On the drive home, I was thinking about how we were going to do this. They had told us about how to feed him from a medicine cup where he laps it up with his tongue, but I did not think that was going to work. I remembered that I had a little butterfly syringe from my intern year with a little hose between the needle and the syringe. So, I decided to cut the needle off of the hose and put the hose next to ML's nipple and syringe in the supplement. It worked GREAT! Occasionally, we could get the seal just right so that Richie would be drawing in from the syringe under his own suction power. This seemed to go pretty well and we got a few wet diapers.

Fortunately for us, it snowed Sunday and Monday so it was really easy to get a pediatrics appointment. By the time we got to our first visit, little Richie had lost about 10% of his body weight and was down to 6 lbs 7 oz. :( That is supposed to happen in 7 days, not 3.5 days. So, the pediatrician told us that we had to start supplementing Richie with formula and that he did not care how we got it into him, but we had to feed him every two hours. And that's from the start of feeding to the next start of feeding. We decided that we were going to have to use the bottle and off we went. Every two hours from Monday at noon until Thursday at 8:30a, when our weight-check appointment was. We tweaked the timing down so that it would take us one hour and 4 minutes to: change diaper, get formula read, feed, put back to bed, pump. Every two hours, the same thing. Imagine, being sleep deprived for 5 days and then sleeping in single hour (or less) increments for the next three days. It was exhausting.

On our Thursday appointment, we had brought back up to 6 lbs 14 oz! The pediatrician was very relieved and told us we could go to on-demand feeding. Oh, which is about every 2 hours! No, really, Richie has given us several 3 and 4 hour stretches of sleep. I was going to go enjoy one now, but I can hear him starting up...where's the bottle?

Oops!

Hi Folks! I just discovered that you folks are actually reading the web site as many of you (MANY) have clicked on my name above to send an e-mail. Unfortunately, that went to an old account that I only check once in a while, sorry! I've only made it through half of the e-mails and I wanted to fix the link before more start going there. If you happened to add that address into your e-mail address book, please remove it. I'll update the link here shortly!
As a short report: Richie is doing better and we are doing worse in the sleep department. :-)

Silence

Sorry for the silence. We went to the pediatrician yesterday and found out that Richie has lost too much weight and was dehydrated and we had to get serious about his supplements every two hours until he gets back on track. I think my older sister can relate to this one. Anyway, thank you for all of the phone calls, but I just don't have time to call back. We've tightened up our routine considerable, but it takes a solid hour to wake up, do all of the changing and feeding and pumping and get back to bed just to get up in an hour. I'll post more once we're back on track and have some more time between feeds.

So much to tell and no time to tell it...Things are getting better, but it was a rough road the first day home. More to come...