12 weeks

Erin has had a little bit better week. She’s still a little more fussy than usual, but it seems to be the combination of heat and wacko schedule that are getting to her. I also read online about “wonder weeks.” There is a book that outlines more difficult periods in an infants life that are related to jumps in development. Apparently they occur at predictable ages and Erin is smack in the middle of one. I’m not sure that I believe this, but sometimes it’s just nice to read something that explains troubles and reassures you that it’s all temporary. Then again, Mom keeps telling me that I should never get used to the good or the bad because with a baby it’s always changing.

Erin has kept me guessing as far as a schedule goes this week. She seems to have thrown out all predictability and that’s been tough on me. Several weeks ago she’d transitioned to eating every 2 hours and was like clock work. Now she’s sometimes eating every hour and other times goes 4 hours. She used to nap after being awake for about an hour and a half and now it’s after 30 minutes sometimes and 4 hours other times. Naps last from 15 minutes to 2 hours. I think that this is making her upset too and it’s making it hard to leave the house to do much because she’s not as happy and she may be getting ready to nap/eat/throw a fit. I think that a few weeks ago I was much more easy going and variability didn’t bother me much, but I’m just not coping all that well this week. Somehow in my mind having things feel settled at home would make me feel better about dealing with the uncertainty of work. I guess I’ll just have to get over it.

Luckily Erin is still sleeping pretty well. We experimented with sleeping unswaddled early this week and it was a failure. That's ok, but it's getting harder and harder to keep her swaddled all night. She is like the incredible hulk busting out of the little bundle with her huge baby muscles. But I've also found that if I reswaddle her and give her the pacifier back she goes back to sleep at night without needing to be fed. Nice. However we have found ourselves in a little bind over the this whole swaddle/pacifier/sleep thing. She does a great job putting herself to sleep when she's swaddled and has the pacifier. I'm sure that we can address the swaddle issue and keep her tightly bundled all night, no problem. However, the pacifier is bound to fall out when she is deeply sleeping and she can't put it back in because she's too little and she can't suck on her hands because she's in a straight jacket. Hmm... dilemma. I guess it just means that for now she's going to need someone with free hands in the middle of the night to help her out.

Work starts Monday for me and it’s a doozie of a day. I have orientation at HCMC from 8-10, my clinic from 1-5, and an ER shift from 5-1. Yikes. Beyond worrying about my brain functioning, I just don’t know that I have the stamina for this anymore. I’m sure it’ll come back quick… or it better. Luckily Muggy is coming on Monday to help out. With 3 adults in the house, I’m hoping that we will be just fine. Matt starts a really tough rotation on Monday as well with long days and lots of call. I’m hoping that he’ll be able to give me a few tips about how to balance home and work since he’s been doing it for 3 months now.

Despite all of my angst about Erin and her schedule etc, she continues to be a wonderful and happy baby most of the time. She’s discovered herself in the mirror and loves to smile and coo at that other cute baby. She likes silly voices, lots of smooches and when we play “this little piggy.” Matt played the uke for her today for the first time and she loved it. She sat there on his lap smiling and cooing along with the music. She seems to enjoy my singing quite a bit less. We spent several evenings out this week with friends and watching the Tour de France and she could not have done better 2 of the 3 nights out. She was delightful. The bad night was pretty rotten for about an hour. This is by no means awful as far as babies go, but for Erin it was so out of character. She wouldn’t sleep, she wouldn’t nurse, she was just pissed off. Luckily she tamed her inner monster and we all survived.

We’re still working on her neck issues. For a while it seemed better, but now she’s got a neck tilt in addition to the rotation and seems to be looking left less again. She hates her stretches so I try to do them when she’s happy and won’t protest too much. Her head shape is still pretty asymmetric even though we’re trying to keep her off her back as much as possible. Accomplishing this is tougher than I though. We can’t do much about her sleeping, she has to sleep on her back. The first week I tried to reposition her head after she went to sleep, but she always moves it back to her favorite position. So during the day she’s only in her bouncy seat for about 20 minutes while I eat/pump and then she’s in her stroller for our daily walk. Other than that she’s being held, in the baby bjorn or on her tummy. Maybe it doesn’t sound that bad, but it’s really tough, especially since she’s still not a huge fan of tummy time. And I don’t have a good place to put her in the kitchen when I’m cooking/eating/cleaning. Again, I’m sure that this is going to improve and I just need to be patient, but again the angst is coloring my world.

We got notice this week that our diaper service is going out of business. I’d been half expecting this, but I’m still really bummed about it. We’d been so happy with the convenience and I love having Erin in cloth diapers. Now we’re in trying to figure out the next step. We have another 3 weeks of service and then we get to keep our diaper pail and the diapers. I’m excited about getting to keep the diapers because that’ll give us about 70 really nice cloth diapers in addition to the ones that we already have. I think that we’ll give washing our own a go and I expect that once we get in the habit it won’t be that bad. So those of you who have done cloth, you can expect me to be soliciting advice in a few weeks.

The other issue that is keeping me up at nights this week is my clinic. My preceptor will be leaving the clinic at the end of September and I will need to work with someone else. My preceptor will be leaving some pretty big shoes to fill. Hands down, meeting and working with her is the best thing about my residency and she’s been such a positive influence in my life. I have two options for new preceptors. One is at the same clinic and I think that she’s great. She’s a pretty recent graduate of the program and is the assistant program director for the peds program. I think that we would work really well together, that we could do a lot of learning together and that she’d be a very positive mentor for me. The other is a very senior pediatrician at St. Paul Children’s. He’s really nice and very knowledgeable and I know that I could learn a ton from him because he knows just about everything. However, I’m intimidated by him and think that I would probably never develop a really close relationship with him. I’m torn. My gut tells me to stay at the same clinic and work with Emily, but maybe that’s just because I know what I’d be getting into. The critical part of my mind tells me that I’d learn more going to St. Paul. Ugh, I’m torn.

Anyway, updates may be slightly less frequent and informative in the next several weeks as our little family makes this transition. Maybe I’ll just have to con Muggy into taking on that job temporarily. Wish us luck.

Happy girl

Oops... the pictures

Big girl (11 weeks)

We've had many reminders this week about how fast time flies and how much Erin is growing up.

This is my last week at home. On July 28 I start back to work full time. I think that being in clinic a little bit this last month has helped me think about being back full time, but I am really starting to struggle with the reality of going back. Not only are the mental exercise and the stamina of working full days going to be very challenging, but I think that emotionally this is going to really tough. I just can't even imagine being away from Erin for more than a few hours at a time. Ugh. We are so lucky to have family to take care of her when we're at work, but I'm still gonna miss being the one to get to care for her during every day. I had no idea how quickly 3 months could fly by.

Erin has decided that she's a big girl this week. It's now hard to get her to sit on our laps because she always would rather stand. She holds her head up high and marches in place on our laps. It's pretty cute. She's also decided that she doesn't like to be held like a baby and she likes to be held facing the world or up on a shoulder. She only likes to snuggle now when she's feeling tired. When she was really little she thought that her hands needed to be involved in nursing, now she's decided that feet and legs must be necessary. Her feet now rest on the arm of the chair or on the couch when we nurse and she loves to push herself around with them. As you can imagine, this makes nursing a little tough and occasionally painful as she doesn't like to let go before she launches herself.

Erin has had a bit of a tough week. I think that she's uncomfortable in the heat and just not feeling herself, so she's been more fussy than usual. On those days she just seems restless and unhappy with everything and we rarely get smiles. It's hard to see a typically happy girl go through the day so serious. I also think that we are still trying to figure out how much sleep she needs during the day and when her ideal bedtime is. She's still not in much of a nap schedule and some days takes a few great 1-2 hour naps and other days she just cat naps in 15 minute chunks even though she seems to need more. Right now she's usually going to bed between 8:30 and 9:30 and is up at about 7:30. Most nights she's up once, but we're hoping that she's going to show us that she can sleep through the night again soon. Not that we are struggling with her up once at night, but I think that even a little extra sleep will come in handy when I'm back at work.

Erin has a quirk when she sleeps for long periods of time at night. On those nights, she is frequently dry when I change her. I'm not sure which it the cause and which is the result, but they really seem related. For example, last night she was changed at 9:00, ate at 9:10 and was up to eat at 5:00. Her diaper was dry. She ate and was up for the day at 7:30. Her diaper was still dry. The rest of the day her diapers are soaked, so I don't think that she's terribly dehydrated or anything, she's growing well and it's not happening every night. I'm just not sure what the story is. I asked our pediatrician about it, but she had no ideas. Anyone else had this experience?

Erin has discovered a love of ceiling fans. I put her down for a nap earlier this week like I usually do with her awake, but tired. I walked into the room a few minutes later to find her still awake, sucking on her pacifier and mesmerized by the ceiling fan. She fell asleep a few minutes later and it is now a common occurrence for her to fall asleep while watching the fan. She has also enjoyed watching the fan in our room, the one int he kitchen and one at a restaurant this week. Whatever floats your boat.

Matt has been working nights a bunch the last few weeks. Being on opposite schedules has been a bit of a pain, but it has let us go to our favorite restaurant a few times for breakfast lately. The other perk is that the Birchwood shows coverage of the Tour de France starting at 7:30 every day. Since we have no cable TV, Matt and I get our Tour fix (ok, I get mine, Matt reads about it online everyday and tries to get us invited over to watch it at various people's houses).

10 weeks

Thank you for all of the well wishes. Thankfully I'm all better now and no one else seems to have caught what I had. We still don't know what I had, so I'm just happy that I'm better.

We had a pretty busy week. I had two afternoons out of the house for work. On Tuesday, I had to take a 200 question test for residency. We are not formally graded on the test, but the program says that it helps to find areas for improvement. I think that this year we're going to identify many areas for improvement. It is always really discouraging to take a test and discover questions about things that I've never heard of. Oh well.

I also had clinic last Thursday. I have discovered both that my brain is totally out of commission and that I'm now very biased about children. Until I had Erin, I was an equal opportunity child lover, now I am horribly biased and believe that my baby is the best and cutest baby in the whole wide world. This makes work a little awkward, but I'm sure that it'll get better. I've also found that instead of just being pretty slow, I'm now slower than even I thought possible. I'm hoping that this picks up a bit as my brain turns back on.

Erin has stayed with Jan during my time away. She seems to really love this time with Gramma and I hear lots of reports of how well she does in my absence. I could not be happier that she gets this quality time with family and that she thrives when I'm gone. What a good girl.


Erin has recently started to differentiate between people she knows and people she doesn't. She is still mostly content to be held by the non-regulars, but is more reluctant to smile and show her sparkly personality than she is with those of us she sees all the time.

This week Erin has also decided that she likes to stand while we're holding her. Her chunky little thighs wobble under her weight, but she loves to try to hold herself up. She's continued to be a baby on the move and spends considerable time during the day kicking her legs and swinging her arms. I think that she's practicing for the next time Matt tries to get her in the water.

She continues to be fascinated by Duncan. I think that the big googly eyes and the black and white face are especially appealing to her baby senses. She will watch him intently any time that she can see him and in turn Duncan likes to sit near her bouncy seat, at my feet while I hold her, or next to her blanket when she's on the floor. I have a feeling these two are going to be great friends someday soon.

We saw the physical therapist last week for Erin's neck. We confirmed that her head is quite asymmetric with a flat spot on the back right side of her head which pushes that side of her forehead forward a bit. If we don't get it to round out in the next little bit, she would qualify for one of the craniocap helmets when she is 4 months old. We got some stretches and some strategies to address her neck problem that should help a lot and hopefully we can avoid the helmet. No one wants their baby to need a helmet. So far the stretches are helping a ton and she now spontaneously turns to the left pretty regularly and I think that her head shape is improving too. The only downside to the strategies is that we are supposed to change her so that she has to look to the left to see us while we're changing her. I never thought that it would be so hard to change her while she's facing the other direction and it has led to some rather awkward diaper changes and a bit more mess than usual. I guess I'm not an ambi-changer. We head back to the PT in 3 weeks to check out our progress.

We headed to Dekalb, IL last weekend for a wedding reception for a good friend from Grinnell. It was great to see Ted, meet his bride Ani and catch up with one of our old coaches from Grinnell. Erin did remarkably well for the long drive and only had one true meltdown in the car. That being said, she did not seem to enjoy spending quite that much time in her carseat and would give us the saddest look, complete with her bottom lip stuck out, each time we put her back in it. Poor girl. There was this great little house on the grounds where the reception was and Matt though that it was great to feel like a giant next to it. Silly guy.

Things should be a bit more settled this week, but I'm counting down the days until I go back to work full time. We've discovered that Matt's on every 3rd night call for my first week back. It should be just delightful. This is really going to be a shock to the system for our little family.

The trip that keeps on giving? (9 weeks)

No, Matt, Erin and I have not fallen off the face of the earth, we've just had a rough end to the week.

Erin went in for her 2 month check up on Thursday. She's still wonderfully healthy and growing well. She was 12 lbs 7 oz and almost 24 inches long, putting her in about the 75% for both. I went to my baby book and I was only 24 inches and 12 lbs 3oz when I was 3 months old. This just confirms what we keep noticing about her being a big baby. Our pediatrician was a little concerned about Erin's preference for looking to the right. We noticed this when she was less than 2 weeks old, but it's just gotten more pronounced since then. Our doc thinks that she has tightening of one of her neck muscles at this point which now makes it hard for her to look the other way. We've been trying to do stretches and we're going to go to a physical therapist soon because her head is already looking asymmetric. Not so good. Otherwise she got a clean bill of health.

I on the other hand, have not been so healthy. I started feeling really tired at the end of the week, but just chalked it up to a few months of interrupted sleep and an especially sleepless weekend. Unfortunately when it didn't improve with a few naps and I got a fever, I couldn't blame it on Erin any longer. I've now had nightly fevers since Thursday night and low grade temps daily. I have no appetite and my real meal was Friday night. I am so tired that I'm not really able to take care of Erin for large parts of the day and my muscles and joints are killing me when my temp spikes. Not so much fun. The problem is that my symptoms are so non-specific I can't blame it on a cold, stomach bug or UTI that I can either take meds for or know generally the time course of my funk. So I went in today to get tested for lyme. I didn't have a tick bite that I knew about or a rash, but it could fit with how I'm feeling. The doc today said that he'd treat me today if I wasn't breastfeeding, but that we need to be more careful because of Erin. He's totally right, I just am hanging on to hope that we figure out what this is so I can feel better.

Given my inability to do anything productive or even care for Erin these last few days, Matt has relatively effortlessly stepped in and is now doing everything with Erin except breastfeeding and also working. He is amazing. To see him juggle prep for work, work and laundry, yard work, housecleaning and dog exercise while taking care of Erin you would think that he's the one with 2 months practice. He is just amazing. Laura has also been doing most of the Erin care when Matt's at work. It's been uncomfortably hot (even more miserable when I'm running a temp) and we've been packing up and heading over to Jan and Dean's wonderfully air conditioned house. I've been napping while Laura and Erin get some good playtime and cuddle time. Jan and Dean have been at the cabin this weekend, but are coming home tomorrow AM and will help out as well. I could not be luckier to have such a incredible and supportive family and how happy I am that Matt and I are not going this alone. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Enough about me. Erin is handling most of this change in routine very well. She didn't sleep too well the night after her shots, but she's not getting back into the hang of it. She's now up once at night (about 4am) and then sleeping until 7:30. Pretty doable, but I think that I was spoiled by her sleeping totally through the night last week. I'm also struggling with picking her up at night since that's when I feel the weakest and the most achy.

Erin hasn't really gotten any new tricks this week, but she continues to perfect her old ones. She smiles all the time now and loves to play on her toy mat and in her bouncy seat. Whereas before i think that she hit the toys totally by accident, she's starting to have some purpose behind her swings. She is still putting her fist in her mouth whenever she doesn't have her nuk and has found her thumb occasionally. She has trouble keeping anything in her mouth, but she loves to try. She also tries to get anything in the vicinity of her mouth into it, so I think that we're going to have a kid who's really mouthy and I'm envisioning mouthfuls of dog hair already. Yum.