Taking a Deep Breath

We have now gone more than 50 days and our little guy's umbilical cord stump has yet to detach. We still have about 10 days before our next scheduled pediatrician appointment, so I decided to google information about this and learned of a couple of "1 in a million" scenarios that are serious about why Joe's cord could still be attached and got myself all paranoid.

We called our pediatrician and are waiting for a return phone call. I'm sure he'll just tell us to keep waiting. He has never made it seem like this is a big deal at all, so I'm guessing that it's just some strange thing that means nothing.

Unfortunately, as I was writing this post, Joey let out the most ear-piercing, hair-curling, life-altering scream. He has never done this in his entire 7 week life. It turned out to be painful gas. Nevertheless, between scaring myself with google searches and seeing him in pain for the very first time, I couldn't help bursting into tears. It's been a difficult evening, but after about 20 big farts, Joseph has drifted peacefully off to sleep. I'm sure there will be many more difficult evenings throughout the course of mommyhood -- I guess I'm glad I made it through my first.

I don't want to end this post on a 'downer', so here's a sweet new video of Joe. In the past week, he has learned to smile socially (not just because of pooping or something like that). He smiles quite frequently now and it just makes him all the more lovable.

Ready for His Closeup

K finished up the pictures and came up with a small set of great ones! I hope that she'll continue to take photos periodically as Joseph develops. Here's the start of what is sure to be a great collection (sans the one I posted last time)! Thank you, Miss Bo Jackson!!!! ;)

Note: As with all the pictures on my blog, you can click on each one to get the larger original shot.

My Little Turtle

Today was a great day! My OB said that I look completely healed up and I am all clear to officially resume my normal life -- drive, work, exercise, etc. We brought Joe with us to the doctor's office so that the staff could see him again and they all agreed that he is a knockout cutie pie! He slept a lot today, so I figured that since he was all rested up, I would try the froggy experiment again.

I set him on the pillow, started up the camera and soon realized that he had not hopped over the boppy pillow last time, but had instead very slowly crawled over it. It took him about three minutes to accomplish this and I got the whole thing on video. He's only 6 weeks old and he's already trying to (very slowly) wander off!

Note: The audio was kind of messed up, so I just pasted over the audio with Hoobastank's song "Crawling in the Dark". I thought it was appropriate. Enjoy!

Glamour Shots

I'm sorry to report that I don't have any pictures or video of Joey doing his froggy trick-- it must have been a one time event. To make up for this, I have a couple of other fun new pictures instead!



I took the picture above all by myself using the tried-and-true method of holding the camera up in front of our faces. I'm pretty surprised that I got all three of us in, because I'm notoriously bad at cutting people's faces in half when trying to take pictures this way.



One of my friends here in town came over yesterday and took about 100 pictures of Joe including the one above. Photography is her hobby, but not in the "knitting is my hobby" kind of way but in the "Bo Jackson is a pro football player and Major League Baseball is his hobby" kind of way. I think her camera is worth about 5 times more than my car. Anyway, she sent me that one as a teaser for the rest, which will take a couple weeks to develop. I cannot WAIT to see the rest, because I'm sure there will be some great ones!

I've got my 6 week postpartum checkup this Tuesday and hope to get the green light to officially resume all normal activity. I probably won't mention that I actually started working about three weeks ago...

My Little Froggy

Unfortunately, I was not able to capture this event on camera, because our camera battery is currently dead... so my very terrible Microsoft Paint sketches will have to do.

Joe was being a little fussier than normal and in those situations, I often try laying him across my boppy pillow on his tummy to see if that helps. Essentially, he's in a slightly elevated squatting position. Having his legs pushed up into his chest helps him push gas out and being on his belly side also relieves pressure. When I put him down this morning, he looked like this:



I heard his typical "grunt grunt gruuuuunt" and figured he was pushing a present out for me, but then I heard kind of a delighted (and quite loud) squeal. Worried, I looked over and saw this:



He had jumped over the boppy! I'm sad that I missed it, but he seemed so exhausted from doing it in the first place that I decided to wait and try it again tomorrow. I will charge up the camera, so maybe next time I can post a video of the little frog in action.

Mother's Day 2009

My first Mother's Day was fabulous! Nick took the entire night shift so that I could get some rest, I was woken up with breakfast in bed by my boys and I received a ton of gifts including two CDs, framed pictures of Joseph, a new swim top, flowers, dinner from one of my favorite restaurants, and a very sweet card that Joey had scribbled in.

Joseph's gift to me on Mother's Day was learning how to mimic my face when I stick my tongue out at him. It doesn't seem like much, but every new little development (especially when it's social) is incredibly exciting to me.



To celebrate Joey's new achievement, I gave him a kiss on the nose. At that exact moment, my little man reciprocated the affection by spitting up.



What a silly boy! I love Joseph more than I could have ever imagined. Happy Mother's Day 2009!

Our (not so) Little Monster

Joseph Asher has made it through his first month with flying colors! It seems like he's able to do new things every day!

* In the beginning he needed newborn diapers and now he's in size 1.
* In the beginning he couldn't use his swing because he couldn't keep his head up and now he loves the swing.
* In the beginning he ate 2-3 ounces at a feeding and now he eats 5-6 ounces.
* In the beginning he couldn't hold his head up at all and now he holds it up alot.
* In the beginning he needed a tight swaddle and extra blankets and now he regulates his temperature well all by himself.

One milestone that should have happened, but did not was having the umbilical cord fall off. Cord stumps fall off within 8 to 21 days at the latest and yet Joe's is holding on strong -- we're on day 33 now. I like to think that it's just his way of trying to stay connected with me. :)



Doc H cauterized the area with silver nitrate to see if that will help speed the process up a little bit, but as long as it doesn't get infected, the only real difficulty of having the stump stay on is that we haven't been able to give him a proper bath.

The BIG news we got at Joe's one month appointment is that he is (drum roll)...

11 pounds 15 ounces, 23 inches long and has a head circumference of 40cm

That's one ounce shy of 12 pounds! I looked up "11 pounds 15 ounces" on google and got a picture of "the largest rainbow trout caught in years". My Joey is quite the catch. ;)



The doctor (jokingly) referred to him as "a monster". His weight, height and head measurements all fall in the 95th percentile -- which means that he is bigger than 95% of all babies his age in every way! What a hoss!

Doc H said that the two things that are important in baby growth is that:
a) Their weight to height ratio is not vastly different. In other words, if they are in the 60th percentile for weight, but only the 20th percentile for height, than they are heavier than they should be relative to their height. (For the record, there is no 'baby dieting' for the first two years of life -- often once babies are able to walk around and be active, any residual 'baby fat' comes right off.)
b) They need to stay on the same curve. In other words, if they are in the 75th percentile at one month, they should not fall to the 30th percentile at two months.

Of course, after hearing this news, I brought up the feeding issue... "no wonder he's so hungry!" Doc H suggested making a big formula bottle up and just seeing how far he'd go. He ate about 5-6 ounces and then zonked out. Three hours later, we did it again and he ate another 5-6 ounces and then zonked out for four hours. That night he actually slept five hours straight through! It turned out that he didn't need a thicker or heartier formula, he just has a bigger stomach now and wanted to fill it up! Thankfully, Joe Momma and Joe Daddy are finally getting better sleep again!

Now that Joseph is more alert and can hold his head up pretty well, we are able to play with him a little bit more. He loves being around people and voices -- anytime we have visitors, he tries his best to stay awake as long as he can so that he can watch and listen.



Next time on 'Joe Momma': Mother's Day! I'm so excited about suddenly having another holiday where I can get presents. :)

Strollin', Sleep and Superheroes

I took Joseph out on his first stroll around the apartment complex a few days ago. He fell asleep as soon as we exited the elevator, but I still took a few pictures. He'll be more alert soon and I'm sure he'll have a great time seeing the outside world.



We've started putting a tiny amount of rice cereal in Joe's formula for a couple of his bottles during the night to help him stay full a little longer, but then it also seems to take him longer to feed, so I'm not sure if we're all really getting much more sleep or not. The main problem is trying to find a nipple that works with our "special mix". Either it's too slow and he has to struggle to get anything out of the bottle or it's too fast and it ends up dribbling out all over him. He definitely seems to be hungry all the time now (and growing a ton too) so we'll have to see what Doc H suggests at our one month appointment on Tuesday. The good news is that he doesn't have issues with constipation or gas or whatnot -- thank goodness! He's just starving and his parents are just sleepy.

Speaking of sleep, here's a couple of good mom/dad/joe sleep pics:





It appears that Joey is trying to teach me how to hold the phone to my head in that last one. What can I say... I'm tired!

Lastly, here's a fun picture from a couple days ago. Joe Daddy had joked in the early part of the pregnancy that he was going to name our child "Little Batman" whether the baby was a boy or a girl. Over Christmas, I found this little Batman onesie at Baby Gap, so I picked it up just for this photo op.



Coming soon: Joe's One Month Birthday and Cinco De Mayo Pediatrician Appointment!