We were going to dress up Baby Bear for his first Halloween, but our local Target was all out of costumes by the time we went to check them out.  We briefly contemplated buying a doggie costume for him since I heard they fit newborns pretty well...but we ended up not getting anything.  It's okay, it'll be more fun next year when he can walk around himself instead of having us carry him around. 

This week was Baby Bear's 3rd week birthday.  We spent that day at the doctor's office for a quick emergency visit since his umbilical stump was oozing blood   Only part of it had healed, but the bulk of it had not yet healed.  But a piece of it got caught on his shirt and pulled off.  So the doctor wanted us to come in so that they could cauterize the blood vessels to stop the bleeding.  She tried to yank off the remaining portion to do a one time cauterization, but it was stuck on there pretty good.  So now we're just waiting for the rest of it to come off on its own.  We have to actually touch it and apply alcohol to it at every diaper change now....touching that thing is so gross.  Neither one of us can do it without eeeew-ing (we are very mature parents as you can see!).

But we've started to slowly break all the "must not do" rules.  Not on purpose...well, not really.  Things just happen.  For example, we started letting the baby fall asleep on our chests after feedings.  So he's laying on his tummy on our tummies.  It actually started out because he gets the hiccups very often during feedings because he is quite the efficient feeder and gulps down his milk so fast (he goes through almost 4 oz with a slow flow nipple in less than 10 minutes).  Then the hiccups causes him to spit up/throw up.  So we leave him on our chests at a 45 degree angle for 15 minutes after feedings to make sure nothing comes back up.  Except with two tired parents, 15 minutes is a long time to stay awake.  So we fall asleep and the baby falls asleep on us.  Btw, having the baby fall asleep on your chest is the best feeling ever...I usually position him so that his head is just under my chin so I can smell his baby smell.

So we've broken the letting the baby sleep on his stomach and the co-sleeping rule.  This doesn't happen at every feed...we really do try hard to stay awake and get him back in his crib after the 15 minutes are up, but those middle of the night feedings are killer. 

I think so far, that's our biggest offense...we try to stick by the rules as best as we can.  But it's pretty unanimous from all our already-parents-friends that the first two months are the hardest.  Someone told me to just do whatever I have to in order to get through the first two months.  If he wants to sleep on our chests, just let him...if he wants to be held all the time, just do it.  Unlike what our parents' generation was taught, babies aren't spoil-able until they're several months old.  She said worse come to worse, just fix it later, just get through this period.  A few more weeks... I can see the light!!!

Baby Bear's has several faces that he repeatedly makes...they're so funny and we've slowly started to figure out what they mean

Kissy face...also sometimes his "I just pooped, check down there" face.

The crooked mouth face = I'm hungry

His intrigued face

Smug and content face

He actually no longer really looks like any of these photos...his face changes every day.  His acne is still here and now he's starting to lose his baby hair in preparation of his for real hair...so he looks bald now.  tee hee.

Who thought you could make an embarrassing nickname out of Tyler.  We tested it before to see if it was make fun-able and it wasn't.  Until now...thanks to Papa and Mama Bear, who for some reason started calling him Tyleroni (rhymes with pepperoni, or macaroni).  He gets called that most of the day...except when he is cranky, then he is called Mr. Cranky-pants.  These days, he is usually Mr. Cranky-pants...gone are the days of a quiet, sleepy baby.

 We had to get Baby Bear dressed in a hurry last week for his doctor's visit.  Normally, we keep him in a nightgown because it's easy access to his diaper.  I was running around packing his diaper bag and I came back into the room to check on the dressing progress.  I knew something was up when I heard PB giggling to himself.  Since Baby Bear was sleeping and PB didn't want to risk waking up him, he just put pants underneath and the fleece on top.  So now Baby Bear looked like he was wearing a dress! Poor Baby Bear...he looked none too happy!

We tried out the Beco Carrier today...I was skeptical about it working on newborns even though it said it would since Baby Bear still has somewhat of a floppy head.  But it actually worked!  the fabric around the head cradles the head and prevents it from falling to the side!  Baby Bear fell asleep in it almost instantly...and during his cranky time too!  Unfortunately, I couldn't wear it for very long since the waist belt pressed against my incision.

I finally have some pictures of me and Baby Bear since I looked somewhat respectable today (I did my hair this morning since we went out).  I still look like crap.  This is what sleeping 2-3 hours at a time does to you!  Sorry, the lighting is bad...we didn't use flash since baby Bear gets startled by it.

PB put Baby Bear on his chest for tummy time and Baby Bear decided he wanted to go search for some milk.  He was at PB's boobie for some time, rooting around with his mouth open! hahaha!

Baby Bear's love hate relationship with the Boppy...he's happy when he's up...and then when he flops over, he starts crying.  You can see the baby acne...it's better now, but this was when it was at it's worst.  All the parentals told us the feed the baby WATER to treat it.  How when we were younger, water was used to clear out the baby's system and to hold us over until the next feed.  There's a reason why doctor's tell you NOT to give babies water....hello electrolyte imbalances.  So now that they've seen the acne, they're emphasizing it even more...to just give him water.  It's okay...they're just zits.

Content:

Not content:

Feeding has become SO much easier.  I usually prepare multiple bottles ahead of time, so when the time comes and Baby Bear is crying for food, I just grab a bottle, dunk it in warm water and I'm ready to go.  Now he's getting greedier and clamors when the bottle doesn't heat up fast enough *rolls eyes*.  Luckily, he doesn't actually care what temperature the milk is...milk is milk to him.  So sometimes PB just gives it to him cold hahaha.

He's so much more peaceful during feedings now.  And now I can talk to him while he eats and hold his hand.  Before all I would do was plead for him to open his mouth or to stop hitting mommy with his little hands.  So now he holds my finger while he eats.  So cute! 

His feeding routine still takes me the same amount of time if you factor in the changing, burping and pumping...but it's so much more stress free!

I weighed him this morning to make sure he was getting enough, and I think he's 9 pounds now!  I'm not sure how accurate it is since we only have an adult scale.  So I step on it first, then pick him up and step back on it and take the difference as his weight.  Last time, it was just about 2 oz off (heavier on our scale).  So he may be about 8 lbs 14 oz if we factor that in.  I guess he's getting enough to eat even though we're still feeding him the same amount of ounces as we were when he first came out of the hospital.

He also has baby acne now   No more clear baby skin.  He has it on his cheeks on either side of his nose...a whole bunch of white heads.

A few nights ago, I was burping Baby Bear...and usually I just throw him over my shoulder to burp him.  And I felt him clawing at my back.  So I asked him, "Baby Bear, are you scratching my back?  are you scratching my back?"

Then all of a sudden I feel someone else scratch my back.  It was PB, who in his sleep thought I was asking HIM to scratch my back.  puahahaha.

I'm going back to bottlefeeding again.  I would have like to keep breastfeeding, but  Baby Bear never really took to breastfeeding...and it's too the point where every feed is a struggle.  And I know it sounds horrible, but I was started to dread every feed because I knew I would have to fight Baby Bear each time.  And since he could never finish a feed without falling into a deep sleep, it become a guessing game as to how much to supplement him with.  We tried dropping the supplements like the doctor ordered, but his stool count was really low yesterday, so we knew he wasn't getting enough.  We started adding it back, but less volume.

I didn't get to see Baby Bear until 12 hours after he was born due to the fever I spike during labor (they had to monitor him for 12 hours to make sure he wasn't septic)...so I lost out on that crucial few hours after birth window to introduce him to the boobie.  But I tried anyway...then my milk came in late and we had to supplement with a bottle because of the whole weight loss thing. 

So  now has pretty bad nurple confusion because he got the bottle and gets really pissed when my boobie doesn't produce as fast as the bottle (which has faster and more immediate flow).  So then he throws little temper tantrums, where he beats my boobie with his little hands and shakes his head from side to side to avoid the nurple. And then he'll just sit there and scream because he's not getting the nurple (even though he's the one avoiding it).  At first it was kind of funny and PB and I would laugh at his antics...but it got old pretty fast...especially at 3 AM. 

In addition, he's a super super sleepy baby.  I've asked so many people their tricks on how to keep him awake for feeds.  I guess after his little tantrums, he gets tired...he gets on the boobie (finally) for 3 mintues, then passes out cold.  Of all the tricks that people suggested....none worked.  This dude will sleep through anything (like PB).  The nurses at the hospital told us about all the reflex spots to stroke to get him to open his mouth or start suckling....they don't work when he's asleep.  We were stroking all over his face to try to trigger the rooting reflex to get him to open his mouth!   A cold towel to his face/belly/back?  A flinch....but still sound asleep.  Tickling his feet?  His little toes curl up...but not even a flinch. 

My previous regimen was to breastfeed, then bottlefeed the supplement, then pump (because Baby Bear never finished a session at the breast)...so it was such a multistep process...and the breastfeeding part alone usually took about an hour.  That doesn't even include the burping and changing diapers (sometimes multiple times...like when he poops right after I change him...or when he pees on mommy and everything else before she can get the new diaper on!!!). I guess I feel a little bad...but I tried (twice)  and I was getting so stressed out over it.  I know Baby Bear will be SO happy with the decision and he is still getting breastmilk and that's what's most important.  A happy baby = a happy mommy!  I would have to switch over to bottlefeeding in a couple of months anyway when I go back to work.

I'm not fully recovered yet, but I'll blog about it anyway.  (And this is more for me to remember later on...so if you want to read the whole thing, have fun...but it's not exactly an organized entry)

I've never had any sort of surgery or any procedure before so I had no idea what to expect.  I have had a few bad sports related accidents that landed me in the ER, but nothing that required cutting.  People never really complained about how bad the recovery from a c-section was...I only heard about labor.  But the recovery was sooo much worse than labor.

After the surgery, they had me in my L&D room so they could monitor my recovery from the anesthesia.  Towards the end of the operation, the anesthesiologist shot me up with a dose of Duramorph (long acting morphine) to hold me over once the epidural wore off.  Honestly, that Duramorph did nothing.  By the time the Duramorph was supposed to wear off, I felt no more or less pain. 

They got my recovery room ready and they wheeled me up.  It's weird being a patient when you work at a hospital.  Anyway, the first big move was to transfer myself from my original bed into the bed in my recovery room.  That was the first time I felt the aftermath of the surgery (and that was with the epidural and duramorph still there).  I don't even know how to describe it.  It's not exactly a stabbing, sharp pain....but it feels like day 2 after you've done a trillion sit ups.  It hurt so much to do anything related to your abs...which is pretty much everything. 

I had a foley cath in place, so I didn't have worry about going to the bathroom...and I was still hooked up to fluids and my antibiotics.  I was still completely woozy from the blood loss and I remember shaking my head to get rid of it.  I didn't realize this before, but they don't let you eat solids until you've passed gas...since they need to make sure your bowels were operational to avoid an obstruction (so pretty much I hadn't eaten since Monday afternoon...and this was Wednesday afternoon).  I was put on a liquid diet until the end of day 2 before I finally farted...and was rewarded with the most disgusting food EVER.

I was offered either Percocet or ibuprofen...I was like give me the good stuff hahaha.  I spent days 1-3 taking 2 percocets every 4 hours.  I tried for 1 dose to cut it down to just 1 percocet, but that was a bad mistake.  Meanwhile, I had to sleep at almost a 90 degree angle otherwise it felt like my stitches were going to rip open.

The nurses shoved to heavy duty pads under me and would come in to check the bleeding.  They also took my vitals every hour...okay maybe not that often, but it felt like it.  Meanwhile, I was starving and thirsty...they hadn't yet okayed me to drink fluids...just ice chips.  But PB, being a nurse, knew there was a nourishment room somewhere for the patients...found it and snuck me some apple juice and crackers. tee hee.

On day 2, i was told to get up and start walking the halls if I could.  I got up out of bed, which took quite a long time...and took my first step.  OMG...did that hurt.  I could only take like 3 inch strides.  That day, the parents came to visit and see the baby.  They were there almost the entire visiting hour and the last thing I wanted to do was entertain people...I just wanted to sleep.  I wish I would have told them not to come until day 3 or 4. 

That night, my nurse came to tell us that the baby was losing a lot of weight.  My doctor also came to let me know that I had lost about a liter of blood during surgery.  She said she's seen more, but it's not exactly a small amount.  My hemoglobin levels had dropped from a baseline 14.5 down to 10, which is borderline low, but very low for me....which explained the wooziness and overall feeling like crap.  When the nurse came to tell me about the baby, I was alone since PB had left for a couple of hours to take my parents to our apt since they brought stuff that needed to be refrigerated.  I had a mini breakdown in front of the nurse....I was exhausted, in so much pain, had to deal with both sets of parents for hours and to top it off, Baby Bear wasn't doing as well as I would have liked.  The nurse was shocked that our visitors would stay for the entire day...she was like, "do they realize you just had your stomach cut open yesterday?"

At the end of day 2, they took my foley cath out and gave me a deadline of 4 AM the next morning to pee...if I didn't, they would have to re-cath me.  They didn't wake me up until 5 AM to pee...but it's the weirdest feeling.  You feel like you have to go...you sit down...and nothing comes out.  I had to really focus on the feeling of having to go...and after several minutes, I peed.  I was expecting a lot of pain, since that's what people have told me, so I lathered on the dibucaine cream before...but it actually didn't hurt at all, I guess since I didn't deliver vaginally.

Days 3-4 were blur...it was just me, PB and baby bear.  I started feeling better on day 3.  They took out my IV's and I was able to walk around on my own.  I also took my first SHOWER (that's right...I showered...and left my hair wet.  And I've showered every day since then) and saw my incision for the first time.  I was honestly shocked at how long it was...I always thought it was a small 4 inch cut.

I started to get the beginning of some milk on day 3...but not enough to sustain Baby Bear and he had to be supplement fed through the night in order to make discharge weight the next day.  We normally had baby Bear in our room with us at night, but they took him to the nursery for the night to feed him.  I felt so sad that he was gone...I had mini breakdown number 2.  HORMONES!!!  PB spent the night with me squished into my twin sized hospital bed.  The doctors came in the next morning to round and saw us smushed in that bed and were kind of like uh.... hahahaha.

They were just about to discharge us, until Baby Bear's bili's came back borderline high.  They made us stay for another blood draw a few hours later.  It had gone down slightly, so they let us go home....except they wanted us to come back the next day for a follow up draw (it was either that or stay another night...which in hindsight may not have been a bad idea).

The damage from the surgery continued to really bother me for about a week.  At the week mark, I felt like I move around much better.  By a week an a half, I stopped taking any kind of pain meds at all and now (at 2 weeks) I can sit up by myself from a laying down position.  It's still sore and itchy as heck...but I feel much more normal.  I was given iron pills to take and I ate beef despite whatever "poisons" it may contain...and by the next morning after discharge, my lips and gums had some color back in it (they were literally almost white before).

My steri-strips were supposed to have fallen off by 10 days...they told me I could peel them off at the 2 week mark if they hadn't fallen off by themselves. I tried to peel one off and I stopped after I went about 1 mm.  What did they do, super glue that stuff on?!!!!  I'll just leave it on for now hahaha

Happy 2 weeks to Baby Bear!  I can't believe it's already been 2 weeks!  He's still sooo cute!  We don't co-sleep, but I can see why people would do it.  It's sooo cute to have your baby to cuddle with in bed.  We are just too paranoid about the rolling over the baby in our sleep since we both move around a lot in our sleep.  Some mornings when PB and I are home together, we'll put the baby in between us (while we're awake) and just look at him.

Today, we went to our follow up visit to see how the re-start of breastfeeding is going.  Well, Baby Bear apparently now weights 8 lbs, 7 oz.  Where as other babies are now just starting to catch up to their birth weight (after that initial loss the first few days), Baby Bear is almost a pound above birth weight.  I can't believe some babies start out at this weight.  I feel like he's so heavy now.  I should have done some upper arm workouts pre-pregnancy.

At the last visit, the doctor had me breastfeed 10 minutes each side and add 1 oz supplement because my supply was low.  Now, the doctor said I no longer need to supplement...otherwise the baby will become overweight. hahaha.  We'll see how Baby Bear adjusts to that...I'm sure he's going to be super cranky for a few days.  The doctor also wants us to lessen his feeds to 6 times a day instead of the 8ish he's getting now.  Yeah...I'm sure Baby Bear will love that too.

We asked the doctor for her advice regarding the baby's evening fussiness since he's practically inconsolable during those hours.  He won't eat and the pacifier and holding him doesn't work.  She suggested the swing, plus some makeshift additions.  We've  tried our Sweet Peace before and he just screamed his head off.  But today, we tried again...we swaddled him up really good and put rolled up blankets on either side of him (per MD's orders!) and put in his pacifier.  He screamed for a few minutes...but then fell asleep!!!!  He's been out for an hour and a half now!  I am beyond estatic right now!  I think we were using too low of a swing setting...the higher ones always seemed so violent.  Now I don't know when to take him out...is there a too long?  I've heard of people leaving their babies to sleep in car seats since they prefer that.

I also noticed that Baby Bear loves to keep his tongue plastered to the roof of his mouth.  It makes  feeding difficult for him since it messes with his latch a little...and it kills my nurples.  So now we have to do pacifier therapy to help train him to keep his tongue down.  He's what they call a "clicker"...so when he feeds, he makes a clicking noise, which is the tongue breaking suction with the roof of him mouth.  And he likes to make clicking noises himself for fun, which I noticed when we were in the hospital, but never thought anything of it.

So that's it...the doctor said Baby Bear is looking so good, that he won't be needed to be seen again until his 2 month shots.  Btw, our doctor is a mom to 6 kids....we take any advice she has to heart!

Sorry...we have decided to close our doors to visitors until Baby Bear is at least 1 month old, if not older (even to family).  Yesterday, we had visitors non-stop from noon until almost 8 PM.  They came in three groups, for a total of of 9 people. Two groups were planned from a while ago, one group let us know the night before...but since they were close family, we felt bad saying no.  

We did try to shield the baby from the visitors as best as possible.  I camped out in our room with the baby for most of the time.  But it was so loud in the other room and the noise came in through the walls and the baby had a hard time sleeping.  We kept trying to shush everyone, which worked for all of 5 seconds before the conversation built up to a roar again.  Then people kept wanting to come into the room to see the baby while he was sleeping.  We made everyone be silent and they came in....then they started to touch him.  I was like OMG...just leave him alone.  So then we quickly shuttled everyone out.  I think they were offended, but we didn't care.

Last night, after everyone left, it was our worst night ever.  6 PM until 9 or 10 PM is Baby Bear's fussy time, where we can never figure out why he is cranky.  So after the last group left, he started crying uncontrollably for hours unless he was being held.  We changed him, tried to feed him (he was so worked up, he wouldn't even eat), anything.  He was so tired from being up all day that he coudln't even make himself sleep.  Finally, PB and I took turns holding him in hour long shifts until he finally fell asleep.  But then he was up more frequently at night to make up for his missed feedings.  Poor PB and I were pooped too because normally we try to nap during the day too, and we couldn't because we had to host everyone.

So after yesterday, we decided until we've established a more concrete routine for the baby, we would prefer not to have anyone over since it messes up his entire day.  But we do appreciate the good intentions.

The first thing we noticed about Baby Bear is that he sleeps EXACTLY like PB.  With one (or both) arms above his head, like so...hahahaha

At this age, there's not much we can do in terms of toys...but Baby Bear LOVES to stare at himself in the mirror.  Sometimes he'll swat at his reflection...although it could just be random arm movements, but whatever, it's still cute!