One Month

July 8, 2010

Dearest Baby boy,
You are officially a little over a month old. I can’t believe how quickly the time passes. There were nights that I wondered if I would ever get any sleep and now you are already a month old! Daddy told me that you would be driving before we know it. I hope that the time doesn’t pass that quickly!
You are the sweetest, most perfect little baby boy! You are absolutely adorable. Before you were born, I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t love you as much as I loved LP. I didn’t know how I could give enough love to two little boys. I have figured it out! I couldn’t love you more and we are so happy and blessed to have you in our lives.
You are doing very well in your first month of life. You like to eat and eat almost exclusively mama’s milk. You get one or two pumped bottles per day as we tend to be “on the go” quite a bit and this seems to work out better. You eat about every 3-4 hours in the morning hours and every 2-2.5 in the afternoon/evening hours.
You are sleeping about two 4-5 hour stretches at night and occasionally sleep for 6-7 hours at a time. You typically nurse in the middle of the night and go back to bed quite easily.
You are such a content baby and rarely get upset by anything. You even don’t mind when you have a wet diaper! You enjoy getting bathed, being talked to, car rides, and swinging in your swing. You really only get crabby when you are hungry or have a really dirty diaper. You even started smiling already! Nobody believed mommy, but I saw your first smile when you were a little older than two weeks, on June 22. Since then, you have really started smiling a lot more. You are so cute and sweet when you smile and I love that we can interact at such an early age.
You are growing like a weed already! At your four week visit on June 29, you weighed 11 lbs 3 ozs and were 23 inches long! I think you are definitely going to double your birthweight by 5 months at this pace! You are definitely out of all your newborn clothes and are already wearing some 6 month things! You are in size one diapers, but I am pretty sure we will need to switch to size two soon.
You have had a few visits to the doctor’s office recently for a couple of different issues. First of all, dad and I discovered that you were “tongue-tied.” I was having some difficulty nursing you and we were told that this may be part of the issue. We talked to an ENT about the issue and he suggested you have the tissue clipped. So, we scheduled an appointment for you to have the very minor surgery. I brought you to the appointment and the doctor told me I should wait outside the room and that you would be done with the surgery very quickly. Within a minute or two of leaving the room, I heard you cry for a brief moment and then it was done. It didn’t seem to bother you at all.
This past weekend, daddy, LP and I headed to Lake Leelanau to visit with Grandma and Grandpa Kuipers. We decided to take LP to the parade and it was too hot to take you with. We didn’t have any pumped milk, so grandma fed you some formula while we were gone. When we got back, you started vomiting…a lot. You vomited so much that you started dry heaving. Daddy and I were so sad to see you so sick. I called the doctor and they told me to watch closely for signs of dehydration. After about six hours or so, you finally got your appetite back and having wet diapers again. However, you continued to vomit a decent amount for the next couple of days. You also seemed to have caught LP’s cold as you started coughing a bit and having a stuffed up nose. Through it all, you were really such a good baby and even though you looked miserable, you seemed pretty happy.
The doctor told me to get you in for an appointment with Dr. Berent when we got back home. So, I took you in and Dr. Berent examined you. He said that everything looked okay and sounded clear, but he was a bit suspicious of something called Pyloric Stenosis. This is a condition in which the stomach narrows to a point that you cannot keep anything down and this can lead to severe dehydration. Surgery is almost always needed to cure this. Dr. Berent said he doesn’t think you have this as you are gaining weight so well and are having plenty of wet diapers per day, but he still wanted to order an ultrasound to rule it out. So, you have that appointment in a couple of days and hopefully everything turns out normal. You seem to be better already, so I am hopeful that nothing major is going on with you.
You are such a joy to have around and we love you SO much. Sometimes I wish I could spend a little more one-on-one time with just you. It’s a bit different being the second baby, but I look so forward to the time I get to cuddle with you at night and during LP’s naps. I love you so much and you are such a wonderful addition to our family!

Love you angel,
Mommy