bah

I think Kiernan was just teasing with his crib naps for a few days there. Maybe he was overwhelmed by Christmas and just needed lots of naps to recover - I don't know, but he's not napping well anymore. There is another factor that could be affecting this I guess which is that he now goes to bed at 7pm... but that's because he's SO overtired by then that he's losing his mind so we just figured that 7 was a good bedtime. Thing is, he doesn't sleep for more than 1:45 minutes almost ever and him being up every hour is driving us mad... plus once Eric goes back to work he won't be able to go every other time (or more lately) anymore. It's awfully frustrating.

I think one of the problems might be the swaddling. We simply can't put Kiernan down without swaddling him - his hands immediately fly to his face and grab his soother or just go up there to be irritating or something so if he's almost asleep, or even asleep, he quickly wakes himself up. So we need to swaddle him for him to get any rest , but, he's big now, and strong and he makes quick work of getting himself unswaddled. So that means that a, he is able to do the punch in the face thing again which often wakes him up, but it also means that we find him with his blankets tossed all over the place, including practically over his face on an occasion or two. There are a bunch of products that are tempting that we might buy, but of course they seem a lot harder to find in canada than they would in the states. The miracle blanket seems like it would be good - even though it seems like we're straightjacketing our child. hehe

For now we are going to try double swaddling him a lightweight pillowcase to see if we can keep houdini in. We WILL persevere! :)

At least the bottle thing is still working and doesn't seem to have been a tease. Today we are going to try to give him formula because I find pumping really hurts me... I pumped for 4 days in a row and everything hurts now even when he nurses and I'm not prepared to have that pain all the time. So now we will start seeing if he'll accept formula in these bottles. keep your fingers crossed.

sleepy baby

So... maybe we've turned a corner, maybe it's just a fluke but Kiernan was only up twice last night and then slept in until 8:40 this morning!!
THEN he went down for an hour and a half at 10:15 and he's been down again this afternoon for 30 minutes and no signs of waking. All of this in his crib!! Woohoo! yay! WOOHOO!
Maybe we're winning after all. First the bottle, now this?

I also think my milk supply and paranoia about him not eating enough recently was real because suddenly my milk seems to be back. I don't know what had been going on, but I felt like there was less milk and now I feel like there's more again so I can't be completely wrong. Anyhow, whatever it was, it seems to be ok now so I'm not going to worry about it.

We also measured Kiernan yesterday and he was 25 inches long! that's 4.5 inches in 3.5 months - pretty impressive!

Kiernan's first Christmas

Kiernan had a great first Xmas. He got lots of great stuff, including a car seat which will come in very handy for mom and dad in the not too distant future too :)
We dressed him up as an elf, which will make for great photos for showing to future girlfriends I'm sure.
Here are a few cute moments
:

Do you see what I see??

Kiernan decided he was hungry yesterday, RIGHT after I'd pumped a bunch of milk. When I tried to feed him anyways he just got very angry - I'm assuming the milk wasn't coming very fast anymore. So, I had Eric warm the milk I'd just pumped back up and *I* tried giving it to him. He took it right away!
I don't know if it's just the nipple that's making the difference - the fact that it's the same as the soothers he sucks on half the day - or what, but it's nice.
Now, the new problem is that he's getting rougher and rougher when he's nursing. He bites, he twists and turns, and it really hurts. It seems like the more he drinks from a bottle the rougher he's getting with me, and that's going to be a definite problem!

VICTORY!

So last night we implemented our night feeding plan with the new nipples (4th kind of nipples we purchased fyi) and he took the bottle!!!

We started with only 1.5 oz of breastmilk because it kills me to dump that stuff down the drain because I have a hard time pumping it. But he took it! Unfortunately when we heated up another 2 oz (the rest that I had managed to pump) and had to switch bottles on him he fell asleep and didn't want any more. Oh well - he drank from the bottle. I got slightly concerned about him seeming satisfied with so little and went back to worrying about how he isn't gaining weight, but I'm sure I was just being paranoid.

He was up another 1.5 hours later (I was forgiving short sleeps last night for bottle feeding) and after slight fighting from eric he took the other 2oz in no time flat. He was still hungry after that so I fed him a bit more (which made me feel a bit better about how much he eats... but he didn't eat long so I'm still a bit paranoid ;)

One of the problems with Eric and I taking turns with getting up in the night is we both start assuming the other person is taking care of it and neither one of us is waking up. That being said, if Kiernan REALLY screamed we would wake up right away so I think it's ok if we don't jump up the instant he wakes up... maybe it'll give him a chance to try to fall back to sleep on his own.

So we're going to keep giving him bottles during the whole xmas break. Oh, and the other thing was that I was in the room the entire time he got the second bottle, chatting with Eric, and that didn't seem to make a difference (probably because he was half asleep) which means *I* could probably give him a bottle in the night.

I have to say that this thing with Kiernan not gaining weight has really thrown me for a loop for several reasons. One, now I understand how all those women who worry they don't have enough milk feel. Before I knew I was giving him enough because he was growing by leaps and bounds. Now I get nervous because not only is he not growing by leaps and bounds but I don't feel as full as I used to. Not that I miss accidentally squirting things and people, but where the heck did that milk go?? Is Kiernan really THAT efficient an eater than he's getting 5-7 oz everytime he eats in under 10 minutes? It doesn't help that when I pump I can't get more than 2 ozs out of both breasts when he's not feeding at the same time (which is really hard) or that I only got 2 ozs when I WAS also feeding him as opposed to the 4+ I'd gotten in the past.

Anyhow, in the new year I'm taking him to get weighed again and I'm going to try not to worry too much until then :)

Less hair or more area to cover?

I was noting to eric this evening how Kiernan DEFINITELY has less hair than he used to. Eric agreed although pondered if really there was less hair, or it was just dispersed across Kiernan's now bigger head. hehe

Demon child, I mean Kiernan, has continued to be a handful. Last night he decided to go to bed for the night at 5pm after barely any naps and then after a semi decent night of sleep he was awake and ready for life at 5am. Great! :P

Today, he was ok for part of the day but has progressively gotten worse. I'm glad our nightime sleep routine seems to sort of be working, but if its going to lessen his naps all day and make him impossible to manage then I'm not so sure I'm down with that. Then I always wonder if there is something else wrong I'm not knowing about that is causing this craziness.

Anyhow, Eric is now off of work until January 3 so we're going to work hard at implementing routines while he's home and we're going to have a last ditch effort at bottle feeding. Who knows... maybe it'll work.

More sleep news

So the sleep thing seemed to really work. Kiernan woke up at 1, and again at 3:30 (Eric got up and got him back to bed) and then again at 4:15 when I fed him (15 minutes before his 3 hours, but he was REALLY hungry and he had a full feed) and then he slept again until 7:30!! wow! That's the latest he ever slept in his room.
So you'd think we'd be having a good day because he's so well rested. Instead he is in a FOUL mood today and it took me forever to get him down for his nap. I wondered if he wasn't tired because he'd slept so much but he was really exhibited all his tired signals. So I finally got him down at 10:45 and I have him swaddled in his crib and have the wave music going so hopefully it'll last.
It's really tiring when he's like this.

Middle of the night update

So... so far the new plan for Kiernan and his sleeping is working - sort of.

He went to sleep at 9ish (it was a bit later than usual because we'd been out shopping) despite the fact that he'd been napping in the stroller for about 1.5 hours before coming home. I woke him up and fed him - a full feeding (apparently snacking can be a problem that makes for babies waking up to eat more often in the night). I vowed I would not feed him for at least 3 hours (12:30) and we went to bed around 11. He didn't wake up until 1 - yay!
I went in and fed him another full feeding - no snacking! I concentrated very hard on not falling asleep in the chair and I put him down and he's been down ever since. It's been another 1.5 hours so so far, so good. Problem is, I can't sleep! I'm completely awake from getting up to feed him and the damn ocean waves music does NOT soothe the mommy to sleep, it keeps the mommy awake. I'm sure in time I'll get used to it, especially if it helps keep Kiernan asleep, but for now, after lying in bed for an hour and a half trying to sleep, I'm up blogging and hoping that the rest of the night goes well so that when I finally CAN fall asleep again I'll get some rest and not be zombie like again tomorrow despite Kiernan sleeping well. hehe.

While I'm posting, I realized that I don't really log some of Kiernan's milestones in my blog, it's always little stories, so I'm going to attempt to do that a bit more. In the last week Kiernan has started laughing which is beyond adorable! He's also reaching out and grabbing things. Instead of grabbing something that you hold in front of him, he'll reach over and grab something off the floor next to him, or on the change table. He's also learned to roll onto his side. He can do this from his back to his side and from his stomach to his side so I figure rolling completely over won't be TOO far away. So much for the dining room table as a place to leave him - that won't last long if he's rolling :)

sleeping issues

So, Kiernan no longer has good nights. He did for a long time, and I could say "ya, the days can be tough, but at least we have our nights". But no more! bah! For the past 3 weeks I've been lucky to get 3 hours straight of sleep. And some nights I'm lucky to get more than an hour straight

So the internet research has begun. I'm not comfortable with the crying it out method so we aren't going to do that. We're going to start by trying to have a slightly more elaborate bedtime routine to make sure that he associates bedtime with what's going on. We're also going to have a cd of wave music on repeat for the whole night - the idea being that he associates the sound of the cd with going to sleep so if he wakes up in the night and hears it he might go back to sleep (worth a shot). Also, whenever I get up in the night I just assume he wants to eat unless it's literally been 20 minutes, so, starting tonight I won't feed him more than every 3 hours. Also, dad is going to get up in the night sometimes so that Kiernan doesn't just associate going to sleep with mommy and with nursing.
So ya, that's the plan, we'll see how it goes!

Grow baby, grow

Ok, so maybe I was off with my last post because I had Kiernan weighed today and he's only gained 2 oz in 2 weeks - not good.
The nurse theorized that he may have lost some weight while he was sick so he's been regaining that weight. He's been eating like crazy so I don't understand where it's going, unless most of what he's eating is being lost in drool ;)
She suggested I call my doctor and go and have him weighed again next week to make sure everything is ok. So now I'm super paranoid and unhappy about that and trying to feed him all the time (like a good italian boy should be anyways ;)
Blah!

slow lara, slow

All my life I can remember my mother telling me to slow down when I drink. She had to cut my juice with water, I would drink 2 tall glasses of milk with supper every night and I can gulp back a bottle of water in approximately 3 sips. I still do this, and to this day she tells me to slow down... it's like it pains her to watch me. I think the fact that I like to drink that way is why I've never been a fan of pop (who knows how I ever started liking beer ;)
Anyhow, that's my little preamble to that fact that my son is a super hoover eater... wonder who he gets that from? ;)
He sucks back his "dinner" in about 5 minutes and is done for the next 2-3 hours. Now, part of that is that I have a lot of milk and he needs to drink it as fast as it comes.... but, he didn't use to eat in 5 minutes so I think he's getting more and more efficient. He seems to be going through a growth spurt right now so I have to feed him more often and both sides so now it takes 10-15 minutes. It's crazy. It took me awhile to believe that he was actually still eating enough, but he continues to gain weight so way to go Kiernan, I'm fine with it not taking long :)

Other updates:

- Kiernan made it through our Xmas party without being crazy fussy and he went down by 9:30 and stayed down until all of our guests had left, yay!
- Not only does Kiernan grab things now, he's starting to reach out for things (we're going to have to get rid of the clutter on the change table I'm thinking :)
- He's still being mr screachy pants and yelling a lot.
- I'm petrified of the time when we have to force him to learn to fall asleep on his own, it's going to be awful and I don't know when to try to do it.

Magic mobile

A few weeks ago I visited my friend Karine and then we went and visited her sister and I got to meet her twins. Kiernan was being a bit fussy and they said "put him on the magic carpet" which was essentially a blanket on on their kitchen table under a mobile attached to their chandelier. I figured, what the heck, and put him on it. He was immediately entranced by the mobile and just stared at it for quite awhile. Seemed magical so eric and I went to IKEA and bought the same mobile. We've attached it to the chandelier over our dining room table and it really IS magical. I can lie Kiernan on the dining room table and he'll lie there and watch the mobile for 20 minutes and I can actually get stuff in the kitchen done! Eric puts him there every morning too. And it's the perfect spot to give him his medicine or vitamins. And it was an $8 IKEA mobile!!

In other updates:

- Kiernan's fever is finally gone, after 4 days! He was obviously fighting a cold and he is now coughing more and has a runny nose, but it's much better than mysterious fever!
- Kiernan's new nickname is John Jacob Kiernan yellypants ;) He yells all the time. He's not crying, he's just ANGRY! It's comical when it's not annoying.
- We lost our nights. For quite awhile there Kiernan was only getting up twice a night... he even slept 7 hours straight once. Since I got sick a couple of weeks ago we're back to being lucky if we get 2.5 hours. This is making me REALLY tired. It's making Kiernan really tired too and as a result crankier than usual - which is pretty cranky :)

The grinch who stole christmas

I thought wrong

A couple of weeks ago two things changed, both I thought, were good.

The first was that Kiernan decided that he does like the soother after all and was willing to take it. I figured this meant that he could self-soothe, something I thought would ease my load a bit.

The second is that he stopped nursing to sleep every night. Because he has become such a power eater, and because he isn't always hungry at our designated bedtime, he sometimes just won't eat. So we would put the soother in his mouth and rock him to sleep. Yay, that meant that I wasn't the only one who could put him to sleep.

These two things seem to have coincided with him not sleeping as well at night, and waking up more and more often. I mean, it could be a coincidence and he just has changed - I've heard that babies who sleep their nights can suddenly stop, but it seems connected. The nights that he nurses to sleep completely are the ones he's easier to put down and have stay down. So does that mean I try to go back to that? Blah... I want it back to when he was only up once or twice a night, not every 1-2 hours. (and I also want him not to feel sick anymore)

My poor baby

The last 5 or so days have been pretty rough. Kiernan seems to have come down with something... a cold I think. It started with him not sleeping more than 1 or 1.5 hours at a stretch at night, that makes the mommy very tired. Then on Saturday morning he woke up with a fever. We gave him some baby advil and it went down and he was back to normal but by the time the advil wore off him temperature was right back up even higher again. This time we took his temperature (39.1 C) and gave him some more advil. A couple of hours later there was no change in his condition and I started thinking we'd better check if I should take him to see a doctor considering how young he is.
So we called telehealth ontario, which is a service that notoriously tells you to rush to the doctor no matter what the issue is, but I was assured by my mother-in-law that my sister-in-law had recently been given some very good advice that did not involve rushing to the hospital, so I called.
They said "you have to go to emergency, we'll fax ahead the information you've already given us". I asked if we could go to a clinic instead, knowing how long it takes to go to emergency, but no, we had to go to CHEO.
So off we went. We got there around 5 or so and we saw a doctor at 11. that's right, 6 hours of waiting to see a doctor. And we forgot Kiernan's soother! Ack ack ack! But, here is some information for you all to store in your memory banks just in case it becomes useful one day - I asked if they had any disposable soothers (this was around 9 by the way... I need to just remember these things are worth asking at the start) and they did. So that helped since after about 4 hours of sitting around the hospital and getting to his bed time, Kiernan wasn't very happy.
Anyhow, the good news is that the doctor couldn't find anything wrong with him and figures that he's just fighting a cold. She did say that if he still had a fever today I needed to take him back to the hospital though because fevers really are dangerous for babies. Kiernan's temp was relatively high again last night around midnight but seems to be just barely a fever this morning so I'm going to call our family doctor and get advice now. Ah... the adventures of parenthood ;)
As my dad said, it won't be our last trip to emerg ;)

Noise changes

Ok, so Sir Kiernan has decided that now that he's 3 months old he needs new noises. So, none of the cries I had figured out ... hungry, tired, bored, etc, work anymore. AND, he also has less patience than before (which is hard to believe) and he now goes almost straight to screaming at the top of his lungs if you haven't figured out what he wants. What is up with that!!??? Aie!

But... he's also doing other very cool things... like grabbing things! He actually grabs stuff that I don't clasp into his hands! It's so awesome to see the way he's learning new things. He can also sit and do stuff with me and actually be entertained. We can sit and read books for a good 15-20 minutes and he'll watch some baby einstein and baby tv too, which is nice because it really is hard to entertain a 3 month old ALL day long.

Also, he's now soother-friendly - perhaps a bit too much so? :) It's nice to be able to give it to him and have it calm him down though - especially given the new screaming fits! ;)

Baby bjorn Baby bjorn

Ok, so my friend let us borrow her baby bjorn to try out with Kiernan because I was going to go to this exercise class where you wear your baby and the maman kangaroo wrap just didn't seem sturdy enough for that. I ended up not going to the class but we started using the bjorn all the time to carry Kiernan around front facing and he seems to really like it. Since we have to give my friend's bjorn back soon I told Eric I wanted us to buy one of our own. He says "ok, but lets get a used one".
Ok, I went to usedottawa.com (Vicky has trained me well) and looked up baby bjorn and someone was selling a never used version of the super deluxe bjorn! A regular bjorn is about $100 before tax, a super deluxe one with lumbar support is $200 before tax. There were a bunch of the regular bjorns for sale for about $50 and then there was this super one, never been used!! for $150. Hrmmm... what to do what to do....
We decided that getting the deluxe version for the approximate price of a new regular one, especially one that's never been used was a good deal and we bartered her down to $130 and went and picked it up right away. So we have it and it's great and I spent 30 minutes walking around the house chatting on the phone with Kiernan in it this morning. Yay!

Wipes rating system

Eric rates poops by the amount of wipes he needs to use to clean Kiernan up. I find it amusing to hear from the other room "woah! 3 wiper!" or "oh my god - this is the biggest poop yet! A FOUR wiper!!"

Mommy has colic

Here is part two of my tale of woe with the stomach flu.

I felt much better on Friday and just slept a lot and was able to eat but on Saturday things started to go downhill again. I couldn't eat anything without feeling really sick so I just kept not eating. By about 6 I started having pains in my stomach and I thought "ok, I need to eat, I'm getting hunger pains". Really though, they were the start of gas pains and eating only made them worse!
I was writhing around in agony and it reminded me of my friend who told me that her sister had been having inexplicable stomach pains and in the end the doctors told her that she had colic! And she said "if this is what babies feel, no wonder they cry so much!"
Eric went online to try to find something that I could take to relieve the pain that was still ok for nursing and finally said "the only thing I can see that might work is... gripe water". Well we have that on hand because we used to give it to Kiernan when he was seeming colicky. So... that's what I had. A whole 1/4 cup of it and let me tell you, it is REVOLTING. I don't know if they sweeten it because they think babies will like it or if that's part of the medicinal value of it, but just imagine dill and anise flavoured sugar water.
Once I'd had the gripe water I then though "if this is colic and babies like being held face down when they have colic, I'm going to try that". So my gripe-watered self lay in bed on my stomach and suddenly all was bearable. So there you have it, the gripe water helped, and so did the stomach sleeping and this morning I'm feeling significantly better, though still weak. I'm figuring that's not surprising since I've lost almost 10lbs since Thursday afternoon! Too bad it's not a healthy or permanent way of taking of weight eh? At least there would have been a good outcome from this ordeal.

Mommy has the stomach flu

Yesterday around 4 I started feeling really queasy and went and lay down for a nap. Shortly thereafter things went downhill... I have not been that violently ill other than the time that I had food poisoning... which I would have thought I had if it weren't for the fact that four people in Eric's family also seem to be afflicted by the same illness. Since I'm nursing I still can't take a lot of drugs so I had to suffer through the natural way.
I was so sick last night that Eric introduced formula to Kiernan for the first time. The good news is that he took the formula just as easily as he takes any bottle (that is to say, not that easily, but eventually he drinks it). I was able to get up the other times in the middle of the night when he woke up but man, it felt like he'd gained 10 lbs overnight I was so weak.
I'm feeling significantly better now and even had some soup for dinner and think I'm hungry enough to keep eating. Being sick and being responsible for a baby is really hard... how do you deal with needing to take care of someone when you can barely stand up? Luckily Eric is fabulous and so is my mother in law (we spent the day there today so I could sleep and she watched Kiernan while Eric was at work).
Anyhow. It sucked, I'm glad it seems to be passing.