(and one week because I am slow)

Dean is 2 months and 7 days old today (10w5d for those of you that like to count that way). On the Monday before Dean turned 2 months old, August 11, he had his two month check up (and shots). He is now 20.5 inches long and 8 lbs 15 oz. He is still tiny, but gaining at his own rate. (Pediatrician says 3-4th percentile for both height and weight, WHO says 0-1st percentile for both.) His head however is 15th percentile ("Lots of brains" claims his doctor.)

We have put all the preemie clothes away and about a week ago we had to retire one Newborn sized outfit. The rest of the newborn stuff fits still. The 0-3 is a little big but he is not swimming in them anymore. He is too skinny to wear any pants though. It is quite entertaining to put 0-3 pants on him and pick him up. They literally fall right off. I think we may have to buy some overalls before fall gets here.

I returned to work 3 days a week. He is doing great with bottles. He get 3-4 ounces per bottle and will drink everything he is given.

We have developed a bedtime routine and he goes down very easy. He eats, we swaddle him up, give him his pacifier turn on the vibrate and water noise on the pack-and-play, and put him down. He puts himself to sleep and sleeps about four hours. He will then eat and go right back to sleep for two more hours. It is making for pretty good nights.

In the last three weeks, he has been drooling a lot. He has also started gnawing at his hands, chewing on his pacifier, etc. I asked his doctor when we were there and he said that it appears that he is "pre-teething". He is quite young for that, but it is not unheard of.

He has also started trying to roll from his back to his stomach. He has rolled to his side to sleep since he was a few hours old. Now he sometimes goes the rest of the way over. He still gets the arm pinned under him and he gets mad. He has not figured out how to get back over when it happens yet.

Last week he decided that scooting across his changing table was fun. I put him at one end of it on his tummy and he scooted to the other end very quickly. I moved him back and he did it again, and again, and again, and again.

Between the trying to roll and the scooting, there is no turning your back on him. Seriously, aren't you supposed to get a bit longer before you have to worry about this?

He loves to imitate. If you stick your tongue out he will too. When you smile or laugh he smiles in return.

All-in-all he is doing really well. He is small for his age, but advanced as far as his developmental goals go.

Cutest baby in the universe. Seriously.

As we mentioned last week, Dean and I met with the Lactation Consultant yesterday (Dean's 3 week birthday).  Daddy was there too.

He grew another 1/4", so he is now 19.75".  He also gained pretty well.  His weight was 6 lbs 15.8 oz.  That means he surpassed his birthweight.  Depending on which growth charts you look at he is in 4th-7th % for weight and 4th-9th% for length.  I recently downloaded a neat program from WHO(World Health Organization) that allows you to track your child's statistics and see them plotted, etc.  One interesting thing that the program does it calculates BMI for each entry.  Right now Dean's BMI is 9.  Normal for an infant is 13, so he is a little low. 

All of that being said, the LC was happy with his weight gain for the week.  She wrote down a number that she wanted to see him have gained and he was within 1/2 an ounce of that.

She did show me a few things I can do to make him get a "bigger" latch and therefore suck a bit more efficiently.  She also showed me how to do a side-lying nursing position that seems to work really well for both Dean and I.  It is pretty much hands free so it is also extremely helpful for me with my arthritis.  It is great at night because I can rest while he eats.

We are probably going to try out the cloth diapers that we got this week since he is finally up to 7 lbs, which is the bottom end of the weight range for them(some of them are even higher than that).  We also bought another carrier.  It can be used as either a front carrier (rear or forward facing) or as a back pack type carrier.

Since daddy is home today, we are going to get some cleaning done and maybe spend some time out side, possibly grilling.

Dean is two weeks old now. He had a check-up this week and is up to 6lbs 10oz, is 19.5in long, and is a little skinny, but healthy in all respects. The pediatrician wants us to talk to a nurse practitioner about making feeding more efficient so he'll gain weight a bit quicker. Clearly, the skinny genes are coming from some other part of our backgrounds. Nicole also had a check up and she's doing great, the scar looks good and she's in great shape for having had a large hole in her abdomen 2 weeks ago. We had visits from Chris, Katie, Tommy, Chris, Steph, Greg and uncle Geoff this week. I started back to work this week as well. So we're getting back into the routine of day-to-day life.

Here is a picture of Dean at 1 week old. We'll try to get regular pictures with the monkey blanket so you can see how he grows.

It's been an amazing week so far. We've learned so much about the little guy already. So far he's maintained his calm demeanour, and when he's awake he is so alert with his dark eyes looking everywhere. He takes long naps and likes to cluster feed. It's so exciting.

Also, the cats have been remarkably good with him.

Dean Paul Evans was born yesterday at 2:36pm at Evanston Northwestern Hospital. He weighed 6lbs 12oz and was 19 3/4" long. Delivery was by planned C-Section, and the surgery went normally through out. Dean started crying as soon as his head was clear of the incision, which is fantastic in any case, but even better considering the biggest concern was lung development. So far all tests have come back as normal and he got feeding and output figured out.

He's been a quiet baby for the most part and easily calmed when he does get cranky. We're hoping that continues for... oh, about 18 years. So far he's had visits from Grandma Paula and Grandpa Jesse, and from Cris and Steph Olson. We're very excited to have him here at last.

Dean was the name of Nicole's maternal grandfather, and Paul was the name of mine.

This morning we had a NST and an appointment with the Midwife. The NST appointment too longer than expected this week. He was very sleepy at the beginning so there was a nice long stretch of baseline (120-130 bpm) heartrate. Then he started moving a bit and we got a good acceleration (up to around 170 bpm and then dipping to about 110-120 before leveling back out). At what should have been about 3/4 of the way through the test, we had two good acceleration and a couple good stretches of baseline. Then he moved and his heartrate jumped up properly, but the dipped down a bit lower than they would like to see it (85-90 bpm). When looking at the printout, I also had a mild (so slid I didn’t even notice it) contraction at the same time. Immediately after that, he got the hiccups and his heartrate jumped back up to the 150’s and stayed there (a little high for a long stretch). As soon as the hiccups went away, his heartrate went back to a normal base line. The dip with a contraction immediately followed a long stretch of higher heartrate even with a decent explanation of why it had occurred prompted them to want to do some follow-up.

We stayed in fetal diagnostics/maternal fetal medicine for a bit while the nurse who did the NST consulted with the OB who would be signing off on the NST. She wanted us to do an U/S just to check the placenta and fluid levels. We then had to wait a bit longer so they could fit us in. We did the scan and the placenta looks great, the fluid levels are perfect. Everything is exactly as it should be.

From there we went across the street to our OB/Midwife’s office. We saw the midwife today because our OB is not in that office on Tuesday, but she did not want us to have to drive all the way back up tomorrow to see her and we have and established history with the midwife anyway. In fact, she will be at out c-section, so that’s cool. Plus we hadn’t seen her in almost 2 months so it was nice to have the visit with her. It was a basic weight/urine/BP check. My weight hasn’t changes in three weeks, my BP was great (120/78), and the urine check was perfect as well.

The midwife felt the baby through my belly and did the fundal height measurements. She said that she thinks he is smaller than Aiden, but not tiny. Her guess is 7.5 lbs.

That being said, my “official” guess is:

If anyone else wants to venture a guess, please do. We can see who get the closest.

After our appointment we went to Babies’r’Us and did some shopping. We got this diaper bag that we had not been able to get a few weeks ago:

It is really big, but we wanted it that way. There is a second on that we would like to get, but they have not had it in the store since we registered for it. We are going to order it online once we get back from the hospital. It is a much smaller, quick trip, afternoon out kind of bag.

We also got a couple more pairs of scratch mittens because we only had one pair. I am totally paranoid about not having enough of them. I have a small scar on my face from scratching myself when I was a few days old and I want to avoid that happening to our little one if at all possible.

Lastly, we bought a sling. It was basically the one that was on our registry, except that this one is reversible. One side is Chocolate (like the registry one) and the other side is chocolate with big turquoise polka-dots. It’s a PeanutShell sling. We’ll see if we like it, but it was on clearance and was about $15.00 off it’s regular price.

So I think that’s about it for today. He’s still wiggling all over the place tonight so all is well.

Tomorrow we will do laundry and dishes and clean the apartment so we have a clean house to come home to. We will leave around 10:15 Thursday morning and should be back home Sunday evening or Monday morning.