Nate is 6 Months Old

Nate turned 6 months on Sunday. A half of a year has gone by since he was born and I cannot believe in that same amount of time he will be turning one. But I won't think about that just yet. :) He had his six month check up on Tuesday. It went well. His eye is much better and actually had his last round of medicine tonight. Thank goodness! He hates it and it gives him the poopies-bad. He's 20lbs 14oz, up only about a pound since his 4 month check up, and is 29" long. So he's still off the charts for his height but is now at the 95th percentile for his weight.

We have started him on foods! He's not much of a fan so far, but he usually finishes it. I've given him rice cereal and peas so far. He always seems to make faces when eating it but doesn't spit it back out and so he must not hate it too much. I think it's so much fun now that he's eating at the table with us for meals. I also haven't been producing as much milk, probably because I haven't had time or been making time to pump. So we've started supplementing with formula. I was afraid he wouldn't take it, but he drinks it right up! I usually give him a few ounces at the end of the night. Let's see if this helps him start sleeping through the night!

He's getting up on his knees and rocking now too. He may be doing this for awhile before he starts to crawl, but it's neat to watch the progression of skills. It's crazy how babies teach themselves how to do all these things.

That's about all that's new. He's just enjoying Daddy being home and all the attention!

Nate's First Solids

We fed Nate rice cereal last night. He didn't seem to care for it too much and was more interested in chewing on the spoon than anything else (go figure). But it wasn't a complete disaster either. My goal was to feed him cereal for breakfast each morning and that already hasn't happened! I just hate to force more things he hates into his mouth--have I said how much he hates his medicine and giving it to him is the worst, I hate it and feel awful that I have to put him through that 3 times a day! And I don't know the rules on mixing the cereal with juice yet--I know there's the feed the same food 3 days straight to see if there is a reaction--so I'm not sure if I have to give him plain cereal for 3 days first. And, I also want to start him on vegetables...so I'm not sure if I can do that yet AND I don't want to put juice in his cereal and have him like the sweetness so much that he won't like the vegetables. Any suggestions?

Michael's Home

Michael finally arrived home from demobilization at Camp Atterbury on Thursday afternoon. It's still so new, like he's not really home, or he is, but just for a couple weeks on leave. It might take awhile to register that he's really home for good.

We've been enjoying spending time together as a little family, shopping or just playing at home. And of course, life doesn't stop and things still need to be done, so the focus today has been getting things back in order (like the jungle that is our backyard).

It's going to take a little while to get used to having him home (and having the extra help!) and it will probably take awhile for him to get used to being home, let alone being a dad and learning ALL about babies. But we are definitely enjoying having him home and all being together again.

Sammy and the Vet (again)

Seems to me I already have a post with this title! Sammy has been constantly licking her wound and acting strangely (lying behind the couch all day, needy, etc.) so I decided to bring her in the vet to have her checked out. Sure enough, the wound is bad, but not too bad. He said he didn't want to have to put her under for sutures, and thinks that a couple staples would do the trick. So that's what she got, along with a fancy e-collar. He said she was lucky, that if the bite was maybe an inch over it would have gotten her colon and been a lot more serious. So now she has to wear the collar, is on antibiotics (my counter top is now filled with medicine bottles as 3 of us in the house are now taking medicine), and has to go back in 10 days for a check up. It's funny to watch her try and manuever through the house with the collar on. She keeps running into things and getting stuck. It's pitiful.

Wild Weekend!

What a weekend! I still can’t believe all the events of this past weekend. It’s now Monday afternoon, but I’ve been exhausted and had limited typing appendages (we’ll get into that later) so I’ve had to take my time getting all this out on paper, er, screen (and it might take you just as long to read it!). I’m going to divide this weekend up into three different entries, the three big parts, otherwise all the stories will become jumbled and scattered—hmm, not much different than my thoughts are normally. J I just want to say a big thank you to Jaime and Jeremy for all that you did for us this weekend. I couldn’t have made it through the last few days without you guys and all your support. Love you!

The Doctor

Thursday night Nate was pretty fussy and running a low grade fever, typical of when he’s teething, so I assumed that’s all it was when I put him to bed. He was up a couple of times through the night but I let him cry himself back to sleep, thinking it was his normal get up a couple times through the night routine. However when he woke up at 4am and I went in there he was on fire. I took his temperature and it was 100.something, but he wouldn’t really eat much and wouldn’t stop crying. I thought something is different. He finally fell back asleep and woke again around 7am. Again, he was inconsolable and wouldn’t really eat. I knew something was wrong. So I immediately packed up and took him in to the doctor. The doctor and I both had thought it might be an ear infection, but after checking him over, he couldn’t find anything wrong. At this point, Nate was hysterical and the doctor was practically shouting over him to talk to me. He wanted to run some blood tests, thinking it might be sepsis or meningitis. I almost lost it when I heard that. So we packed up and went to the hospital for the blood work. I called Jaime to let her know what was going on and she immediately came up and met me at the hospital. The first blood work to come back was the cell count, which was okay, so we headed back to the doctor’s office to get a shot of antibiotics. The blood culture wouldn’t come back for 24 hours, so the doctor decided to start with the antibiotics, standard procedure. Well, during the time we were at the hospital waiting for the results, Nate’s right eye was beginning to get red and puffy. It was slightly red when we first got to the doctor’s office, but I thought it was from all the crying. After Nate got his shot, the doctor came in and saw his eye. He said if it would have looked like that a few hours ago, he would have diagnosed the eye infection right away. Sorry. That’s what he said, sorry. Okay, it was a scary few hours of not knowing what was going on, but it was better to be safe than sorry (although watching Nate get his blood drawn was so sad).
We needed to go back Saturday morning for a follow up visit. Friday night went okay. Nate slept okay but his appetite was still really low. His eye looked even worse Saturday morning, almost completely swollen shut at this point. The minute the doctor saw him she told me she wanted to admit him into the hospital for 24-48 hours. This time I did lose it. She said it would be best since he wasn’t responding to the antibiotics given yesterday. She wanted to run some more blood work and this time set up an IV to administer the antibiotics. So I took him up to the hospital and got him admitted in. He was in a big baby crib and even had to wear a little baby hospital gown. So sad. The nurses brought him in a room to have his blood work done and then tried to give him an IV. After two failed attempts, they decided to call the nurses from the birthing center to try it. So about an hour later they came up and tried, three times, with as much success. They tried his hands and feet but he’s so chubby that they couldn’t find the pathways or a good vein. So they called the doctor in. This time they wouldn’t let me in the room (at this point I probably had had as much as I could take watching them poke at him and holding him down while he’s screaming). The doctor tried a couple more times and even tried once in his head, all times failing. It was horrible sitting in his room and hearing his screams down the hall. Probably one of the worst experiences I have had. They decided to just administer the antibiotics in shots (which over the period of the next couple of days resulted in many more times being poked by needles) and orally. Jaime and Jeremy came up to help me with things around the house and to keep me company in the hospital while we were there. On Sunday, Nate’s eye was looking much better and since they couldn’t start the IV anyway, the doctor released him and sent us home with the oral medication and a prescription for eye drops. She wanted him to come back in this morning for his next round of shots. But this morning his eye was looking a ton better and when the doctor saw it she decided that he didn’t need more shots and that the oral meds and eye drops should be enough from here on out. Thank goodness! I don’t think I could take much more of that, let alone Nate’s poor little thighs have got to be so sore. So now we just need to keep an eye on it and finish up the medicine (about 7-10 days). This has been so difficult and like nothing I have ever experienced. Being a parent is so difficult when you see your baby in pain and you can’t take it away and they don’t understand what is going on. I’m sure there will be many more times like this, but this definitely has been a difficult weekend for me as a parent.

Michael's Homecoming

Yes, this is also the same weekend that Michael was scheduled to come home! Originally it was supposed to be Wednesday, and then it was moved to Friday afternoon. It was then changed again to Saturday evening at 6pm. Through everything that was happening with Nate, I wasn’t calling the hotline, checking on the flight arrival information, like I normally was a million times a day. Jaime called and found out that it had changed yet again, still Saturday night, but at almost midnight! Since that would be too late to take Landon out, Jaime took him back to the house to spend the night there, and Jeremy took my up to Stout Field in Indianapolis for the welcome home ceremony. I don’t think it really hit me that he was coming home until shortly before they arrived. Then I got really excited and as soon as they were dismissed I threw down my poster, jumped a chair and ran to him. It was so good to see him and hug him and have him hug me again. Normally all troops were to receive an hour with their families before heading to Camp Atterbury to out process for five days. Since Nate was in the hospital, Jaime and Jeremy contacted Red Cross and got a message sent up to Michael’s company. Poor Michael got the message as he got on the bus at the airport and didn’t know what was going on. So instead of staying up there for an hour, he was released to come back down here to go to the hospital. It was 2am and he didn’t want to wake up Nate, so he just looked him over through the crib bars and rubbed his little head. I can’t imagine what he was thinking looking at him, since the last time he saw him in person Nate was just a little newborn. He stayed until 4:30am and then had to head back up to Camp Atterbury. I’m so glad he’s safe and sound back in the states, but I am looking forward to Thursday, when he can home for good. It’s hard to sit here and know he’s so close and not be able to see him. Hopefully there will be a couple of evenings we will be able to go up there to visit.