November 15, 2006

I can't believe Jesse is a week old already! Time is going too fast - someone slow it down ...

** warning - breast feeding discussion to follow **

Jesse's nickname this week has been chomper. He's got quite the good suction! He's a good nurser though and we've made it through the first week with no bottles - yay! Between forcing fluids down and my mother's milk tea my supply seems to be keeping up with his incredibly frequent feedings, and that makes me happy and proud. I haven't had to resort to the fenugreek but I have it here just in case.

He basically eats all day, sometimes taking one big nap for 2-3 hours in the middle of the day. He's actually pretty good at night as long as he's touching me in some way while sleeping. He usually goes 3-3.5 hours when we finally go to sleep around 10:30 or so, then when he gets up at 2ish it can take a little while to change him and get enough milk into him to get him back down. Once he nurses on both sides though he's good for another couple hours, repeat. I must have fallen asleep mid-feed last night because I woke up a couple hours later to chomper trying to get my nipple in his mouth. smack smack smack - It was pretty cute!

I've had a little more pain than I care for with my right nipple (not sure why just the right) and resorted to a nipple shield yesterday which is awkward but definitely cuts the pain way down, pretty much to zero. So I've been using that for a few feeds during the day, but it's not his favorite and also it's too awkward to try to figure out at night. I'm just hoping it doesn't set me back as far as toughening up so to speak.

** warning - poop discussion to follow**

We're finally getting the mustard yellow poops today. I must say, despite this being my fourth (such that you'd think I'd know what I was doing by now) I was getting a little concerned that the poops were still pretty dark brown. Not the black sticky meconium like the first couple days, but not the mustard yellow that I was expecting from a booby-baby. So anyway, today we're there and that's good. His skin is looking much less yellow - almost a normal color for the most part now.

** ok, I think the rest is safe **

Jocelyn is adjusting pretty well think. She sees me get the baby out of the swing and rushes over to sit beside me while I nurse. Sometimes she'll sit in front of me and we'll play patt-a-cake while Jesse eats. We found a baby pooh bear in the pile of stuffed animals in the dining room and she pretends that is her baby and holds him and kisses him and tucks him into the bouncy seat. She's just talking so much these days. She likes to take all the cards out of the boggle junior game and bring them to me one at a time, naming what's on the card. It's sort of like flash cards for toddlers!

Morgan and Jocelyn have been fighting over Josh a bit. Morgan will go to crawl all over him and Jocelyn will get possessive and try to push him off, which Morgan doesn't care for. Josh has done well to try to play something that can involve them both or else involve turn-taking (which Morgan is much better at than Jocelyn!).

Josh went on a cleaning spree today and the house looks fantastic. He's gotten a full night's sleep the last 2 nights (he's still sleeping in Timothy's room) and so he's feeling much better. The house had gotten a little behind but now it looks like we actually hired a full cleaning crew! The only thing we're not caught up on is laundry, but that's because we're generating it as fast as we can do it!

Tomorrow I have Timothy's parent-teacher conference so Jesse and I will be venturing out of the house for the first time since we've been home. I'll put him in the sling for the conference and hope he can go 30 minutes without eating but if not, Timothy's teacher will just have to deal.

Well Tim and Amy should be here soon for dinner so I best wrap this up. Stay tuned for more exciting updates!