Doug's Sounding Board

Okay, 6 weeks and 3 days.

Observations:

• When she lifts her eyebrows (what she has of then) she gets forehead wrinkles.
• Her forehead wrinkles are mostly on top of her head. Had her forehead not grown already then the wrinkles would be fully atop her head.
• Nicole noticed the forehead wrinkle thing comes from my dad.
• Even though she is gaining weight her hands still look more like they are in normal proportion to her arms.
• She is over 8 pounds now and I expect her to hit 9 by around Wednesday.
• She is strong. Since about week 4 she’s been able to push up into a stand on my lap nearly vertical. Her balance and coordination isn’t very good. We just need her arms to catch up now.

Problems:

Shortly after my last post Olive developed reflux. It started with a gurgling noise in her throat that we now know is silent reflux. So she got her first hospital visit since these things seem to have to happen on the weekend. After a bunch of tests to make sure it wasn’t an infection and waiting for her blood oxygen to get out of the slightly low range the doctors all decided it was reflux. I also learned that on some babies a phlebotomist can draw blood from the arm like on an adult.

So now we give her Zantac which doesn’t stop the reflux, but makes it less painful. She’s not even minding the bitter mint flavor as much. We also started having to feed her more often but less with each feeding and keeping her elevated for 20 minutes after each feeding to let gravity help keep things down. I get a lot more early morning web browsing done now.

The hardest part is when Nicole will only do for comforting. On those days I come home from work to relieve Nicole and there is very little relief I can provide.