More milestones

Having a great day today. Not that my other days are particularly bad (except my call on Sunday which was horrible...young people need to stop doing drugs). Here are the reasons for my great day so far:

Simon slept 7 hours straight last night. Which means I did, too!! Amazing. Not holding my breath for him to do it every night, but hoping that at least he continues heading in this direction. He also turns 10 weeks old today :) happy 10 week birthday, my precious baby!! You are growing up so fast. Yesterday he was staring at his fist for a long time, so I think he's starting to learn that his hands belong to him :). So cute. 

Rain. It started raining overnight and I woke up to the sound of rain, which I love. For some reason I find it very soothing. And since we are having a very bad drought this year I'm sure farmers are excited as well. 

Bumped into one of the OR nurses leaving the parking garage this morning and he shared his umbrella with me :)

Working with a super nice attending today. He's giving me a ton of extra breaks. I feel so spoiled! 

There are, of course, many more things to be thankful for. I am richly blessed in so many ways. But especially happy today for the above mentioned things.

2 month update, and some random musings

Happy belated 2 month birthday, Simon!

I started a post on his birthday while I was at work, but it got erased somehow (blogger app on my phone is not that great). And I was on call so ended up being too busy/tired to repost.

Jeff and I were both pretty tired this week. Simon had one night of restless sleep and I ended up being pretty tired during the next day. I was so tired last night that I passed out while holding him in bed, trying to soothe him to sleep. Guess he fell asleep hardcore, too, since he slept from 9 to 3 am! Fantastic. I'm not holding my breath for him to sleep like that every night, though. Setting my expectations a bit low for the time being and just happy that he sleeps 5 hour stretches about 50% of the time :).

Today was his 2 month visit. It went okay. Simon didn't cry too much after his two shots. My brave little guy! We'll see how he does over the next few days. The pediatrician said there is a 1 in 20 chance of some sort of reaction. We got infant Tylenol just in case anyway. Our usual pediatrician is on vacation so this was her partner in the clinic. To be honest, Jeff and I both didn't like her too much. She kept pointing out all these things that were "wrong" with Simon - like the folds of his neck being rashy, that he would develop a permanent turned neck (torticollis) since he likes to turn his neck to the right, etc. The way she talked made me feel like I was being a bad parent. I'm pretty sure she didn't know I'm a doctor, but at that point I was too tired to tell her and just wanted to get the visit over with. On top of all this we had to wait about 35 min in the waiting room...I understand delays, especially since I know how difficult it is to not fall behind, but it's not fun to wait in the waiting room with a fussy 2 month old.

Anyway. Just thankful that we like our usual pediatrician a lot. And that she is much more warm/friendly/encouraging.

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Work has been good. I made a really difficult decision this week to not pursue a fellowship in pediatric anesthesia, at least for the time being. There were lots of reasons, including a much heavier call schedule than I had anticipated (in house call), not seeing myself working in a pediatric hospital after, not sure about how much the fellowship would help with getting a job...and now, having Simon in my life, especially with his medical condition, I just feel like I don't want to spend so much time at work anymore. I would like to have time to be with him besides 1-2 hours in the evening and the weekend. And have time to take care of myself - just simple things like exercising and cooking. Maybe this decision was influenced by the fact that I'm pretty tired, but I just couldn't see myself being on call all the time and spending all those nights in the hospital. I do feel a twinge of regret, though, when I think of taking care of kids at work...they're so cute and I do love talking to them :).

This is one of those decisions where you can't be 100% happy with either choice. Being a grown up is hard sometimes.


Getting pretty tired so I will finish with more thoughts later. Want to write a long blog post about my mom and how she has become a crazy overbearing grandparent (I exaggerate...only a little).

Working mom

It's been a little while since I last updated because I went back to work last Monday and things have been busy, busy, busy! At least I was off this past weekend but we basically spent the time resting and gearing up for another week :]. I guess that's just how it will be from now on. 

The transition itself actually went pretty well. Jeff has been doing a great job taking care of Simon. It's pretty exhausting work and he is all by himself with baby for about 12 hours every day! I try to help him out by taking care of the birds' food and making Simon's bottles but it's still a lot of work :). 

Simon's been growing and developing new skills. He learned how to stick his hand in his mouth and suck on it. I was hoping that would lead to him self soothing but he seems to do it only when he's hungry, haha. And he's not terribly coordinated yet so he still waves his arms around a lot. He continues to coo a lot (makes all sorts of sounds, it's super cute). 

He is also eating a lot - Jeff reports 4 oz at a time sometimes. But he also barfs a lot! We think he barfed both weekend mornings because I would nurse him when he woke up and my boobs would be too full. He also tends to swallow a lot of air when he gets frantic (either super hungry or fussy/tired). So anyway...lesson learned. And a lot of laundry done this weekend...

Simon has his 2 month checkup at the end of this week. Not looking forward to him getting his 1st round of shots and being on call on Sunday. We will get through it somehow!

Simon is perfect!

Had a follow up visit with Simon's pediatric endocrinologist today. She was very happy with his growth (he's now 12 lb 11 oz, wow! and 98%ile for height, no wonder he's been outgrowing his clothes like crazy) and his labs, so no changes to his levothyroxine dose for now.

I was a little concerned that his length had shot up to 98th percentile, and that he was possibly a little hyperthyroid (especially given his sleep issues) but given his good weight gain and lack of other symptoms (diarrhea, poor weight gain, labs within normal range) she didn't think that was the case. Also, his night sleep has been decent so that is also a good sign. And since levothyroxine is dosed based on weight for babies he may actually outgrow his current dose in a few weeks, so we have to recheck his levels in about 3 weeks. Another blood draw, sigh. The good news is that they will continue to get further and further apart as he ages.

So basically we have a giant baby. Which I said during our visit ("OMG, he's a giant baby!") -- to which she responded, "No, he's perfect!"

:)

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Some recent pictures of Simon wearing his Cal onesie (great gift from Jeff's boss):
The many faces of Simon while considering attending Cal one day (no pressure!)

Contemplative (hmm, sounds alright..)

Yay! I'm excited!

Too much pressure! I can't take it!

Annnnddd just like that, it's September! What the what.

Labor day weekend was a mix of fun and busyness and exhaustion...it was Gary and Michelle's wedding on Sunday, and Jeff was a groomsman, so he was pretty busy with the wedding rehearsal on Saturday and wedding on Sunday. That left me to be the solo parent, which for the most part was OK, except that Simon wouldn't nap on Saturday so I had to wait until Jeff got home to eat lunch. Then Sunday my parents watched Simon for several hours in the afternoon/evening so I could attend the wedding. (I had previously debated taking Simon with me, but decided it was too unpredictable given that I wasn't sure I would be able to find parking easily, and him crying during the ceremony/reception, and his bedtime being 8...etc. But after getting there I realized it would have been doable. Oh well.) It was really nice being able to go out and socialize, even though I had to leave early. (Another side note -- it's hard to stay out for long periods of time when you're breastfeeding a newborn. Boobs.)

Anyway. I had a lot of anxiety leading up to the wedding because I wasn't sure how Simon would do with my parents. He can't nap at their place for many various reasons -- too much stimulation being the main one, though. That and my mom won't swaddle him (argh). He ended up doing OK. Of course they waited until he was crying to feed him (another argh), but he survived without me/Jeff. I didn't get to their place until 7ish and he was pretty fussy by then because he hadn't slept for 4+ hours, so I rushed him home to give him his bath and get him ready for bedtime. Then he really wanted to comfort nurse, but because I hadn't had the chance to empty my breasts they were pretty full and he gulped down too much milk and air. The result? A huge barf that drenched me, him, and everything on the bed. Poor little guy. He just let out this sad little cry, like, "why did this happen to me?" That is something I'd like to not relive again, ever.

Somehow I managed to clean both of us up but by then I was SO exhausted I didn't even want to think about doing laundry and so we crashed in our master bedroom instead. The fun didn't end there, though. He woke up at 2 am to feed, which was great (5 hours!), except he couldn't go back to sleep after that...his eyes were closed but every couple of minutes he would fidget and move around. In my sleep deprived state I thought it was his diaper, so I changed it, and then again 2 hours later when I fed him again...needless to say I basically didn't sleep from 2 am - 5 am when I finally gave up and woke up Jeff. Who was sleeping on the couch downstairs because of the bed situation. The whole family was tired on Monday, hah. Luckily Simon chilled out and actually slept that day so we had a chance to recover. Just in time to have dinner with my parents and a bunch of their friends...huzzah, more stimulation for our poor baby! Simon's such a trooper, though. He did great at the dinner except towards the end he got fussy, so we had an excuse to leave, haha.

Simon's definitely starting to smile and coo more, especially when he's well rested. It's super cute but I have trouble capturing it on my phone. His cooing sounds like he's saying, "ooooh" over and over again. And while most of his smiling is still related to him farting/pooping, I think he's starting to smile socially (yay!)

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I didn't mean to write about that whole thing but it was a pretty eventful weekend. I'm glad it's over. I really want to enjoy this week since it's my last week of leave (insert very sad face emoticon). Jeff is also working from home this week so it'll be super nice for me! Everything is so much easier (and less lonely) when he is home. I really should take advantage and use this time to stock up on food and prepare for next week. Luckily my first two weeks back are PACU so I'll have ample time to pump and get re-acclimated to working again. Hopefully I haven't forgotten how to anesthetize people, HA.