Second Tooth

Okay, I'm not going to keep posting every time Ryan gets a new tooth, but I figured I would this time. There's not much going on with us right now, so this is still pretty big news. He got the matching tooth to his first one, on the right hand side. You can kind of see it, but you can certainly feel it. I attached a picture of his first tooth too. It's only poked through a tiny bit from the gums, but it's a start. He is putting everything in his mouth now. I'm trying to keep him in control, but he's getting really coordinated. He puts his soother in his own mouth, takes it out, then puts it back again. He can also put his own bottle in his mouth, but he hasn't figured out that it needs to be at the right angle to get the formula.

Uncle John Moved to Alberta

I took my brother to the Airport this morning, so he could fly out to Fort McMurray. He's gone to look for work. He has been chronically underemployed here. He's done mostly retail, and a little factory work, and worked at a couple gas stations. He's gone to stay with my Father in the hopes of finding a well paying job, and saving enough money to come back and go back to school full time. He's also talked about saving up enough money to get a house when he comes back. It makes it sound like he'll be gone for a while. :(

Anyway, I got one last picture of Ryan with his Uncle John, before he left. Overalls are so cute.

First Tooth!

Ryan's first tooth has broken the surface! He bit me last night and I realized, hey, that was sharp... Sure enough when I checked his first tooth had popped through. It's his left lower incisor. I knew he had started teething because his cheeks became perma-rosey (see picture) and he was drooling like it was going out of style. He's also been putting everything he can get his hands on into his mouth. That includes both of his fists... at once. I figured we had a long time yet, because although he's been a tiny bit more whiny, he hasn't been cranky or crying or anything!

I'm going to try to get a picture of it soon, but he'll barely let me look at it. He's always putting his tongue over it. Hehehehe! Ryan's got his first tooth at 20 weeks old!

Hmm... I wonder if I should get him a toothbrush? :P

A Mommy milestone...

Today, I left Ryan alone with a non-family member for the first time since he was born. The only times he has been out of my presence since birth were with Bill, my mother and my friend Shawna. Believe me it was a big step, even though I never left the building. :)

I went to the Cambridge Early Years Centre today, to attend a Baby Food Preparation Course. I learned how to make all of Ryan's baby food myself at home. While I was in class, I dropped him off in the infant care nursery. There are 3 adults watching 8 children (aged birth to crawling) in the room. If there are any problems they just walk to child down the hall to mommy (in whichever classroom she happens to be in) and she can take over. Well I dropped him off at the room at 9:30, and started class. Gradually as the morning went by, every other mother in the class had their baby brought to them. By 11:00 I was the only mother in there without her baby! When I went back to pick him up at 11:30, he was asleep. I don't know whether this is a good thing or not...my baby didn't need me! It was only for 2 hours, but still!

On the other hand I learned some really great stuff for making his food at home. I have another class next Monday, we'll see if today was a one-off performance.

Swimming

So we went to our first two classes this week at the rec centre.

Tuesday was the Boot Camp class, where I was supposed to work out with Ryan for 30 minutes, and then play with him for 15 minutes. We put our babies in these little floating seats and attached a tether to them, so that they floated in front of us. He seemed to enjoy if after a little while. I do have to say that I did not get a very good work out. I spent so much time looking after Ryan, that I don't feel like I ever got my heart rate up.

The waterbabies class today was alot more fun for Ryan. He got alot of really good interaction time with the other babies, he smiled and laughed during the class, and was even reaching out to touch the other babies. I think he's starting to feel more at ease in the water. In both of the classes the instructors used Ryan as their example/prop for showing us moms the exercises. He did really well, even though he was in someone else's arms.

I'm looking forward to next week. Although, I did start to wonder f the chlorine will affect his eczema at all...

Easter

So Easter this year wasn't such a big deal. It's not like Ryan knows who the Easter bunny is, or is able to eat chocolate. But we did go see my mom and brother in Toronto. I forgot to bring my camera, so there were no pics, but I'll be back there in a couple of weeks, so I'll get some pics then.

Afterwards we went to see my friends Shawna, Tracy, Shannon and Aidan for a ham dinner in Hamilton. Ryan had milk though. :)

My brother is leaving to go and work in Alberta for a while. He'll be staying with my father and hopefully saving up the money to go back to school for a few years. I' going to drive him to the airport, and I want to get a few more pictures or Ryan with his Uncle John, before he leaves. I'm going to miss him.

Good morning Sunshine!

Just some pictures of Ryan
waking up in the morning...

Met the ladies again

So we went to the mall yesterday, and met up with Pam, April, Sam and Madison. It was fun, we actually got the babies out of their seats and they got to interact a little. We ate lunch, I had Chinese, and Ryan had breast milk. :) Then we walked through the mall, and mommy spent some money at Sears and Zellers. It was a nice little day out.

4 Month Check Up

Here's a picture of Ryan and his daddy. It was male bonding time. We had Ryan's 4 month Check-up yesterday, and he's still doing good. He got his second set of needles, but he only cried for about 10 seconds. His growth has tapered off a bit. He measured at 25.5 inches in length and weighed 15 lbs, 1 oz. This is above normal for his age, but not at the same percentile (95th) as when he was born. He's still a very big boy, but he's falling back down into the normal range.

He still has his eczema, so the doctor recommended I put him on an infant probiotic. UDO's choice.
He says it will help improve his immune system, which will help with the dry skin and eczema. I have to go to the nutrition house at the mall, since Shopper's DM doesn't sell it. Other than that he's in great shape!

Waterbabies & Baby Fat Boot Camp

So we registered for two classes at the local Rec Centre. They both take place in the pool, so I hope he does ok.

Baby Fat boot camp is a class for me. I am allowed to bring Ryan to class, and we do Aquafit type exercise in the pool, and I use him as my weights. :)

We're also going to waterbabies, which is a swimming type class for infants. It just basically teaches them to be comfortable in the water, some kicking and swimming motions. It cost me about $85 o register for both for weeks, so he better not decide he hates the water!

I've also been able to go to the Adult aquafit classes at night, after bill gets home from work. It's really nice, I get to go work out, sit inthe hot tub, even the sauna, all by myself. It's such a nice break after a whole day of just me and Ryan!

Meeting the ladies

So I went today to meet a couple of the ladies from the prenatal classes I took last fall. It was a pretty fun afternoon. We met at the food court in the mall, and just had a coffee, and talked and had a little baby brag party. Both of the babies are bigger than Ryan, which was surprising, but it was also nice to be around other big kids. Sometime when people ask me how old he is I feel weird when they act all shocked.

Anyway, we're going to get together again soon. One of the other moms, April, is going to the Mommy and me class at the library that we've registered in for the beginning of May. It will be great to know someone else when I go there for the first time. She's new to Cambridge too, so we're in the same boat, trying to get to know the city, and all the services and things to do.

Weaning

Ryan and I have had a challenging time the last few months. We never did get the hang of the breastfeeding thing. We had a bit of a size discrepancy, so for the last 4 months, I have been expressing my breast milk with an electric pump and feeding it to him from a bottle. He had lost a bit of weight at birth, and we were worried about him getting enough, so we started supplementation in the hospital. Ever since then it has been a challenge to get him on the breast. I have tried every trick in the book! A feeding tube, plastic nipple shield, different holds, different positions, everything. The real problem though , was his inability to get my whole areola in his mouth to feed.

So I have decided to return the breast pump we rented, at the end of the month. I have a large supply of frozen milk in the freezer that should last for another month, and then that's it! He'll be on formula. I don't feel too badly about it, since I was able to give him the benefits of breast milk for almost the first 5 months. He's had it a few times, and he tolerates it very well!

We're Positive we're negative

So, we got the final good news yesterday. The skin biopsy test results came back Ryan definitely DOES NOT have CPT1! It is a big relief.

That is all, you may return to your regularly scheduled programming. :)

Pablum

So we started Ryan on rice pablum this week. It was a bit of a fight to get him to eat everything, but I managed to get more than half in him. And that's the important part. Bill took pictures, while I fed him. :)

30th Birthday

So yesterday was my 30th birthday, and Bill came home! On Saturday night I went out with my brother and a few friends, and celebrated. There weren't as many people as I thought there would be, but we had fun anyway. :) We went to my friend Shawna's house for cake, drinks, and presents. Then we went out to a couple of bars. My mom babysat for me, and surprisingly Ryan was really good for her. He's such a Momma's boy sometimes that I despair of ever finding a regular sitter. (My mom lives an hour away)

Anyway Bill brought me home a lovely present for my B-day. A gold necklace with a heart shaped pendant, with 18 small diamonds. It was very thoughtful, and very pretty. :)

All in all, it was a pretty frickin' good birthday.

Laughing

Ryan laughed for the first time this week! It's the cutest thing ever, and I can see it is now my mission in life to make him laugh as much as possible. So much better than all that crying and whining stuff!

Now he just has to learn to say Mama!

Valentine's Day

So no husband for V-Day, but I at least got a phone call. Ryan and I ended up going out for wings with a friend from work and her husband. So at least I got to spend the day with my other favourite guy. :)

Only 2 more weeks until Bill gets home!

Sleeping through the night

Ryan slept through the night for the first time ever! After keeping him awake for 3 hours, I fed him and put him to bed at 10:30. He slept right through until 6:00 am! It wasn't planned, but I appreciate it none the less. We'll see if it continues.

That's all, I just wanted to mark the occasion. :D

2 Month Check Up

We went to the Doctor for Ryan's check up and two month immunizations yesterday. He weighed
12 lbs 6 oz., he had a head circumference of 40 cm, and he was 23 inches long. Everything went well.

Ryan has really dry skin and a touch of eczema on his knees and elbows. We've switched to Cetaphil, for washing him with and I'm using Aveeno and hydrocortisone cream for the bad spots. I hope it's not itchy, but it's not like he can tell me.

Bill's gone to Alberta

Bill's gone to Alberta to work for a month. I dropped him off at the Airport this morning and I feel lonely already. :( It's going to be hard to deal with Ryan by myself with no breaks. He'll be back in 4 weeks though...

Baby Firsts

So I figure I'm going to try to start keeping track of Ryan's developmental milestones on this site. I haven't really remembered so ar, but I'm going to try to start now. It's hard to keep track of the first time a baby does something. Like a smile for instance. Lots of times the first time they smile, it's really gas.

Anyway, so far Ryan is smiling, and has started to hold up his head. when he cries, it sounds like he's saying Mama. OK, I guess it more like Maaaaaaaaaaa Maaaaaaaaaaaa. :) So I'm going to hold off on counting that as his first word. :)

RSV

We're Sick

Respiratory Syncytial Virus
Bill went and infected me and Ryan with what we thought was a cold this week. We went to go see Ryan's pediatrician on Tuesday to look at Ryan. He suggested I take him to the hospital to get him started on an IV, since we still weren't sure whether he has CPT1. Ryan was also not eating well, and was very sleepy. Normally most parents would say these symptoms were due to the cold, but we wanted to play it safe, so off to the hospital we went. I went home packed my bags, and off we went.

Ryan and I stayed in that hospital from Tuesday through Friday. on Tuesday night the nurses tried to start him on an IV and that has to have been the most harrowing experience of my life. The poked and prodded him for close to an hour. trying to start it alternately in each of his hands and feet, and then tried each again. Ryan cried and whimpered, he was so tired and sick, and weak, that as soon as they stopped with the tourniquet and the needle, he would fall asleep. Then he would wake up crying again, when they tried another spot. Finally they decided to shave the side of his head and put the needle in his head. Three nurses and one doctor later.

They did a test on him while we were there and it turned out that Ryan (likely Bill and I as well) had RSV. Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which is pretty common. That was one of the hardest weeks of my life. It's so hard to watch your baby suffer. His nose was all stuffed up, he was congested, and had a phlegmy cough. I couldn't get him to blow his nose or to cough up the phlegm. The best we could do was to put saline drops in his nose, and try to get him to sneeze it out. His appetite went down to half of normal, and he was sleeping all the time. I had to work pretty hard to get him to smile. He was miserable most of the time he was awake. Bill had to work most of the week, but he came to the hospital to relieve me at night, and to bring me food. I was sick too with the same thing this entire time, and sleeping in his room on a fold out chair. It was no picnic for me either.

But the doctor finally said we should remove the IV, and we went home on Friday.

More testing

Dr. Potter called and spoke with Bill letting us know that the final test results were negative for CPT1. Although he threw a wrench in the works by letting us know that the most definitive test would be a skin patch test. So I brought Ryan back to McMaster today for testing.

Dr. Potter cut a piece of skin from Ryan's thigh, and they are going to culture it, and run enzyme tests on it. Since Ryan wasn't feeling well today, he's getting sick, Dr. Potter decided it would be a good idea to run all of the bloodwork again as well. That way we would see if any of his levels changed when he is well as opposed to sick. In a way Ryan getting sick is a good thing, because we will know for sure at the end of this whether he has it or not.

So there is another test, and another waiting period. It will be at least another month before we find out definitively.

Breastfeeding

So my breastfeeding has not been going well. While we were in the hospital Ryan dropped a significant amount of weight, 1 lb, so the nurses recommended that we supplement his feeding with formula. So we were feeding him formula, and I was expressing breast milk when I was able to, and feeding him from a bottle. By the time my milk came in he had eaten more from a bottle than from the breast. I have a very lazy baby. He's cute, but lazy. He wanted to eat the easy way, not the hard way. Every time I would try to breastfeed him, he would get so frustrated and start to cry. Which always made me upset. I saw a lactation consultant in the hospital, and a few times after I was discharged, but nothing was working. It doesn't help that we have a significant size discrepancy between my breasts and his mouth.

I tried using a tube inserted with the nipple, several types of holds, and positions, as well as a plastic nipple cover. In the end it proved so frustrating and stressful for me and the baby, that I decided I would just give him my breast milk from the bottle. So I started expressing breast milk for every feeding, and giving it to him from the bottle. My husband went out and rented me a good electric pump from Shopper's Drug Mart, because I wasn't getting any rest using my manual one. It's worked out well, because I'm now able to pump every 6 hours for 30 mins, and get enough food for two feedings. He eats about 4 ounces every 3 hours. I figure that even if I can't breast feed him, at least he's getting the benefits of the breast milk.

There will be no bottle for my next child - not for at least the first 6 weeks.

New Year's Eve

So, we had been trying to decide what to do for New Year's Eve, but eventually we decided it would be too expensive and just stayed home. So on New Year's Eve 2007, I watched movies, ate a nice dinner, had some wine, and kissed my two favourite men at midnight.

Not too shabby.