picture post

It's been a busy week. We spent last week Friday through this week Friday at Green Lake. The weather never ended up getting warm enough to take Dane out, so we watched a number of movies and read a lot. We also had a good night's sleep about every other night (opposite the nights that Dane was overly agitated and colicky and up most of the night). Then we were in Madison for a night with my parents before heading to Reedsburg on Saturday. Saturday night we went to Larissa's friend Steph's wedding reception in Baraboo (the wedding was a couple weeks ago in Utah) - it was fun to see everyone. Then this morning we got to see Dane's Great-Grandma Darlene before driving back to Madison (with a quick stop to see Evelyn, Andria & Scott's daughter, who is about 1 month older than Dane).

Nothing much new to report. Dane has been sleeping better (we hope it is a new thing rather than just a good night or two) - we were able to get an uninterrupted block of 5 1/2 hours of sleep last night! Dane's head is still disproportionately large for his body, making lifting his head difficult and unsteady, but he is doing a much better job of lifting his head. He is also tracking faces and voices a lot more (not all of the time yet), which is very fun. We can't wait for him to continue to get more aware of the world around him!

Anyway, here are some pictures from the past week...

Trouble in Paradise

Our apologies for the lack of blog posts over the past week or so. Following my final exam of medical school (ever!), the three of us drove to Green Lake to relax. It was not a fast trip... The drive from our apartment to the house in Green Lake is listed on Google Maps as 187 miles and should take just under 4 hours. We have made the trip in 3 1/2 hours... but this time, after stopping to feed Dane 2 times (at ~40 minutes each stop by the time we feed and burp him and then get him back in the car seat) and changing 3 diapers, it took us 6 hours. We needed a vacation after just getting to our vacation destination. Anyway, after getting to the lake things got better for a bit. We slept pretty well Friday night. Then on Saturday morning our friend Katy drove up from Madison to hang out. She swore that she was too busy to stay for more than a couple hours, but we (or was it Dane's cuteness?) managed to persuade her to spend the night and stay until Sunday afternoon. It was great to catch up and hear news about her and what's been going on in Madison - we were extremely disappointed that we missed this year's Brat Fest! It was also good to have Grandma and Grandpa Anderson, Uncle Steven, and Great-Grandma Karin around to help with Dane. The grandparents were nice enough to take the midnight feed each night, although Dane decided he wouldn't let Larissa take advantage of it. Saturday night after the midnight feed, Dane was a bit colicky and was up from 1-6am crying for about 10 minutes every 20 minutes... Not great. As we have said, Dane is quite the dichotomy... he can be the cutest most perfect kid all day but once the sun goes down he turns into pure colicky evil. He did this again last night (Tuesday night). I sat up with him and we surfed the internet in the (soundproof) porch of my parents bedroom until midnight while he cried. It was great that the room was soundproof, however, because it allowed Larissa to sleep for about an hour even though he was up. She doesn't sleep very well at all when he's crying (as opposed to me, who can sleep well though anything.) After his midnight feed, however, I think he did alright (Larissa would know for sure as she was nice enough to not wake me up for the 6am feed, allowing me to get 8 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep - it was AMAZING and, while not caught up on sleep, I felt better this morning than any day in the past month!) Dane seemed to only be happy sleeping flat on his left side, not sitting in his bouncy chair, so we put him on the couch braced with blankets. (Yes, I know the recommendation is to have him sleep on his back nowhere near blankets or pillows, but I'm finding that this is only true IN THEORY and, in the real world, we do whatever he needs to sleep.)

It can be hard to deal with Dane and each other some days...after a string of nights of not sleeping enough and having Dane cry inconsolably throughout the day, our nerves can be frayed and tempers short. It is all we can do some days to keep ourselves from fighting (or to try and get past dumb arguments) and just enjoy our time together. We were looking at baby pictures of me in a photo album here (one of about 40 photo albums Great-Grandma Karin has in the basement) because Larissa wanted to compare how I looked at this age compared with how Dane looks. When we look back, we are surprised at how fast Dane is growing - he's nearly doubled in weight since birth and has grown several inches already! We were trying to remember how old he should be before he holds his head up or walks or starts teething or talks...all these milestones that we are excited for him to achieve. (Right now, after nights of not sleeping well, I'm joke that I'm excited for him going off to college...) But he's growing fast even though we don't see the changes from day to day. We have been noticing that he is holding his head up better during tummy-time (which means he isn't having his head sway as soon as he picks it up and then immediately having it face-plant back in the blanket...instead he is usually having it sway and crash down to one side or the other).

It has been great to relax at the lake. The weather hasn't been great the last several days...it was beautiful, albeit cool, this weekend but during the week it has rained a lot. While I was hoping to stock up on some sun prior to becoming a mole with the start of residency, even rainy weather has been good for us here at the lake. We mostly have sat in front of the fireplace watching TV. We've watched the entire first season of Monk, which my parents have on DVD. I also have been getting some things done off of my to-do list. I am most proud of renewing my Comcast cable and internet yesterday... our bill was scheduled to jump ~$40/month next month when our "introductory price" ended. I called them yesterday to inform them that that price would be out of our budget and I'd probably have to cancel my service and switch to DirectTV. They promptly offered to lower my current bill from $60/month to $43/month for the next 12 months. That works for me. Small victories, right? This was great because Dane is still competing with himself to see how many diapers he can soil each day and we have found that the "cheaper brands" just don't contain him (we need to use the Pampers Swaddlers)...

We are looking forward to another couple days relaxing at the lake, hoping for some better weather, before meeting up with our good friends, the Swees, in Madison this weekend (we wish you guys lived closer to us still!) and going to Larissa's high school friend Steph's wedding reception in Baraboo Saturday night. Busy times. Luckily, my parents will once again take care of Dane for a while on Friday and Sunday nights, so we can get out alone, and Larissa's parents will keep an eye on Dane while we are at the party Saturday night.

ps- we've been taking pictures but need to get back to Chicago to our computer to upload them... we'll hopefully get some new pictures up by Monday night.

S-H-O-T-S

In celebration of Dane's 2 month birthday (today), we went to the pediatrician and Dane got to experience the joy that is vaccine shots. Let it just be said that he does NOT, by any means, like shots. We gave him some pediatric tylenol (grape-flavored drops, which he likes much more than the flavor of his zantac) prior to the shots to take the edge off... they may have helped, but he still screamed for all he was worth starting with the first of the 3 shots. The whole process only lasted about a minute and the screaming only lasted a couple minutes, but it still resulted in him being alternately exhausted and fussy the rest of the evening. The pediatrician did say, however, that he is doing very well. He is growing faster than babies of his adjusted age (1 week old) which means he is catching up to his growth curve. He is currently still on the non-age adjusted growth curve at ~5th percentile for both height and weight, but if you adjust for him being a preemie then his corrected growth curve is more like the 15th percentile for weight and the 30th percentile for height (and the ~50th percentile for head size! That explains why he is having trouble lifting his head during tummy-time...) So he's growing fast and catching up to his peers. Fun to have him growing and looking healthy. :)

Secondly, Dane is gearing up for his first out-of-state trip! After my exam tomorrow (my last exam of medical school, ever!) we will be driving to Green Lake for the next week. We decided this was a good idea for a couple of reasons: a. I won't have many breaks after starting residency on June 10th, b. we need a break from the apartment and futon, and c. our building decided now was a great time to begin a construction job involving jackhammering all day on our section of balconies (they said it would be a "light tapping or hammering"...uh, nope). Hence, we'll be hanging out by the water for a week, which will be a much needed change in scenery, and will also give us a chance to catch up with our families and possibly some friends from Madison. We're looking forward to sitting on the pier in the (we hope!) sun and I may be crazy enough to try waterskiing depending on how chilly the water is. I may have to break out my wetsuit!

4 hours of sleep!

Last night went well... For the last several nights, we have been waking Dane up for his 4am feed. We talked to a nurse from the pediatrician's office yesterday who said that, overnight, if he was sleeping to just let him sleep as long as he would sleep. If he sleeps longer we just feed him a bigger bottle before and after the longer sleep. Well, last night he slept from 1-5:15 (over 4 hours!) which means that Larissa and I got over 4 hours of sleep in one stretch (the longest sleep we've gotten since he came home from the NICU 3 weeks ago). Larissa felt so good that she managed to go running at 6:30 in the morning following our "big" block of sleep. They told us to only make sure he is still hydrated (enough wet and dirty diapers each day...which he certainly is! my oh my is he soiling himself more than often enough...)

Dane is also seeming more awake and aware of his surroundings, at least on occassion. He still has a lot of times, especially during feedings, where he gets cross-eyed and/or one eye closes, but he also has times where he seems much more awake and aware. When we feed him or burp him or hold him we are finding that he often will look at our faces, sometimes tracking us as we move around him. We also got some "art cards" as a gift from Larissa's friend Rachel to give him things to look at. These cards are very cool... the literature says that, at this stage in an infant's development, infants most easily see high-contrast black and white images. So these cards have pictures of animals on them in black and white cartoon drawings. We showed them to him for the first time this morning after his 5am feed. He stared at them for a couple minutes, seeming like he was staring AT them rather than in the same direction as them. It is fun to think that Dane might start being more aware of us. We like to think that he might know our voices and faces.

Larissa's grandma Hilgendorf also sent us an article about preemies, showing how micropreemies (born at between 1-2 lbs; smaller than Dane), turned out successfully. It made Larissa cry, as she's relieved to know that Dane has a really good chance of being successful. One of the recurring themes, though, was that they turned out to be shorter on average than their peers, even into adulthood. Does anyone have experience with this? While we want Dane to have every chance at being "normal", height is probably the least of things that could be wrong. Dane has another appointment tomorrow, for his 2 month shots, so we'll get another update on how much he's grown since the last appointment 2 weeks ago. It's encouraging to see that despite seemingly poor breastfeeding, he's still growing at a good rate. 

Larissa also took Dane out to visit her coworkers at Tyndale today for the first time. There was plenty of oohing and aahhing, and he slept like a champ, through the visit and errands to Target afterwards. He always manages to show visitors and others his angelic side, leaving the screaming and poop blowouts for his sleep-deprived parents. :)

What's the opposite of progress?

For a couple days at the end of last week, Dane had us fooled. We started to think that he was going to be pleasant for us... He was sleeping for about 3 hours between his night feedings (allowing his parents to get almost 3 hours of straight sleep) and was breastfeeding well. He seemed happy. But don't let his cute innocent face fool you, he can be a demon. After a couple good days, everything fell apart again. He is now once again nocturnal, crying much of the night. He is also getting extremely flustered, especially when being breastfed. He is also still pooping his diaper within 5 minutes of getting changed probably every other diaper change...and most diaper changes he is now peeing to set a distance record across the carpet of our living room... (at least our unit is a rental?) While it seems that the zantac prescription may be helping because he is arching his back less (seemingly less symptoms of reflux), he is spitting up more during and after his feedings. (He makes a hilarious face - check out the first picture - when getting the Zantac, as it's mint flavored - apparently not his favorite!) We were told by the pediatrician that we could hope for his peak crying to be at around his due date (several days ago) but we also saw online that his peak crying could be at around 3-4 months of adjusted age (3-4 months from now....) What was your experience? When did your babies start sleeping more, crying less, feeding better, and becoming a bit more "stable"?

On a good note, we have already found that Dane fits well in the BOB stroller and now Dane seems to fit perfectly in our BabyBjorn (when Larissa wears it). We have gone on several walks with it now and, except for a small meltdown about 10 minutes from home this afternoon due to an extremely soiled diaper, he has happily slept through our walks. We even brought him through the mall briefly yesterday while running some errands - he seemed fine with it.

Happy Due-Date, Dane!

Dane was born at 32 weeks 6 days... 7 weeks and 1 day ago. It is hard to believe it has been that long already. But today was Dane's due-date. We are now counting UP, not only for his actual age but also his adjusted age.

He's made so much progress since being born at 3lbs 13oz. He still has a number of little quirks, most due to being a preemie, according to the nurses and docs we deal with. He grunts a lot, which we thought at first was always due to needing to go to the bathroom, but apparently is just him practicing "talking". He also still startles a lot, but that's a pretty normal newborn thing. He had his eye exam yesterday, and while the hemorrhages are still there, they've apparently healed by about 85%. The pediatric ophthalmologist said that he doesn't expect that these hemorrhages will affect Dane's vision long term (the hemorrhages are worst in the left eye but located around the periphery of the retina...it would be more worrisome in terms of vision problems if they were located in the center of each retina.) We'll be heading back in 3 months for a follow up appointment, at which they'll see if he needs glasses (there is no reason to suspect he will at this point, but we are told that preemies are more likely to need them...)

According to most doctors, if preemies are cared for well, they'll catch up to their peers by age 2 at the latest. We've also heard a lot about using Tummy Time more frequently than for normal newborns, and how it can speed up preemies' growth and development rates. We're still working on getting Dane to breastfeed more consistently, but he's started to be able to nurse easily at 2-3 of 4 breast feedings. We're still giving him a bottle during the night feedings, as we can fortify it with Enfamil, to add a few more calories. We know that the breastfeeding isn't too taxing on him, as he gained 8 oz during the 6 days between appointments last week. So we'll just keep practicing and praying that he'll continue to improve. He's also started a Zantac prescription, which we hope will help his acid reflux. It's mint flavored, which is the first non-milk or vitamin flavored food he's ever had. The face he makes when we give it to him is hilarious. He seemed to like it at first, but since, has started to look almost horrified by it :) We have to give him a quick milk chaser or he'll spit it out. It has a cumulative effect, so while it hasn't seemed to make a big difference so far, we're hoping it will eventually make him more comfortable and hence, sleep easier.

Tummy Time is Fun (at least for Dane's parents...)

We have been making an effort to keep Dane doing Tummy Time. This is when we put Dane on his stomach and try to encourage him to lift and/or rotate his head so that he strengthens his neck, back, and arms. So far, he hasn't gotten very good at it. Besides the obvious fact that he's only 6 weeks old and shouldn't yet be born, his head is still disproportionately large for his body size. Very often Dane will attempt to raise his head, only to have his head stay on the ground and have his legs and waist raise into the air. Oops! The good thing is that Dane doesn't seem to hate Tummy Time. We were warned that some babies just hate being on their stomachs and cry the entire time they are doing it. Dane can get frustrated and grumpy because it seems that he is trying to get his head up but is unable to, but he doesn't seem to get angry. He sometimes will even fall asleep during Tummy Time. We were told different things by different people about how often to do Tummy Time...some people say to try to do 10-20 minutes 3-4 times/day (usually just prior to feedings so that he is least likely to spit up and also to help wake him up for his feeding). The PT/OT people at the hospital said that we could also try to do 10-20 seconds per episode and try to do that 10-20 times/day (this is more for the babies who hate being on their stomachs). When we burp Dane on our shoulder and on our knees after meals Dane also tries to lift his head up and this technically counts as Tummy Time even though he isn't on the floor.

the first adventure for our stroller-bound baby

It's been another busy couple days. On Thursday, Megan Schiefelbein stopped by to say hi and see Dane again. This time, however, it was nice for her to see him at home rather than at the NICU. After hanging out for a bit, she and Larissa went and got some shopping done at Target while I stayed home with Dane - luckily, he slept right through the 45 minutes I was watching him.

Later Thursday afternoon, Babette (from Tyndale) came to bring us a pizza dinner. Nice! It was also fun for her to see Dane at home, rather than in the NICU like her last visit.

In preparation for all of Dane's visitors, he got another bath (usually this is just to wash the milk out of his neck-folds more than anything else).... We think he looked a little bit like a wizard when wearing his towel... don't you agree?

Lastly, Thursday night we packed Dane into the BOB stroller (which is amazing!) and took him for his first stroller adventure. This was just a really long walk, but the weather was perfect. It really is starting to feel like summer (of course, then the temperature dropped about 20 degrees so that several days later it was highs in the 60's instead of in the 80's...) Dane does look really small in the stroller, but he was very stable once we packed him in with a bunch of blankets.

On Saturday, my parents came down to see us. It's always great to see family - and always nice to have them come bearing food. Not surprising, Grandma Anderson had found several more cute baby outfits and also had had a friend give her a big bag of baby clothes to give us. We now have plenty of clothes for the next several months...but when Dane decides to go through clothes, he can go through them very fast. It's crazy how he is able to spit up on every outfit we put on him, even when he is well wrapped in burp cloths.

He's still hit or miss as far as sleeping through the night, so we're feeling pretty beat. He's also starting to enter a stage where he cries in a way that seems to say he's just angry, versus for specific reasons like being wet or hungry; his pediatrician said that infants peak at crying sometime around 2 months old, so we're hoping that his recent crying spree will start to slow down eventually. Larissa feels most helpless when she can't figure anything out to help him when he's crying like that (and being exhausted and hormonal doesn't do much to make it better!). She's also been experiencing a larger reduction in her milk supply than we'd hoped for; in part, we think it's because Dane is not really taking to breastfeeding, which would help regulate her supply. It's frustrating to be tilting to the other end of the spectrum; it would be really nice to have something just work as it was supposed to on the first try.

Happy Mother's Day!

Dane just wanted to say Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, especially his grandmas.

The Damages Thus Far

Nothing in life is free and that includes pregnancy. I'm sure it depends on your insurance (hopefully you have insurance!) but having a baby is not, by any means, cheap. We have received most, but not all, of our bills from Larissa's and Dane's times at Central Dupage Hospital. Larissa's bill was impressive but not overly surprising. Dane's NICU bill, however, almost made us cry and wish we had our own diapers. Anyway, without further adoo... (Drum roll)

Larissa's bill:
$4,100 (OB bill from delivery)
$1,520 (Anesthesiologist bill for epidural)
$17,838 (Delivery / Hospitalization bill)

Dane's bill:
$177,185 (NICU bill)
$14,567 (Neonatologists' bills from time in NICU)
$3,516 (Send-out lab tests)

Grand total: $218,726 (so far...we think this includes all bills through Dane coming home from the NICU. It doesn't include follow-up outpatient visits, etc.) To put this in perspective, because it is such a large number: Dane has already cost slightly more than 4 years of medical school...

We will be accepting donations. (As you can see in the photo, Dane offered to pitch in $10 but we don't think that will cover much of the bill...)

Now that you feel bad for us, I should also point out that these numbers are all pre-insurance payments. The good news is that once we surpassed our deductible, we had a 10% coinsurance payment up to a cap. Because of the cap, we will end up paying less than 2% of the total bill, which is still a fair amount of $$, but much better than it could have been. The good news of all this is that we don't foresee any further medical expenses until 2010 for our entire family...I guess that's good news. Also, we realize that the bill could have been A LOT more.

Random slightly-related thoughts of an almost-doctor after seeing medical care from the standpoint of the patient / family:
1) Why are medical bills so expensive? Would the same care have been cheaper in countries with more nationalized healthcare? Or would the physician bills, at least, be lower if physicians weren't graduating from medical school with > $200k in loan debts (like me)? Were there aspects of Dane's time in the hospital that could have been done without if the doctors weren't practicing "defensive medicine," making sure they were safe from any lawsuits. (Note that, as parents, we wanted EVERYTHING done for Dane regardless of the costs, especially since insurance was paying, which is why the decision to do or not do tests wasn't up to us...)
2) Along with our medical bills, it shows how much the bill is discounted for the insurance company. One bill of ~$8,000 had ~$1,000 written off because it was paid by the insurance company. This never made sense to me in the past, but it is how all insurance companies function... in accepting a certain insurance, a physician opens themselves up to all the patients covered by that insurance company but they also will accept less than their billed amount. One number I have heard to show the worst-case reimbursement is that hospitals/physicians usually receive ~25 cents for every dollar billed to Medicare and ~18 cents for every dollar billed to Medicaid. Insurance companies usually base their reimbursement rates somewhere above these Medicare/Medicaid numbers. So how do physicians and hospitals make up for these lower reimbursements? They bill higher than their best insurance repayments so that people without insurance will help their bottom line and so that they guarantee maximum insurance reimbursements. I don't know if there is a way to improve on this system, but by charging more to people without insurance, it seems to be most hurting people least able to pay.
3) Even as we complain about these medical bills, we are so thankful we have insurance. We would be completely financially crippled if we didn't have insurance. Also, holding Dane in our arms, even at 4am when he's ornery and crying and has his second dirty diaper in 10 minutes, we are so thankful for him and say he was worth "any price."
4) Universal healthcare. I agree there are good reasons for universal healthcare, but how would it work / how would it be paid for? And what would we have done if we didn't have insurance? Again, what would we have done in Dane's case without decent insurance?
5) Should we have gotten a different insurance plan? (Hindsight being 20/20)... Would we have been better off with a higher deductible for lower co-insurance cap or lower monthly premiums?

It all comes down to "I don't know." I don't know how to fix the system to make it more available, more affordable. And I'm glad that we had insurance to cover the vast majority of the bill...

visiting the pediatrician

Today was another pediatrician appointment for our little guy, mostly just for a weight check. Dane is still growing, actually gaining 2 oz since his weighing yesterday at the lactation consultant, and 7 since his appointment last Thursday. Newborns are supposed to grow at approximately .5 to 1 oz per day, so he's on the high end of the curve, which is encouraging. Our pediatrician is a fellow Loyola grad, and she said we were doing great with him so far. She suggested that we follow the lactation consultant's schedule for breastfeeding and see how his weight gain continues. It was good to hear that despite our uncertainties and fears about caring for him, he's doing well!

We also had another visitor, Steph from Tyndale. She brought us a pot of excellent homemade chili, which we enjoyed for dinner tonight. Dane was excited to meet his mom's former cube neighbor, who gave him his first happy meal toy, even before he was born. It's still at work, since I wasn't expecting to need it so soon!

Finally, we looked at apartments in our complex to move into once our lease in our current apartment ends. We've decided to stay in the same building since it has almost (someday we'll have laundry and our own garage!) everything we want and it'll make moving slightly more convenient. We're looking forward to having our families down to help move around graduation since it will be such a crazy time for us. It will be great to be in a place that has enough room for Dane and all of his accompanying stuff :) It will also be nice to have a second bedroom and bathroom for visitors, as well as more storage space. It's amazing how we accumulated stuff once we got married!

Exams, breastfeeding, and hairdos

It's been a busy, tiring couple days. First, I found out that I passed my oncology exam. This was a big relief since i took it 90% asleep ~9 hours after Dane was born after spending the evening prior, when I'd planned on studying, in the delivery room at CDH instead of in the library at Loyola. Glad that is done and behind me...

Also, Larissa had a meeting with the lactation consultants at the hospital today. They said that if she was going to be exclusively breastfeeding that she should be feeding 8 - 12 times/day (Dane currently has 6 feeds per day). The plan now is to breastfeed with some bottle supplementation for 4 feeds per day (during the day) and do 2 full bottles (at midnight and 4am).

We also think that Larissa's milk supply may finally be decreasing. It SHOULD be decreasing since we have tried everything: weaning + benadryl + sudafed + starting the birth control pill. We are still frustrated that nobody told us ahead of time to avoid overpumping to avoid milk oversupply. And we are annoyed that people were hesitant to recommend starting the birth control pill, even when max doses of benadryl + sudafed didn't help at all. After only 2 birth control pills, Larissa's milk supply seems to have decreased by ~25%... magic! But even better than a decrease in her milk volume is the decreased engorgement she experiences between pumpings. She can now sleep between pumpings, even though it is still uncomfortable to sleep in any position other than on her back.

One of Larissa's coworkers from Tyndale, Kendra, visited today. She brought us a pot pie, which was awesome. She also brought her 10-week old daughter, Addison. I'm sure Dane enjoyed starting to meet some people his own age.

We have decided that we should be careful what we wish for... Dane is no longer constipated but now he is having frequent prolific loose stools. He is also getting in the habit of holding just enough poop in reserve to soil his clean diaper within ~6 minutes. We got a "diaper genie" that claims to hold up to 180 diapers without stinking up the room... it seems to work great and the room doesn't stink, but it is starting to feel full and I am dreading opening it to change the bag. I pushed the diapers down earlier today to compress them for some extra space and, in addition to getting a dirty hand, blew a horribly foul smelling breeze into the room.

Finally, Dane got an awesome hair-do today. Like it? :) Clearly Dane likes it.

The first week home

The first week is a hard one, which any of you who've had children know. Dane is only giving us around 2-6 hours of sleep each night, broken up into 2-3 hour intervals. For me these 4ish hours are poor sleep too; we moved his crib from our bedroom to the living room and are using a monitor. While Mark is a solid sleeper, I wake up at every grunt and squeak he makes. Last night, he was unusually unhappy for no reason Mark and I could figure out, and I ended up just having to hold him from 3 am until around 7 am, after only getting a couple hours in between the 8 and 12 feedings. We have discovered that the bouncer seat is helpful sometimes, giving him the more vertical position that helps his reflux. One of the reasons feedings have been taking so long is that he needs to be upright for ~20 minutes after each one so he doesn't spit up. Mark has mastered the knee-hold, while I pump and then we both change him and clean up. The first thing everyone has asked is, "Do you have help?". Unfortunately, we don't have room for my mom to stay down here, as every inch of the apartment is covered in baby stuff, but I definitely wish we were closer to family during this time. It would be so nice to have some reassurance that we'll get past this part and onto something less overwhelming. In the next two weeks, we have 6 doctors appointments; thankfully, Mark will be able to be around for them.

On a related note, if you were one of the many people who offered to bring a meal once the babe came home, we would LOVE to take you up on it now! We're trying to eat decently, but I've realized that we've had yogurt or cereal for most of the last couple meals. It's too much work right now to do anything complicated or requiring much cleanup. When we're washing bottles and pumping equipment 6 times a day, we don't want to add any more cleanup than necessary. We'd love your prayers for Dane's getting onto a regular sleep schedule, along with eating more consistently. I also have an appointment with the lactation consultants at CDH tomorrow, so I'd love prayer that we'll figure something out about how to decrease my supply and help Dane start to breastfeed. I talked to the OB about it yesterday and he said that in this case, the only remaining option may be to completely wean, which is frustrating. We really wanted to have him on breastmilk for at least 6 months. Finally, please pray that we can have peace about the huge medical bills we've been receiving. Apparently, 5 weeks in the NICU is not a cheap thing...more on that later. (But to give you an idea, the total bill for Dane and I will be more than 4 years of med school...insurance helps, but it's still a daunting amount)

As you can see in the picture, we gave the BabyBjorn and try and realized that Dane needs to grow a bit more before we can really enjoy taking him on walks with it.

Maintaining the Status Quo

Not much new on the Dane front. He's still doing pretty well. Sleeping only about 2 1/2 hours at a stretch overnight (eating every 4 hours, takes about an hour to eat and get burped then immediately falls asleep and wakes up about 1/2 hour prior to his next feeding), so we are really tired. We have began putting a little extra formula in his bottle for some of the nighttime meals which adds a bit more "bang for the buck" and helps him sleep a bit harder / longer. Larissa doesn't sleep as hard as I do, so she is waking up whenever he makes a squeak and is getting even less sleep than I am. She is, however, getting better at napping - something she's never been able to do in the past. Dane got another bath yesterday (in the sink this time), which he clearly was very excited about.

We are also hoping that he is getting a bit more "regular" with his bowel movements. Seems like he is going every other day (on his own) right now.

Lastly, it is BEAUTIFUL outside today! Larissa and I have been trying to get out of the house more so that we don't get stir crazy. We aren't sure when Dane will be ready to go outside, so we have been alternating working out outside. I went for a great bike ride today (first of the season on the road bike!) then Larissa went for a walk/jog when I got home (she still hasn't been officially "cleared" for exercise involving impact). We are considering seeing if we can fit Dane securely in the stroller because we would love to go out for a walk as a full family.

4:30am

Saturday, 4:30am. It's already getting light out and I just heard a bird chirping outside. Why are we awake? Just a joy of parenting... Hopefully someday we'll be able to once again 1) sleep a full night straight and 2) sleep in on a Saturday morning. It's already been almost a week without sleeping more than 3 hours in any single stretch...that's rough. Even during my hardest med school months I'd still get a somewhat decent night's sleep two out of every three nights...

Dane has been very grumpy tonight. He hadn't pooped since Wednesday morning (almost 3 full days ago!), which is long enough to make anyone unhappy. We haven't gotten a lot of sleep. We are currently fortifying his bottle-feeds of breast milk with some formula to bring breast milk (20 calories per ounce) up to 22 calories per ounce. For a while in the NICU he was getting 24 calories per ounce but they reduced the fortification to make him more hungry and to take more fluids. We think that he might benefit from more than 22cal/ounce right now and might fortify a little more for a day or two. He seems to be hungry but unable to tolerate more volume of milk because once he takes the full 60mL (every 4 hours), he has been spitting up some of it even when we keep him upright for 20 minutes and burp him well. My theory is that his stomach didn't have a lot of space due to all of the poop in his system. (Like his parents, Dane is occasionally full of crap! Hahahaha.) So if we increase the calories/ounce, he won't need to eat as much volume in order to achieve the same caloric intake, hopefully meaning decreased spitting up.

Anyway, I said that Dane hadn't pooped since Wednesday. Tonight it turns out that the big reason he was ornery, at least at his 4:30am wake-up, was because there was poop on the way. I'd heard the horror stories of poop shooting up all the way up the baby's back so the waistband on Dane's diaper was very snug. What I hadn't thought about was that, after he fills the diaper like a balloon, the poo still has to go somewhere. In this case, it couldn't go up his back so it shot out the leg holes in an explosion all the way to both knees. Not pretty. Larissa and I had to change that diaper as a team...not enough wipes have ever been made to clean that mess. And thank goodness that we have bought a Diaper Genie, a contraption that holds up to 180 diapers in an air-tight (read that "smell-proof") bag until it is full and we can throw them all out at once...

OK, almost enough news for today. Other than being hungry and occasionally ornery and continuing to get a bit backed up with poop, Dane is doing really well. He is able to lift his head up (off the floor during tummy-time or off my chest when I'm burping him), which is exciting. When he does lift his head up, he is far from stable - we watch his head wobble from side to side before usually crashing in a face-plant back into the damp burp rag. We are just hoping that now that's he is fed and pooped he will sleep for a solid 3 to 4 hours so that we can get some uninterrupted sleep. Life right now revolves around sleep, bottles, and diapers - life isn't exactly exciting but it is still such a blessing to have Dane home and in our lives. He's worth all of the sleepless nights and dirty diapers (or at least we hope we'll feel that way looking back on it!)