Monthly Archives: September 2010

Kieran has a cousin! (12w5d)

Posted on by
Reply

As of around 7:30am PST this morning (4:30pm Belgium time) Kieran has a cousin. No word on name and no pictures yet, but he arrived healthy and full-term. By all reports, Mama and baby are doing fine.

Paul and I thrilled for Cassie and her fiancee Kurt. We remember how we felt almost three months ago when our own son arrived. The overwhelming joy, happiness, fear and relief. And the love. Oh yes, the love.

What hit me most this morning when I woke up to hear Paul calling his grandmother to report the good news (delivered within minutes by Grampy via Skype) was the joy in his voice for his little sister. For all their squabbling and bickering, he loves her something fierce. He is so proud of her, watching her from half a world away, forge her life on her own terms. And now she’s made a little family for herself. We couldn’t be happier for them.

Nakey Baby (12w4d)

Posted on by
4

This is my first video from start to finish. Now that I know how to take videos from the camcorder all the way to the web, I’ll be getting more up as soon as I can.

This is a fairly typical scene these days… but it ends on a particularly high note. Make sure you have your speakers on. :)

Paul stood behind me as I edited down the 4 minutes of raw footage to the 41 second opus above, and Kieran went NUTS at hearing himself. Seriously, he was squealing and giggling along with himself on the screen. We were cracking up.

Formula Recall (12w1d)

Posted on by
5

Similac has recalled a bunch of their powdered formula due to possible contamination with bug parts and larvae.

We found out about this at 8:00pm tonight. The Similac/Abbott website listed in the press release is down due to being SLAMMED with traffic. The phone number they reference for 24/7 help (800-986-8850) is busy for hours. (This all hit the news at noon today.)

The Internets told us that our two plastic containers were on the recall list because they both had “T2” in their lot numbers. So at 9:30 I went off to Target to return the half-used container to get some liquid concentrate formula – which isn’t affected by the recall. We’re holding onto the empty (as of Monday) container that is also a ‘T2’ lot for the refund process.

Paul was able to get a hold of a very harried PR/PIO girl at the Abbott Corporate headquarters at 9:45pm tonight who reluctantly confirmed that yes, any lot number that includes “T2” is on the recall.

This probably explains why Kieran has been unusually fussy, EXTRA gassy and somewhat fitful since Saturday (his 2nd day on the first container of recalled formula.) His diapers have gone from not smelling at all (or smelling like prunes) to being fairly horrible. He’s had the closest thing to a diaper rash that he’s ever had – his little bum is red and the tiniest bit warm. My poor little guy.

Paul and I are both so mad we could spit at this. Not sure if we should be more mad at Similac or the FDA or what…. but we feel like somebody let us down.

I just hope that Kieran’s little system is able to flush out whatever has been irritating it so much for the last few days once we get him on some clean formula. We’re hesitant to switch brands after the hell it was to get him on something that worked – so for now we’ll stick with the liquid concentrate stuff.

(As a total aside…. if any new mamas are reading this and have Similac coupons or rebate checks they’re willing to trade – I’ve got a grip of Enfamil and Gerber rebate checks I’d be willing to trade for Similac ones.)

We live in the future! (11w6d)

Posted on by
1

When Kieran was first born, we had to track his eating and eliminating to see if he was getting enough to eat (turns out he wasn’t regardless of the diaper count… but I digress.)

We started using the white board in the hospital room to keep track of these details, but a few days after Kieran was born, Paul found a FANTASTIC Android app for our phones called BabyESP (eat, sleep, poop) that allowed us to time breastfeeding (on each boob no less!) and keep track of diapers, as well as when our little man slept. (Which back then was quite often.) Paul loaded this app onto my phone and we have managed to keep track of Kieran’s every activity since.

We LOVE this silly little application. It now syncs to both our phones (thanks to an update about a month ago) and we use it to track Kieran’s bottles (how much he eats, when he starts and stops eating, and notes about what type of formula it is, or if it’s his daily prune-y bottle) as well as his naps/sleeps and medicines. The medicines reminder feature has been a godsend to keep us on track with Kieran’s 3-times-a-day Zantac, which has all but eliminated his acid reflux symptoms. It was a HUGE help to us to keep track of diapers when we were battling constipation for a week. Plus, we have an accurate record of all the formulas we’ve tried and their varying results on the other end… (Not that we always make notes about Kieran’s diapers, but we can if we need to!)

Paul can look at his phone when he gets up with Kieran at 5:00am and see how the overnights went for us – without waking me up to ask! I can see at a glance how things are going for my boys while I’m at work. Being able to confirm that Kieran really is making the “OMG, I’m hungry!!” cry by seeing that it’s been 2 hours on the dot since he had his last bottle makes life a lot easier.

BabyESP even creates charts and graphs for things like average sleep amounts over a week or month (or formula consumption over a week or month) so we can make sure we’re trending in the right directions. Our pediatrician loves having this kind of data available.

I know it sounds all crazy Big Brother, but this has been such a help to us. As we’re trying to get a handle on Kieran’s sleeping schedule, having an accurate record of when he sleeps and for how long is the first step that all the books say to have when trying to create a schedule.

Oh, and the fact that the guy who is behind it all seems to be an actual nice guy who personally responds to tech support queries makes us feel good about supporting this app.

We live in the future. And it’s pretty cool.

First Week Back (11w5d)

Posted on by
2

What a week. It was SO long and SO short at the same time. My first week back in the office, full-time. Well, working full time, but not all in the office.

Now that I have somewhere to be every morning at 8:30, our schedule has by necessity changed somewhat. Namely, I have a bedtime for the first time in over two decades. Roughly an hour after we aim to have Kieran in bed, I aim to be in bed. Making it on time is harder than I expected.

I’m off work (supposedly) at 2:00 – not that I actually left the office before 2:30 at all this week. Home around 3:00, I take Kieran from Paul who (understandably) is in need of a break. Daddy gets a break, Mama gets her snuggles – everybody’s happy. The next four hours are filled with bottles, diapers, baths, and Mama trying to get some work done before Kieran’s bedtime at 7:00. Oh, and trying to make dinner for us in there too. Once Kieran finally goes down, we scarf dinner and try to wind down for bed.

Kieran has settled into a fairly regular sleeping pattern of a 4-ish hour stint, a 3-ish hour stint, and then however long it is until 5:00am. He’s up for an hour or so at a time for a bottle and diaper change – both of which I take with the goal of keeping Kieran quiet so Paul can sleep through the night. He’s stuck with the 5:00am wakeup call, so 6-8 hours of straight through shut-eye is the least I can do for him. I get three 2-3 hour naps over the course of the night, which works OK for me. I have developed the Mama-skill of sleeping lightly and being up and out of bed at the first squawk from the crib in the nursery.

At work, things are going very well. We’re crazy busy right now for the end of the fiscal year, which helps me by keeping me too busy to think about anything else. I’m also helped because Paul had the great idea that I re-do the cork boards in my office with pictures of Kieran – so I’m surrounded with pictures of my boys all the time I’m in my office.

I hadn’t originally planned to work a modified schedule when I went back to work, but I am SO glad that my supervisors assumed I would. (Prolly has something to do with the fact that they’re both fathers…) After having worked one week, I can’t imagine trying to put in full days, 5 days a week right now. I continue to be grateful that my work is flexible about this kind of stuff.

We’re still working out the kinks, and we’re both exhausted by turns – but this is life right now. I am SO incredibly happy that Kieran isn’t going to daycare right now. I know we’ll have to deal with that at some point when Paul gets a job again, but for now I revel in the fact that Kieran is home with his daddy every day.