The Cold

I've learned that babies are remarkable beings. It is as though they know when mom and dad have conquered the most recent challenge and dig into their bag of tricks to present a new one. Owen did just that two weeks ago. As soon as he had started sleeping pretty consistently from 8:30 until sometime between 4 and 5:30 he discovered a new weapon to throw everything back into a state of disarray...

A cold.

Of course we knew Owen would get a cold eventually. In fact, we expected it to happen sooner than later since he had just started going to daycare about a week and a half prior. When you walk into a room of screaming kids every morning and each one that looks up at you has what appears to be the Colorado River of snot running out of their nose it's pretty inevitable that your kid will not be safe for long. What we were not prepared for, however, is how a cold progresses and just how long it can stick around.

June 12 it all began. It started as most colds do with a sniffle. Nothing major and so we figured he'd get congested and it would all be over in a couple days. That was a Friday. The next couple days passed and Owen became more congested. However, he was still sleeping relatively well and outside of having to use the dreaded nasal aspirator every once-in-a-while things were OK.

Last Friday, the cold took it to a whole new level. Thursday night Owen developed a cough. We sort of figured this would happen since we've all had colds and they usually start to drain and turn into a cough. That night, Owen didn't sleep well at all. The kid who had been sleeping through the night woke up in the middle of it. To make things worse we checked and he was starting to develop a temperature. Nothing too serious, 101, but enough to worry two new parents enough to call the doctor as soon as the office opened at 8:00. Bridget's previous post described that adventure so I'll move the story along.

From Friday until Wednesday, we learned all about what a nasty cold really is like. It involves things

• A baby who had never spit up in his life vomiting half his bottle on your clothes.
• Waking up at random times of the night with 15 minute coughing fits that won't stop.
• Parents unable to sleep because the baby coughs once every 10 minutes and the monitor makes sure you hear it.
• Having to switch from 6oz of formula at a feeding to 4oz and eating every four hours to every three hours because the baby can't eat more than that at a time.
  

Finally, on Wednesday, the congestion started to go away and by today the cough is much, much better so much so that last night Owen slept til 4AM when I woke him up for his bottle. In a way, we're glad we've gotten through cold #1. It's another obstacle cleared and we'll be that much more prepared for cold #2, which I'm sure will be here sooner than later.

Now the only question remaining is...What does Owen have up his sleeve for his next trick?

Life with Owen

I love Owen. He's a cool kid. Tomorrow he'll be 12 weeks old and he's just started to do some really neat-o things. Life is still hectic; in fact, life is so hectic that I fell asleep in the dentist's chair today. How crazy is it that getting your teeth scraped is the most relaxing part of your day?!

Anyway, back to Owen. He's been sucking his thumb for a few weeks now, but just recently he's been able to do it with some degree of consistency. I can't tell you how frustrating it was for me to watch Owen bring his hands to his mouth over and over again, only to miss his thumb completely and start crying about the whole fiasco. The thumb really soothes him and I'm glad he's able to find it regularly.

Just recently he also started to grab toys and bring them to his mouth, too. Bryan or I have to hold the toy in front of him, but he knows how to use his opposable thumbs to grab on. And it must be instinct for a baby to put everything in his mouth, because the toys went straight in. FYI, it appears Owen is a lefty.

The coolest thing (next to sleeping through the night) is that Owen can now find mom's face in a crowd of people. We found this out the hard way (story below), but it's the most incredible feeling when your son finally recognizes YOU and wants to see your face above all others.

So Owen got his first cold at daycare. He had some congestion and sniffles for a few days, but we finally decided to take him to the dr. when it sounded like he had some chest congestion and he was running a fever. Bryan sent me in alone, thinking it would be a routine exam...how wrong we were. The first thing I hear is "pneumonia" and the second thing I hear is "blood draw". Eek. To put your minds at ease, it turned out to be just a cold, but that diagnosis only came after we did a flu test (giant cotton swab up Owen's nose), a blood draw (yes, a giant needle into my little son's arm) and a urine sample (a plastic bag taped - taped! - to my son's crotch - crotch!). Luckily, all those tests came back normal, so the dr. didn't require us to do the chest x-ray she originally scheduled. The only good thing out of this whole story is that during the blood draw, Owen was able to find my face amonst the other 3 people (nurses) in the room, and he looked to me for comfort and immediately calmed down when I picked him up. Cool.

"School"

It's been a while since I blogged, but rest assured I am alive and well! The first 6 or so weeks of Owen's life were rough for Bryan and I, as I suspect they are for all new parents, but we seem to have hit our stride around the 8th week. I just read the book "Home Game" by Michael Lewis, (hilarious!) in which he wisely noted that we love our children all the more because we do all that dirty work in those first weeks/months. We are truly grateful for Owen; he is the best kid ever and we are having a lot of fun seeing him grow in all the ways that babies do.

Since I'm returning to work on June 15th, and Bryan isn't keen on the whole Mr. Mom idea, Owen has to go to daycare. I like to call it school, because, well, just because. I sort of feel that sending your child to school is perfectly normal and healthy, but I feel guilty about sending my child to daycare. Probably because I was fortunate enough to have a mom who stayed home with me and my brothers when we were growing up. So we just won't call it daycare.

We started to take him for partial days this week, so hopefully we can have some sort of schedule in place when I go to work. The first day was rough. I cried. Okay, sobbed. Owen's teacher, Ms. Ana, had to hold me. I stayed with Owen for about a quarter hour, but left when he started to wimper. I don't think I could've handled seeing him cry and knowing that someone else was going to sooth him. I picked him up from school a few hours later and he was happy and smiling, thank goodness. Owen went back on Thursday and Friday, and it's going well. He doesn't realize what's going on (phew!) so the only real adjustment for Owen is getting used to his school schedule. One great moment today - Owen managed to poo during the 3 minutes it took to get from the house to school and Ms. Ana changed the diaper. Niiice.

Made It. Two Months.

Owen is two months old!

It's June 1, which means that Owen is two months old! That's the good news. The bad news is that since he's two months old he had to go to the doctor's office today and get his first round of immunizations. Wow, that's a lot of shots. Four shots, two in each leg, and one vaccine taken orally. He actually handled it really well. He cried, but Bridget and I are pretty sure that he cried because we put him down and he wanted to be held and not because of the shots themselves. With myself being someone who avoids doctors mainly because of the risk of getting shots, I think he did fantastic.

In other news, Owen has undergone quite a transformation in just the last week and a half. For the first 7 weeks, Owen was unhappy unless he was being held to our chests, being fed, or if he was asleep. About 10 days ago, however, he decided it was OK to just hang out and soak in the world. He still can't take too much stimulation at one time, but he's usually good for anywhere between 30 and 90 minutes after each feeding of the day. Of course, this change had all of our visitors over the last two weeks thinking we were crazy for saying Owen was such a handful (if only they had visited a week earlier!)

Owen sitting in his Bumbo seat for the first time

As far as sleep is concerned, he is getting better and better at sleeping in his crib at night. He's now going for 6-8 hours at a time after being put down at night, which is super since Bridget is heading back to work in 2 weeks and neither of us were looking forward to getting up every night for nighttime feedings. During his daytime naps we haven't pushed him too hard to sleep in his crib so he struggles with that. We'll see what happens when he starts going to daycare part-time this week. Something tells me they'll be better at training him to nap in his crib that we are. (As long as they don't just let him cry it out. Just one of my many fears about sending him off to daycare.)

It's amazing to think back on the first two months and see not only how far he has come but how far we have come as parents. Those first couple weeks were brutal and while things are not exactly sailing right along yet we have a much better handle on the situation. Now it's on to the next set of challenges. Monitoring for complications from vaccines, waiting for him to get sick at daycare, the beginning of toothing, etc. As long as I get a smile from him each day I think I'll be OK.

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