All Arms!

Zoey has been using her arms and hands so much these last couple of weeks. Much to her daddy's delight, she is using her left hand and arm much more deliberately than her right side; Jason already has big plans for her t-ball and fast-pitch softball careers as a lefty. Turns out that babies will switch back and forth for almost a couple years before settling in to a left or right preference... but a father can dream, right?

Zoey has a wood rattle that she loves; it's basically just a small wood cylinder with some beans in it, and she'll grab hold of that (with her left hand) and just flail it all over the place. Totally adorable. She is also quite interested in whatever is behind her at all times, especially while nursing. Hooray! Aside from it being a little painful at times, it's really kinda cute how interested she is in the world around her. Unfortunately, that also comes with waking much more easily at every loud truck that passes on the street outside the bedroom window... The police sirens actually make her cry now. :-( Ah, for the days when she could sleep through anything...

Speaking of sleep, she is still sleeping soundly through the night, for which we are very grateful and lucky. Now if only we would go to bed at a reasonable time and take full advantage of it!

Zoey and I are taking a trip to Alaska on Tuesday night to join my family in celebrating the life of my grandfather, who passed away on Sunday. He was 88 years old and just as strong and independent as he was 30 years ago. He had been struggling with blood clots for several years, and last Monday he had a massive stroke from which he did not recover. He won't get to go on that moose hunting trip he had planned, but he is happily joining my grandmother who I'm sure he sorely missed for these last few years. I wish that Jason could come with us, but with his new job, there's no vacation time yet... So Zoey and I are going it alone and will be staying with family in Alaska. Here's to you, Grandpa!

Travels & family

Zoey took her first flight last week when we traveled to Minnesota to visit my (Wendy's) family. We drove up to Seattle (about 3 hours from Portland) to fly out of there because it is much cheaper than flying out of Portland, and we stayed overnight at Jason's brother Lee's house and flew out on Friday morning. Zoey fussed a bit on takeoff, but slept through the landing in Minneapolis. My dad & stepmom met us at the airport and we drove 4 hours north to the Iron Range where I grew up. My brother Mike and his family drove up from Kansas at the same time we were there, and we all spent the first few days at my mom's house and the last few days at my dad's cabin on Sandy Lake. Mike & Sarah just had a baby girl two and a half weeks before we had Zoey, so we had a wonderful time reconnecting and getting to know each other's girls. The grandparents got a whole lot of baby time, too! It was sweet to see my parents with our babies, with lots of precious moments. :-)


We returned to Seattle on Friday the 8th and got in around midnight. Lee graciously picked us up at the airport and we spent the weekend at their new house. Jason's sister Bridget flew in from Los Angeles as well. Lee & Eloisa had a big birthday party for their daughter Isabella who just turned three, so there were lots of family there, some who were meeting Zoey for the first time. It was adorable to watch Isabella enjoying her party! Bridget drove home to Portland with us on Sunday night and spent an extra day with us, which was absolutely wonderful.



Jason started his new job on Monday with Metro West, one of the city's ambulance companies. He is working three 12-hour shifts per week right now and spent all of that time in training this week. They outfitted him with a uniform and a great big jacket for the wintertime -- looks good on him!


I went back to work this week as well, just one morning in the office doing prenatal visits and another morning at our weekly business meeting. Zoey did great, taking a bottle of breastmilk from Jason while I was gone one morning. I had a bit of anxiety about it all, but she did great.

Here are some of the new things that Zoey is doing since my last post:

• holding our gaze for several seconds (sometimes minutes) before smiling and coyly looking away
• grabbing, grabbing , grabbing and moving everything toward her mouth
• standing better with support, and standing for longer
• lifting her head higher and longer during tummy time
  
• getting real close to rolling over from her back to her belly
• showing signs of being ticklish, especially at the back of her neck
  

The girl absolutely loves trees! She is clearly fascinated by them, staring contentedly. It's wonderful to stand outside with her and let her watch the trees as she drifts off to sleep. I'm not sure what we'll do in the winter when it rains all the time -- maybe we'll just need to have an umbrella handy... :-)

We're having a heat wave in Portland -- today was our third day of 100+ temps. We seem to have a stretch like this every summer, and we're hoping that it breaks soon. We do have a couple of window AC units, and they are working overtime to keep our second-floor duplex apartment manageable. Send us cool thoughts!

It's been a couple of weeks since I've blogged -- we have been super busy! Zoey is constantly delighting us with her little personality and the new things she does. She is definitely grasping at everything and moving it toward her mouth. I think she's pretty darn close to sucking her thumb for comfort, she just hasn't quite figured out how to stick out her thumb yet -- she just puts her whole fist up to her mouth and slobbers all over it. She's also exercising her legs a lot more by "standing up" on our laps. Sometimes she works at it so hard that she grunts and yells, which we think is quite funny. We'll have to see if we can get some video of that for you.

She's been wanting to face forward more in the last week or so, looking out into the world. Her very favorite thing is to be facing outward in our arms or in the sling while we stand on the porch and watch the wind blowing in the trees across the street, listening to the cars going by. That is how we've been spending the normally-fussy evening time, and she doesn't make a peep. Just big blinky eyes, taking it all in... and drooling. :-)

We had our first visit with our baby doctor yesterday, Dr. Sam, who is a naturopathic physician. We really like her demeanor, and Zoey seems to like her a lot too. She spent an hour with us, getting to know Zoey and inspecting her head to toe. Zoey now weighs 12 lbs 12 oz, is a little over 24 inches long and is in the 65th to 75th percentile in all of her measurements. Because my insurance doesn't cover naturopathic doctors, and also because Dr. Sam doesn't do vaccinations (mostly because many of her clients choose not to do them at all and the vaccines would just expire in her refrigerator), we will probably also have shared care with an MD pediatrician that my insurance does cover. Apparently a lot of people around here do it that way.

Next week we will be traveling! Our first big trip! We will be driving up to Seattle on Thursday evening and staying with Jason's brother Lee and his wonderful family, and then on Friday morning we will catch a flight to Minneapolis. My dad will pick us up and we'll drive another 200 miles north and spend the week with my family. My brother and his wife will be there too (coming in from Kansas), along with Mike's son Matthew and their new baby Elizabeth, who was born just two and a half weeks before Zoey. The grandparents will have so much baby time they won't know what to do! We're looking forward to getting lots of pics of Zoey and Elizabeth together.

Hope you all are enjoying the last days of July. Happy birthday, bro!

We had a busy last week, lots of activity! Our biggest news is that Jason got his first EMT job! He had an interview last week with an ambulance company and was called back for a second interview this morning, and within 2 hours of the interview, they called him to offer him the job! Woo hoo! They like to hire new EMTs and help them to work toward getting a paramedic degree, so he'll be working 3 shifts a week while continuing to go to school. They also offer classes and workshops to help develop skills to get through school, all in hopes of keeping him in the company when he graduates. Very cool. He'll start where everyone starts, at the bottom of the totem pole, and will be driving sick people to their doctor's appts. He'll be running the place before long... :-)

Zoey is doing great -- still going 8 hours between feedings at night! Yeah! We went to another mom's group meeting last week and one of the other mothers mentioned that she "had a great home remedy for that thrush." (Thrush is a yeast overgrowth in baby's mouth, a fairly common problem in babies that looks like white patches on the tongue, palate or inside cheeks.) I immediately denied that she had thrush, explaining that I had just nursed her and it was milk on her tongue, not thrush! Not my baby! Then, after I got over myself, I came to terms with the possibility that she might indeed have thrush. We've been trying my friend's home remedy for the last several days, and it has gotten a lot better. Jason picked up some super-acidophilus for me today, and I will blitz that for the next 6 days and see if that does the trick. Thrush can be hard to get rid of, and with my sweet tooth, it's even harder -- yeast loves sugary breastmilk! I've pretty much cut sugar completely out of my diet, so hopefully we can get things back on track. That little girl is a powerful motivator for me to eat right...

We think that Zoey is losing her long dark hair. There is some short dark hair coming in underneath, so we'll see what that turns out like. No freckles yet, but I had another dream about them the other night... there's no chance this girl is getting away without freckles!

She's been holding up her head a lot more, getting very strong. She's starting to push off on her legs a lot more too, so we're encouraging that by letting her 'stand' on our hands while she leans forward onto our body for support. The third month is also when babies typically start to notice their hands, so she's spending more time sitting semi-upright in a bouncy seat or in our lap rather than laying flat on the floor so that she can find her hands better. She certainly is grabbing fistfuls of my hair better!

We had a wonderful, busy weekend with lots of visits with friends, a beautiful wedding, and a street fair with music and food. This week we'll have another meetup with our mom's group, a BBQ with friends... and mommy gets a massage on Wednesday! Hooray!

2 months, 12 pounds, and 8 hours!

Zoey hit several milestones this week! She turned 2 months old on Sunday and weighed 11 lbs 14 oz (which is close enough to 12 lbs for the title of this post!). And to celebrate, she went 8 hours between feedings last night -- woo hoo! Of course, I woke up in the wee hours with the worst engorgement I've ever had, but we managed it and hopefully my body will adjust soon. Zoey had about three nights in a row where she only went about 4 hours between feedings, then Saturday night she went for 6 hours, then last night it was 8. We'll see how this new schedule shakes out in the nights to come...

Mornings have been so much fun with her. She wakes up in a great mood and just smiles at everything. This morning Jason spelled me while I went to take a shower. He & Zoey just hung out together, laying on the floor, walking around, dancing a little bit... Then when I was all dressed and ready, it was Jason's turn. He was holding her and not a second after I pulled the burp cloth from his shoulder to transfer to mine, Zoey spit up all over him. The timing was impeccable.

Zoey has been holding her head up really well lately and is also pushing with her legs more and more. Tummy time is going better, too -- she went from really hating it and crying right away, to tolerating it for much longer. Her favorite place for tummy time is on the quilt that her Great Grandma Helen made for her.

We had a nice holiday weekend, went to friends Audrey & Sarah's house for a BBQ on Friday evening but skipped out on the fireworks so that Z could get to bed. That's how it goes now, her sleep schedule reigns supreme. (It's OK though, because we were pretty tired too.) The rest of the weekend was relaxing and the weather not too hot.

Jason has a job interview on Wednesday with an ambulance company -- keep your fingers crossed for him! If he gets through this one, then he will have a second interview.

We hit a snag in our search for a pediatric care provider, as my insurance (Regence Blue Cross/ Blue Shield) does not cover naturopathic care. This means that in order for insurance to cover any of Zoey's checkups, we would have to go with an MD or a nurse practitioner. This isn't a bad thing, but we prefer naturopathic care. I have a health savings account, which means that Zoey and I together have a $3000 deductible before insurance kicks in anything. So regardless of the type of provider we choose, the first $3000 of expenses are going to come out of the savings account either way. If I go with a provider that is not an "eligible provider" with Regence (like a naturopathic doctor), then the money we spend does not get applied to that deductible, which is the downside. However, it's not likely that Zoey and I together will need $3000 worth of medical care in a 12-month period -- yes, it's possible, but unlikely. I'm healthy, and Zoey does not have any health issues that would amount to medical bills like that. So we're considering just going with a naturopathic pediatrician anyway. Often times, providers will give a discount to people who are paying out of pocket for care, so it may turn out to be cheaper anyway. We interviewed one naturopath a couple weeks ago before I learned that Regence wouldn't cover NDs, and we're working on scheduling an interview with another ND as well as an MD that many of my clients have used (and love). Maybe we'll end up with a hybrid model of care, where we see an ND for well-baby care and an MD for sick-baby care and vaccinations...

I put together a parenting group last week, made up of my favorite midwifery clients. We had our first meeting on Wednesday in the park, and it was wonderful. There were seven of us who got together with our babies and just chatted for a couple of hours about things like sleep and how to cook with babies and sleep and healthcare providers and breastfeeding and sleep... We've continued our conversations online since we met, and it's such a great group of smart women. I feel lucky to know them. And it's kinda cool that I caught most of their babies!

Six-week growth spurt?

This has been an interesting week for us. Zoey has been sleeping pretty well at night, going 5-6 hours between feedings (even went a record 7 hours last night!). She's often in a great mood in the morning hours, smiling and cooing and making us laugh. Then in the afternoon and evening, she starts fussing and can't seem to sleep well between feedings unless she is carried in the frontpak and we are walking around with her. As you might imagine, this makes it difficult to get much of anything else done! She nurses more often in the daytime, every two to two and a half hours, which probably helps her to go longer at night. After a feeding, she is often awake for 1-2 hours, much of which we spend soothing her! We know that it's just a phase that she's going through and will come out of it soon. We're just really grateful that she's sleeping so well at night! (Somebody knock on wood!)

So we weighed her this morning, as we have been every Saturday, and I almost can't believe the scale anymore. It said 11 lbs 7 oz this morning, which would mean that she has gained 12 oz this week, and basically 3 lbs over her birth weight. (She'll be 7 weeks old tomorrow.) To be fair, the upper end of my scale is 12 lbs, so it's possible that it's less accurate at the extremes? We also measured her and she's at 23-3/4 inches, which is nearly 3 inches longer than her length at birth. She does feel heavier all the time, and she's noticeably longer and growing out of her clothes... it's just so amazing that it's happening so fast! Our little superchunk!

It's hot here today -- mid-90s. We have a little window AC unit in our 2nd-level apartment, and it pretty much just runs all day to keep the bedroom manageable. The bedroom has windows all along the south-facing wall, so the poor AC unit fights a hard battle with that sun pouring in all day. The little mini-blinds aren't much help. We pretty much cocoon in the bedroom on days like this...

Tomorrow we are driving down to Eugene in the morning, which is about two hours south of Portland. I have a workshop from 10am - 5pm to renew my certification in the drugs I can administer as a midwife, as well as my skills in starting IVs, giving shots, suturing and managing shock. I have to go through this continuing education every three years as part of my license, so although the timing is difficult for an all-day workshop with a 7-week-old baby, I have to do it or I will lose the ability to do these things. Fortunately, I'll be with a group of midwives -- who better to understand and empathize with the needs of a new baby? And Jason is coming with us, wonderful Daddy that he is, so that if Zoey gets fussy, he can take her for a walk.

Jason has started his Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) class this week. Summer classes are more intense because they cram 12 weeks worth of material into 8 weeks, and A&P is already a difficult course. Fortunately, he has a great instructor, which makes all the difference. And Jason studies all the time, so there's no doubt that he's going to do very well. :-) He is also going to be assisting in the EMT labs for a couple of his old instructors, and he's been applying for all kinds of EMT jobs. There aren't a lot of jobs out there right now, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that he's going to get something exciting. I've got 5 weeks left of my maternity leave, and we'll see what things look like at that time for going back to work.

Stay cool, everyone!

Growing like crazy...

We weighed Zoey on Saturday, and she is up to 10lbs 11oz. That's a 9 oz gain from last week, which is a couple ounces ahead of the curve. Woo hoo! We had to back off from the one-bottle-a-day plan because we had a bit of a setback in nursing; her latch shifted a bit during breastfeeding and it became painful for me again, so we've gone to every other day for the last few days. She's back on track with the latch, so I'm hoping she'll stick with it and then we can go back to Jason giving her a bottle of breastmilk every night.

We had our first outing without Zoey on Saturday night! Jason and I went to see one of our favorite movies, Serenity, on the big screen. A guy here in Portland has managed to get a local theater to play this movie every year at this time for the last three years, and the ticket proceeds go to a global women's rights group called Equality Now. It has been so successful that the screenings have expanded to a few dozen cities around the world, which is very cool. Anyway, our amazing postpartum doula, Vicky, insisted on babysitting for us, which is great because she is probably the only person that we would feel comfortable leaving Zoey with at this tender age! We figured that she would be her normal angelic self for Vicky, but to our dismay, we learned that not only did she pretty much cry the whole time we were gone, she had a giant poop blowout too! Waa! Vicky was very gracious about it, thankfully.

We're interviewing pediatric providers this week. There are three naturopathic doctors that we're interested in talking to, although one of them charges $60 for an interview, so we may hold off on that one for now. (Not sure why he would charge for an interview when it's supposed to help generate business... I don't think I get that strategy.)

We're also going to learn how to do infant massage on Friday, which should be fun for everyone! I'll try to get some pictures to post. Stay tuned!