Happy Halloween!

Poor Sick Baby

sick babies turn into cuddle babies

Rhett hasn't been feeling well for a few weeks now. He caught a nasty little cold, which went away but has now come back in full force. He doesn't seem miserable--he's eating and sleeping well, and is still generally a pretty happy little boy. But he is a little clingier and a little more prone to whining and tears. It breaks my heart to hear him sniffling and coughing. His coughs started sounding a little too wet for my comfort last week, so I googled it. Don't ever do that. Googing is stupid. We were pretty convinced he had pneumonia or RSV or some other horrible baby-disease. But alas, the doctor said that his lungs are clear and his throat is what's snotty (which is apparently just fine). He does have a little ear infection  so he's been on antibiotics this week (Which he loves. Apparently it tastes like bubble gum). It's no fun having a sick little guy. I feel so bad for him when he's wheezing and coughing all night--I think it's a lot harder on me than it is on him.

Keep Rhett in your prayers! I'm really hoping he feels better soon.

tired little guy

Josh's Field Work

One of the requirements for Josh's schooling, is to attend a field work church--Josh was assigned this church at the beginning of the school year, and we are to attend while we are in St. Louis, and Josh helps out the Pastor with a variety of tasks.

We were assigned to Blessed Savior in Florrisant, MO. It's about a half-hour drive. They worship about 100 people a week, spread out over three services. It's smaller than we're used to, but we've had such a good experience there so far. The people are really nice, and Josh is enjoying helping out with the Sunday School opening program every week.

Josh gets to wear a clerical. 

We usually attend the adult Bible Study class until Rhett gets fussy, and then I excuse myself to the nursery. We like being able to go to Sunday School together, and he usually does pretty well for the first twenty minutes or so. We're always trying to strike a balance between staying together as a family, and not distracting everyone who is trying to discuss the book of Acts. I don't think anyone minds him being there, but I would hate for them to be secretly wishing we would all just go away! (I know they aren't really wishing that. They are NICE people).

Acts is intriguing

Rhett enjoys church. The stained glass is realllly fun for him. And even in the womb, he's enjoyed organ music. So church is a real treat for him. For some reason, they turn the lights off at Blessed Savior for the sermon. Rhett usually passes out on the pews which are conveniently padded.

This makes communion tricky

We've been very blessed by this congregation. I know that we will have an excellent three years of worship here.

6 Months of Rhett

Chair photos are hard at six months!

I'll spare you a side-by-side newborn to baby Rhett picture extravaganza this month. I already posted a comparison video and I'll probably do a photo collage at some point.

But you guys! My baby is six. months. old. Half of his babyhood is gone! In just six more months, he'll be one! He's going to be toddling around before we know it, and I can't even believe it! The last six months have flown by. We are enjoying Rhett more and more every day. He's such a joy!

Cute boy

Rhett's personality has come alive this month. He suddenly seems to know exactly what he wants all the time and he gets really frustrated when he can't communicate it to us. He's obviously developing cognitively too--he is so interested in the world around him and always has an inquisitive look on his face. I noticed that when he drops something out of his line of site, he'll lean far over to try and find it. He realizes it's on the ground, so he has the basics of gravity and cause and effect DOWN (he's going to be a scientist. I'm sure of it)

We got to experience the wonderful world of teething this month. Rhett has two teeth on the bottom. He was really irritable and ran a small fever for the first tooth. The second wasn't as bad. Hopefully he'll be able to tolerate the pain better as he gets older.

He want to crawl so badly. We've been giving him lots of tummy time and home and he tries to get to a toy or to his daddy, but he usually ends up rolling over on his back, in the opposite direction--further away from his destination. It's funny because he'll get a really frustrated look on his face, and then look up at us as if to say "...you going to turn me back over, or what?" (he can't roll over from back to front yet either).

Bedtime

Rhett's grown to love his stuffed animals and his books. He likes being with mom and dad and the sound of the vacuum cleaner. He loves blowing rasperries and spit bubbles and just recently, being tickled and playing peek-a-boo. He laughs when we so hard when we do and he's been making friend with the other babies on campus.
He can sit up on his on for a minute or so now (when we prop him up). We've been able to put him in high chairs in restaurants  which has just been amazing. It's nice to be able to eat without having to hold him--particularly because he now tries to grab things off our plates.
As of today, Rhett has tried pears, sweet potatoes, avocado and carrots. His favorite seems to be the pears, but he pretty much responds with utter confusion at any solids right now.

He sleeps though the night, most nights. He's been teething and had a cold for the past few weeks, so sometimes he'll wake up and need to be comforted. He's also eating like a horse (around 40 oz of milk a day!). So once in awhile, he'll wake up in the middle of the night, or really early in the morning for a bottle. He's really good about going right back to sleep though. Which we appreciate. 

He's also started to grow some hair! It's hard to see in pictures, but his hair is getting longer and thicker by the day. It's still very much 'baby hair"--very wispy and fine. It's hard to tell, but it looks like it has hints of red in it, which took us by surprise! Josh has reddish facial hair, and apparently his grandfather was a redhead. It would be so funny to have a little boy with red hair! We'll see how it looks when it gets longer. 

Can you see the hair?

We're excited for the month to come! Grandpa is visiting, we're going to all dress up as a family for Halloween, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that Rhett will make some progress on the crawling front (he wants it so bad!)

Exclusively Pumping for Rhett

Disclaimer: This is a personal post and might fall into some TMI territory. Sorry about that. It also got a bit longer than I expected.

I will post the six month update soon, but six months is somewhat of a milestone for me as well and I wanted to write about that first.

When I first heard about Rhett's IUGR, one of my biggest concerns was that breastfeeding would be difficult. During my pregnancy, I had wanted to exclusively breastfeed my baby, and was hoping to be able to nurse for one full year. When he was born, one of my first thoughts upon seeing how little he was was "there's no way that baby is going to be able to nurse".

In hindsight, I think I kind of set myself up to fail. I didn't give nursing a real chance. I  didn't want to try and fail, so I didn't really try at all. I was way too emotionally unstable when Rhett was born to add the stress of trying to nurse him when I was pretty sure it wasn't going to work.

So I did what I thought would be the next best thing for Rhett. I started pumping breast milk for him to take from a bottle. The days in the hospital were the worst. I didn't have a double pump, refrigerator or dishwasher at my disposal. So I would pump on each side for 15 minutes, take the pumped milk to the nursery, wash all of the pump parts by hand and then go back to the nursery to feed Rhett his bottle. I did this every three hours around the clock, usually getting about 40 minutes of sleep in between at night.


Early on, one of the nurses asked me what brand of formula we wanted to use if I wasn't producing enough milk. Somehow, she got it into my head that I probably wouldn't produce enough, so I was very diligent with my pumping. Pumping is kind of terrible. It's all of the worst parts of breastfeeding, with none of the benefits (for the mother). I was happy to be able to provide for Rhett, but miserable with the amount of time it took me to feed him. It was taking me away from him for hours a day. And it was very stressful.

One of my most vivid memories in the hospital was the day I was so engorged, I couldn't even get out of bed to go give Rhett his bottle. The nurses were always so impressed with my pain tolerance--after my C-section, I never rated my pain as more than a 4 on the 1-10 scale. But oh, man. One day I was engorged so badly that I was whimpering to Josh that I was at a 9. I sat up in bed as best I could and pumped for about an hour trying to relieve the pain.

Things got better when we got home and I could pump while Josh fed him a bottle next to me. Night time sessions were still the worst. Instead of getting to cuddle up to my baby and nurse, I would get to hook up to a pump while Josh fed him. Some nights of this were actually kind of nice. Josh and I each had an important role in feeding him and we got to do it together, each and every time. Once Rhett started sleeping through the night, I cut out the middle of the night pumping as well, and then things started to get a lot easier. I made a goal for myself--I would make it to six months exclusively pumping. It was hard work and I remember thinking that six months would never, ever come and I would surely give up before then.

But here we are. Six months. And I did it. I hated (almost) every minute of it but I did do it. He's six months old, and he has been fed breast milk exclusively. And he's thriving. He's growing so much and it's so encouraging for me to watch it happening. I am proud of myself this week. For doing my very best to give him the best, even though it has taken it's toll on me.

Josh and I have decided that it is time to start supplementing my milk with formula. Upon returning to work, I have had to cut down on pumping sessions and with Fall allergies and colds hitting me constantly, my supply is no longer enough to satisfy my growing boy. My freezer stash has been slowly dwindling over the last month and I don't expect it to last for the rest of the week. I made the very difficult decision this week to not try to add another pumping session in to up my milk supply. It just takes too much of a toll on my emotional well-being and I truly believe that Rhett would rather I spend that time with him. Our plan is to give him 8 oz of formula each day, which should be a little more that what we need to bridge the gap. As the months go on and Rhett eats more and more solids, I am hoping that his demand for milk will go down to the point that we won't need to supplement anymore. But I am feeling very comfortable with where we're and what I've done. I made it to six months. And I am going to continue to do the best I can.

Now and Then