Baby Brother –1 month

Wow! I can’t believe Baby Brother is over a month old already.  It seems like a blur, but I guess that’s what hap­pens when you’re on new­born sched­ule! The month has been spent adjust­ing, deal­ing with nurs­ing issues, going to numer­ous doctor’s appoint­ments, enjoy­ing vis­its from a few friends and fam­ily mem­bers, and snug­gling a really sleepy new­born.With all my breast­feed­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, we were really focused on mak­ing sure that it goes as well as it pos­si­bly can. And, things just weren’t going well. His latch was ter­ri­ble and he wouldn’t nurse long. I was frus­trated and in pain (not to men­tion had almost no sup­ply). So, at 5 days old, we headed to a visit with the lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant (who is also a pedi­a­tri­cian) I had seen right before he was born. She thought his palate was really high & he was some­what tongue-tied (both of which make latch­ing on & nurs­ing dif­fi­cult). So, she referred us to a pedi­a­tri­cian who spe­cial­izes in an elec­tro­cautery tongue-tie pro­ce­dure on babies for the pur­pose of bet­ter­ing breast­feed­ing. By that appoint­ment (at a week old), he was down to 6 pounds even. He seemed to have dif­fi­culty even latch­ing on to bot­tles. So, we went through with the pro­ce­dure and it imme­di­ately made a notice­able dif­fer­ence. One week later (at his 2-week well-check), he had finally sur­passed his birth weight and was up to 6lbs. 13oz. Another week or so after that (at his tongue-tie pro­ce­dure follow-up), he was up to 8 pounds even! Pack­ing on the pounds! And, basi­cally, that’s what we spent our first month doing. Pretty much just snug­gling, eat­ing, and lots of sleep­ing on his part. Per­haps I’m just not remem­ber­ing with the other two, but Baby Brother seems to be far more sleepy a baby than the older guys! He’s def­i­nitely not sleep­ing through the night or any­thing. But, he’s had very few awake times and is quite a bit sleepier through­out the day. Maybe a prod­uct of com­ing two weeks early? I don’t know. But, now that we’re at the one month stage, he’s finally hav­ing some awake peri­ods and is already SO much notice­ably big­ger! For monthly pho­to­shoots, we started using a bit of an uncon­ven­tional stuffed ani­mal when Big Brother was a baby–a large croc­o­dile! It’s cer­tainly not the best pho­tog­ra­phy prop, but since I used it for both the other boys, we’re using it again! I hap­pened to take Big Brother’s & Lit­tle Brother’s one month shots in the same out­fit (which isn’t the best for pho­tographs either), so Baby Brother wore it too! Noth­ing great from a pho­tog­ra­phy per­spec­tive, but I love hav­ing them side-by-side for com­par­i­son. So fun! Baby Brother must have known I was going to com­pare the shots– just look at him stretch­ing out as far as he can in an effort to look big­ger! And, here’s proof of what a sleepy guy he’s been. I picked him up & laid him on the ground for these shots and stayed sleep­ing for a few min­utes. But, he did indeed finally wake up and stretch out! You can see how he still has plenty of grow­ing to do before he fill­ing out that sleep­ing gown! Much dif­fer­ent than Lit­tle Brother! And, last but cer­tainly not least on the pic­ture front, each month with Lit­tle Brother I tried to get at least one shot with Big Brother in it too! They turned out dar­ling each month and made for some great size com­par­isons! So, I’m hop­ing it will work out the same way with Baby Brother–though try­ing to get a decent shot of 3 squirmy boys is cer­tainly tough! We’ll see how it goes. But, at least we have some­thing for month one! I’m hop­ing we’ll find our groove this next month and be rewarded with some awe­some baby smiles. There have been glim­mers of what look like some smil­ing this week! So, I’m get­ting excited for that!