Order in the chaos....

Bryan and I continue to look for order in the chaos of Rowen's routine. Here are the updates.

* Sleep- Rowen is now sleeping in his Moses basket (bassinet) at night next to our bed. This has worked for the past TWO nights! Bryan and I have really enjoyed having our bed back. However, my shoulder is somewhat sore from reaching over and replacing Rowen's pacifier continuously during the night. It is funny, after trying for 7.5 weeks to get him into this basket for sleep - I woke up at 5:30am the first morning and realized part of me had missed him and was a little sad Rowen had "outgrown" us for night-time sleeping.

* Dr. Visit- Rowen had his planned 2 month visit last week. Unfortunately we were too early and had to reschedule for his shots. Rowen was 50% for height (length) and 10% for weight. Because we have been having some breastfeeding issues- Dr. Maughn wants to keep an eye on this. However, Dr. Solenski (my co-worker) said he is "99% for cuteness". We have to agree. We are going back 2/26/09 for his first round of vaccinations and a follow-up on his weight progress.

* Feeding (spoiler warning- this will be more about breastfeeding than you may have ever wanted to know). Rowen has had crying issues with feeding. We have remained uncertain of the specific cause and have come to think it is multi-factorial. It appears to be partly due to my "let-down" (lots of milk at once) and some gassiness. Interestingly, Rowen has been having some green poops (this is not the interesting part) and I learned this could be due to a foremilk/hindmilk mismatch (this is the interesting part). This occurs in Mom's with over-production, marked by fast/plentiful let down (which I have). This results in baby getting a lot of foremilk and less hindmilk. Foremilk is higher in lactose and causes increased gassiness. This is very interesting- since many of these crying episodes happen 2-5 minutes into a feeding. Fortunately, it appears that he is outgrowing this little by little. He is having less episodes and now has them after 7-10 minutes of feeding. Dr. Maughn recommended also not changing breasts during feeding, which also reduces the amount of foremilk he gets and this seems to help. Our new mission is to track the color of his poop in our notebook that has been tracking Rowen's routine.

* Development milestones- Rowen continues to have wakeful states. He is best in the morning. Below are two pics of reading and talking. Also, a video from this AM with Rowen talking and smiling. This is our favorite time. He has been having improved head control and coooing more. You can see that he is still somewhat of a weeble wobble, but he is doing better. He continues to try to mimic us with sticking out his tongue. We have tried, per Uncle Don's recommendations, to do pursed lips and raised eyebrows. This makes Rowen smile, but he does not appear to be able to mimic us. He is very good at tracking objects and faces and has had good conjugate eye control.