Liam - a photo update

Sweet little baby

All dressed up for his first visit to the Law School!

The official family portrait :)

My, what big eyes you have

Looking adorable, as usual

Monkey!

Love this hat

Harley & Liam doing some Sunday napping on mom's lap

Keep the papparazi away!

a new buddy to nap with

Tummy time!

My little Yoda

Utter relaxation

Hattie was fascinated by Liam and had to check him out

Handsome is an understatement

Settling In

Starting with Week 2, I learned how spoiled I was to have mom and dad here to help out while Jay was at work.  It was way more exhausting when you were the only one handling all the diaper changes, feedings and all the assorted ups and downs...let alone the lack of sleep,  The good news was though that we managed to figure out pretty quickly how to get along together, old man Liam and I, and we got a pretty good routine of sleep, eating, napping and diapers down.  We even manage to get out of the house a couple of times each week for errands or lunch with friends, all that fun stuff.  Today though we are enjoying a nice quiet day at home, which is nice as well.

Harley continues to adjust to not being an only child anymore.  She will take the initiative now and come sit next to me if Liam and I are in the recliner, and she doesn't seem to mind having him near as much as she used to.  She also continues to be protective somewhat of her baby :)  This was the two of them napping together on the couch here the other weekend

The only downer these past couple of weeks was Liam's lack of weight gain.  At his 2 week appointment he was almost back up to birth weight, tipping the scales at 7 lbs 10 oz.  However, at 3 weeks he was only 7 lbs 15 oz...not enough of a weight gain to be considered normal.  He eats like a champ though, and with increased feedings and increased bottle size, plus going to two formula bottles a day, I'm happy to say that at 4 weeks he weighed in at 8 lbs 6.6 ounces!  Four to seven ounces/week is the typical weight gain for a baby this age so he was not only right on track, he made the two week average of 5 ounces/week fall within that range too.  We're hoping this will continue over the next couple of weeks. 

It is just amazing to watch him change and grow.  In some ways, he still seems like this tiny little snugglebug who will curl up on my chest and sleep, yet in other ways I can see him growing and changing.  His cry has changed a lot over the past few weeks, and he's getting longer too.  He's still my snugglebug though, as he is fast asleep on me as I type.  He continues to be a very, very good baby, and luckily as he has gained some weight, his overnight sleep patterns have lengthened out a bit!  It's amazing how much better I feel when I sleep 3.5-4 hours at a stretch versus 2-2.5!

I'm working to try to get more photos posted, but I have to try something new other than Flickr (since I'm too cheap to pay for more photo storage!).  In the mean time, I'll just do a posting of photos in a separate post from the past couple of weeks. 

Week One

Liam managed to make our time in the hospital interesting, and a bit worrisome, when he made his entry into the world.  He didn't tolerate labor well, particularly that whole pushing him into the world part, and his heart rate would drop to about half every time I pushed.  This made the doctor and nurses (who were all wonderful and fabulous) worry a bit about the umbilical cord and whether it was potentially wrapped around his neck.  The doctor recommended attempting to use the vacuum over a C-section, which was fine by us, and once that decision was made, it was chaos in the room (organized chaos, but chaos nonetheless to us who had no idea what was going on!).  People started appearing out of nowhere and we went from 3 people in the room to like 11 in no time flat.  The vacuum did its job and we got him out, but that then led to a host of other concerns (although not the umbilical cord, turns out maybe he was just sitting on it and causing the problems!).

The vacuum did a number on the back of the little guy's head.  Once he was out they whisked him over to be examined, and then started calling in specialists to look at his head.  He had a huge hematoma on the back where the vacuum had attached, and about a half circle where the skin had just been rubbed away.  After two NICU PAs and then a doctor looked at him, it was determined that he could just be observed in the maternity ward by the pediatrician and didn't have to go visit the NICU at all.  That was a relief.  The concern was that there was potentially bleeding underneath there that could cause problems, but as we found out, there wasn't a need for worry there.

All of this was going on though over on the other side of the room, so Jay went over there to see what was going on and took a photo of him so I could see our little man.  It was about 30-40 minutes before I finally got to hold him, and it was pretty perfect when they placed him in my arms!  It made all the craziness and worry that started the minute they started talking about his heartbeat dropping disappear and all the aches and pains totally worth it.

The good news on the head was that while the first day looked pretty darn bad, within 24 hours he was shocking everyone with how much better it looked and how quickly it was healing.  All that worry and all it took was a couple of days of Bacitracin :)  We found out at his first doctor's appointment with our pediatrician that the doctor from the hospital had called her the day he was born to give her a heads up, saying it was one of the worst hematoma/injuries she had seen back there.  By the time we saw our pediatrician 4 days later for a jaundice check (all that extra blood on the back of the head led to a minor case of jaundice), you would never have guessed it had been that bad.  We were so lucky and so fortunate that it turned out as well as it did. 

(A little sunlight therapy for the jaundice with Grandma)

It made for an interesting week though, that's for sure, between the head, the jaundice, major weight loss (was 7 lbs 12 oz at birth, 4 days later was 6 lbs 11 oz) and then some issues regulating his temperature (I think he's going to run cold like his mom!).  All of them worked themselves out though with a little time and attention, and by our two week appointment we had a growing, happy, healthy baby boy.

The Real Adventure Begins!

Happy New Year!  Liam Wallace was born on December 27, 2011 at 2:02 p.m.  Weighing in at 7 pounds 12 ounces and measuring 20.5 inches, he entered the world crying and demonstrating his lung strength!  This was a good thing to hear, as he managed to make the delivery interesting by not tolerating pushing well.  More on that later, but I'm already so late in posting this announcement I thought I'd get the basic news out there and include the requisite photos!  I've also updated the blog so that there's a new photo album of photos from the first week (and more albums will be added as well!).

We all came home from the hospital on the 29th and are settled in well here, thanks in large part to my parents who have been tons of help!  Harley Sue hasn't quite decided what to make of Liam...the first day she sniffed him from head to toe and then basically ignored him.  By day two, she realized that this kid wasn't leaving, and she started to be a bit more needy and jealous.  She seems to not mind Liam though, so that's a good start! 

Liam already has another nickname thank to his oldest cousin, who finds "Liam" a bit hard to say at 3 years of age...it comes out sounding more like "Baby Lamb" than "Baby Liam", which is pretty darn cute.  Liam himself is pretty darn cute, and is a really good baby (at least so far).  Not only does he have his mom and dad wrapped around his little fingers, I think you can probably add a number of other relatives to that list too!  We are so blessed and so fortunate and I can't wait to see what 2012 brings in our Adventures With Baby Z.