Tired

Brooke seems to be in a pattern where she doesn't want to go right back to sleep after eating in the "middle" of the night. This morning she woke up at 4am to eat and didn't go back to sleep until 5:30! Then Ryan was up at 6:45. :::yawn::: She also has not always been going right to sleep after her "bedtime" bottle and for a few nights was up until a little after midnight. She still sleeps alot during the day. She will usually stay awake for an hour or so in the morning and then sleep the bulk of the day, with just a few brief awake periods, until around 7pm. Then she is up from 7:00 (sometimes a little earlier) until she gets her last bottle for the night, usually between 10-10:30. I'm not sure what to do to get her to go right to sleep after her early morning feeding because she is SO wide awake. Oh well, I guess it will work out somehow eventually!

The home health nurse came again today. Brooke went from 6lb. 9oz. on Friday to 6lb. 14.5oz. today!! I knew she's been eating really well lately, but I didn't know it was *that well. LOL. And to think that last week I was worried about her gaining enough weight. I could tell her little legs were gettin gsome meat on them, though, lol.

Now on to the pictures.

I love when she holds her pacifier like this...so cute. She usually ends up knocking it out, though. LOL.

Zonked out in her bouncy seat.

I love these pants ; ).

Sleepy smile.

"Are you talking to ME??"

Love this face. LOL.

Brooke got this dress while in the NICU. Another family who had twin daughters in before had donated a bunch of special occasion dresses like this. I just had to take some pictures of her in it.

Don't mess with a hungry baby!

Hanging out after a diaper change, right before her bedtime bottle.

I plan on taking a pic like this every month until she turns a year old. I stole the idea from one of my online friends. Wish I would've thought to take one at 2 months! (That's the girly onesie we bought not long after we found out we were expecting again!)

A couple pics of my little man!

Playing his VSmile.

I can't believe he "posed" so well for this pic! LOL. He's very anti-camera lately.

The one evening, Doug was feeding Brooke and thought she was done, so he put her on the couch in her Boppy pillow. She started fussing, so he stuck the bottle back in her mouth to see if she wanted more and she did. Ryan wanted to feed her, so we let him hold the bottle for a couple minutes while she was on the pillow. Look how proud he was...

She looks like she's thinking, "Are you SURE you know what you're doing??" LOL.

Little chunker

Brooke's arms and legs (especially her legs) are starting to look a little chunky to me : ). The home health nurse was back on Friday and Brooke weighed in at 6lbs. 9oz. So between Tuesday and Friday she gained 2.5oz., so almost an ounce a day : ). Hopefully she'll get back on track with that! She's been eating very well. The spitting up varies, but hasn't been too bad the past few days. Tuesday and Wednesday were really bad. I think she had a slight touch of something, although she didn't even run a fever (thank God because I would have freaked) so who knows. She went back to the chiropractor Friday morning. He said he can definitely feel a difference. She's not as tight as she was. So he said to either bring her back this Wednesday or the following Monday (since the 4th is Friday). She's scheduled to go back Monday.

There's not much else to report! I'll try to add some new pics soon : ).

Officially full term!

Brooke's due date was on Saturday! Remember the scrapbook I posted about that my friend Heather made for us and gave to us at the baby shower? Well, she put a page in there titled

"June 21st, 2008"

"The Day Brooke Was Due"

which prompted me to do a "photo shoot" Saturday night. At first I didn't think Brooke was going to cooperate because every night between her 7pm and 11pm feedings, she acts like she's STARVING...yes, almost that *whole time. LOL. But I did get her to calm down and I got some great pics. Check them out.

This is how it started. LOL. She was ticked because the pacifier fell out of her mouth!

And now life is good again. LOL. Luckily I got her to cooperate (for the most part) w/out the pacifier.

Look at the biggie girl holding her head up!

It's hard work, though!

So calm : ).

Another feet picture, lol.

Long legs!

Trying to get that head up again, but it didn't happen.

This was hard to get! She kept trying to scoot away. LOL.

Here's another for size comparison....almost 3 months.

And at one month old. Bad mommy doesn't have a pic for 2 months : /.

And here is a baby picture of Ryan (finally) to compare with Brooke! He's the same size in this pic as she is now!

I stand corrected

I was sitting here last night really thinking about Brooke and her spitting up and she actually hasn't been spitting up as much the past couple days. So maybe the chiropractor *is helping. Or maybe it's just a coincidence. Either way we'll probably just take her the one more time (tomorrow night) and that's it, unless she starts getting worse or something again. The insurance covers the visit, but the $15 copays add up fast! (Of course right after I finished typing this paragraph, she spit up a mouthful of curdled-milk-like spit up. YUCK. Is that normal??)

The home health nurse was here this morning and Brooke weighed 6lb. 6.5oz. So that's just under the 1/2 an ounce a day minimum they like to see. I'm not sure if she's gaining so slowly now just because of the lower calorie formula (Neosure is 22 cal. per ounce and the Sensitive is 20 cal. per ounce) or if she's just having a slow spurt. I guess we'll wait and see what the doctor says when the home health nurse calls him with the update. I hope she has significant gain by Friday when the nurse comes again!

Yesterday evening, Brooke started coughing and sneezing a good bit. The cough sounds just like her "reflux cough" that she does occasionally, but she was doing it more. Coupled with the sneezing and then her not eating the greatest yesterday and being pretty fussy last evening, I thought for sure she was coming down with something. I was expecting a rough night, but she slept just fine and I actually had to wake her to eat at a quarter to 4 (about 5 hours since her previous feeding) and she drank almost that whole bottle. Then she drank her whole bottle at 8. The nurse said she sounds great. She actually hasn't sneezed yet today and has only coughed a few times this morning, so hopefully it's nothing!

Here's some pictures. I have some other ones that I'm going to put in a post all by themselves that I took on Saturday (her due date). But here's these for now!

Dressed up for Doug's mom and dad's vow renewal ceremony.

Before a bath. She made herself comfy while I was getting the water ready, lol. I was hoping she would wake up more when I put her on her belly, but nope!

This is where/how she sleeps at night...on the Boppy pillow in the bassinet next to my bed.

Hanging out on the end of the recliner after a diaper change. A lot of times I'll change her there so her head is slightly higher than her belly in hopes that she won't spit up and we almost always have something under her to catch any spit up.

Getting mad and I swear trying to roll over!

Ryan had to come make sure she was okay ; ). He gets very concerned when she cries or fusses! So cute!

Sucking on her hand.

Lifting her head up!

Sucking on the burp cloth. LOL.

Sacked out on the Boppy pillow downstairs.

Just looking cute ; ).

The home health nurse gave us these pictures. We taped them to the back of Ryan's chair, lol. Notice, we'll also fold up a burp cloth/cloth diaper to prop up against her pacifier to help keep it in her mouth because it's always popping out and then she gets mad!

I don't think I ever posted about Ryan's preschool graduation! It was on Wednesday, June 11th. They did a little program and sang a few songs. Ryan did SO well! Most of the pictures I took suck...they turned out so dark : (. But here's a pretty good one of him and his teacher, Mrs. Kristen, when he got his diploma!

Quick update...more later...

The new formula is going so-so. Brooke is still spitting up about the same amount, but she hasn't been having near as many painful episodes. I don't know if that's because the Zantac has finally taken effect or what. I've been told by a few people that it should work right away and a couple other people told me it can take up to 2 weeks to take effect. We decided to try taking her to the chiropractor to see if it may help with the reflux. It turns out she does have some restrictiveness in a couple spots on her spine that could be contributing to the reflux. The spine could be partially compressing nerves that control the signals to the muscles that keep food/liquid from coming back up. She's gone twice so far and is scheduled to go again today and Wednesday. So far I haven't noticed any difference, though : (. We've decided the next step will be to try some oatmeal cereal in her formula to see if it being slightly thicker will help it stay down better. I don't want to risk rice cereal constipating her because as it is she only poops every 3-4 days.

I'll post more later with pics! Sorry I've been slacking on posting so much : (.

Another doctor visit

I called the ped.'s office yesterday to see if I could get a different reflux med called in for Brooke. They wanted me to bring her in. First off, she's gained 6oz. since Monday! She's crossed the 6lb. mark and is now 6lb. 2oz.!

The ped. was reluctant to try a different medicine because I guess most of them aren't approved for babies, although some doctors do prescribe them. We decided to see if maybe the formula (Neosure) is the problem. He gave me a sample can of Similac Sensitive (lactose free) to try and see if maybe she won't have the spitting up problem. So we'll see how she does with that and then go from there!

On Wednesday, she puked (yes, puked...not just spit up) almost every time I burped her for her 7am, 11am, and 3pm feedings. She also had lots of tiny spit ups in between feedings. Yesterday, she didn't puke at all and didn't spit up too much, but she did have quite a few (5 or 6) episodes where she'll bring it up into the back of her throat and struggle and struggle to get it back down. Her face turns bright red and she arches her back as far as it will go and cries. It's so pitiful and I hate when it happens :*(. I hope this new formula helps! And if it doesn't, I hope she outgrows this soon!

Also, we decided to stop mixing my breast milk with the formula for now to see how she does, thinking maybe she's not tolerating something I was eating that she's getting through it!

I'll let you know how it all goes!

Oh, yeah...

I forgot I wanted to add in the last post a response to a question that was asked in the comments on the "Cloth diapers" post.

Yes, the pink diaper Brooke is wearing in the first pic in that post is the same diaper laying beside Brooke in this post (5th pic). So it fit her 2 months later! : )