The Long Week

Sorry we're a little late, everyone.  It's been a looong week.  Two major things causing disruptions this week - the continued search for the reflux cure and me (Jen) getting sick.  I had a wicked bout of food poisoning Wednesday and I'm still recovering from the aftereffects.  We were lucky that Shif's mom was here Wednesday night when I got sick, because for that night I needed more care than the baby did and I was glad to have Shif around.  The hardest thing to deal with in the aftermath was that we weren't sure if it was food poisoning or a stomach flu, so just in case it was flu, I couldn't be around Zain.  After two days or so, baby withdrawal was pretty severe!  :-(  I've still been having a lot of trouble in the last few days (some of you may recall my history with dehydration and pictures of Shif giving me an IV in India!), so it's been hard for me to pull my weight with baby duty.  So, Shifi has really had to pick up the slack, on top of the already grueling life of breastfeeder for a baby linebacker.

 Things may be looking up, though. I'm feeling quite a bit better today and we also tried giving Zain a bottle of pumped milk today and he took to the bottle fine (and back to the breast fine afterwards).  So, I am currently sitting in the nursery on the first night shift, with 2 ounces of liquid gold next to me.  Shif is hoping she can get a luxurious 4 straight hours of sleep out of it - it would be the first time since the day before she went into labour!

The reflux issue continues to kind of consume us....  We've tried all sorts of things - raising the head of his cradle, sleeping him in his jiggle chair, pacifier, changing the way he feeds.  Shif has also eliminated all elements of joy from her diet in case it's an allergy issue - no dairy, no soy, no citrus or sour food, no spicy food.  I think there are like three things left that she can eat.  Dairy (whey) and soy (soybean oil, soy protein isolate) are hiding in everything.  And she's a vegetarian, so life without soy has been interesting, too.  There seems to be some improvement.  He is gagging, choking, and sputtering less when we put him flat on his back (so fun to listen to your baby do that!).  But he still wakes up a lot.  Day and night.  So... it's been a long week.

He sometimes follows objects now. 

On the positive side, Zain remains the cutest baby ever.  :-)  He's growing.  No problem there.  We visited the midwife tonight and he's now 9 lb, 11 oz.  We had to go shopping for new footy sleepers yesterday because he's too long for several of the ones he's been wearing.  He's very alert and loves to look around.  We've gotten a few little smiles out of him, too.  He also loves to be naked.  :-)

Sorry for the short post.  Back next week, hopefully healthy, with more.

Claudette was visiting from Sioux Lookout and very happy to meet Zain