37-11

Hooray! He's eleven weeks old today.

Though we have a sort of hybrid newborn/one month old, in behavior. He's a newborn because he's home for the first time, and he's small, and he needs to eat a lot. He's a 4-weeker because he doesn't poop every day.

OK, so I know that hospitals don't send you home with babies and instruction manuals, but when they send you home with a chronic condition that needs to be managed, don't they tell you how to manage it? I think that they gave us some sort of binder two and a half months ago about caring for our new baby, but we weren't caring for him, and it wasn't like I had time to read ahead. No one told us, for instance, that he would not be pooping every day. That it might be more like every two or three days. They are obsessed with input and output in the hospital so, naturally, so are we. We did not find out until our pediatrician visit yesterday morning that his behavior is normal. We worried for more than two days about our little man's inactive bum because they worried about it in the hospital.

When he pooped last night, a big sticky mess of army green poo, we applauded. Wouldn't it be great if our mundane achievements were met with such enthusiasm when we were adults? Babies get love for the most bizarre things.

I want him to be regular, though, at least in the intestinal sense, and as he's a breastfed baby, he should be. At the hospital, they were plugging him all up with Beneprotein and Similac Human Milk Fortifier in his bottles, and they sent me home with Similac Neosure, instructing me to fortify two to four bottles a day for him to bring his breastmilk up to 22 calories instead of 20.

I didn't want to do it, and I vowed not to do it. But I was over talking to them about things like this, so I let them do their spiel, took the can with the demon shark-eyed bear on it, and nodded like I understood. We decided to wait and talk to the pediatrician, and then if it seemed absolutely necessary, I would find a supplement that was more to my liking and not chock full of corn syrup and additives and not made by a company whose name implies that they are similar to lactation.

Well, the pediatrician we found in half and hour while sitting outside a hospital coffee shop turned out to be a lactation guru, married to an immunologist, very experienced with preemies, and just all-around cool. She said that I did not have to supplement, we'll check his weight at his next appointment, and if he's not gaining, then we'll talk. She did say that I have to do the iron and vitamin D supplement, though, and it's downright nasty.

Our Little Man was a champ at the doctor's office. He got to be weighed all nekkid, which they did not do at the hospital. In fact, the last time they weighed him was in both his diaper and his apnea monitor belt. Now we can start from scratch at 5 pounds, 13.3 ounces and 18.5 inches. I'm going to talk to their lactation consultants and get him off the nipple shield when he's ready, which the doctor thinks should be soon because "he has a big mouth." Then the boy will go back in about three weeks for his second round of our alternative immunization schedule and a weight check.

Tomorrow will be the end of his 37th gestational week, and he's considered full term. Really, he just looks like a small, normal baby. He has a strong neck, a lot to say, and an almost adult ability to fart.

We are very proud.