Eli: Two week appt

Eli had his two week well-check and more than ever we really like Dr. Moore.

The stats:

Birth: 7 lbs. 8 oz.
Leaving hospital: 7 lbs. 2 oz.
Two weeks: 8 lbs. 4 oz. (Little oinker!)

Birth: 20 in.
Two weeks: 20-3/4 in.

It's pretty amazing to think that Eli's size right now is almost exactly Tobey's size at birth (8 lbs. 5 oz., 21 in.). I already feel like Eli has gotten visibly bigger and labor pains, while gone, are not completely forgotten. Did I really push out a two-week old Eli to when I gave birth to Tobey? Ouch.

So the reason why we love Dr. Moore so much is because he answered all of our questions with an intelligent and helpful explanation. Like usual, I came with my post-its full of questions (and this is fewer questions than I had with Tobey the first time around), some of which I thought might have been stupid questions to ask especially as a second-time parent. But he answered each without making me feel stupid, with an answer that was actually useful, giving us more information than we expected but all the information we would have wanted so that we can be better parents.

Dr. Moore on...

Burping - If baby is a spitter, burping on shoulder is better giving more uniform pressure on the body. If baby isn't a spitter, burping sitting up is better giving a little pressure on the tummy. Sometimes we might not hear the air pass up the sphincter (sp?) so burp for a couple of minutes and then stop. Sometimes over burping may "shake" up the baby more and produce more air/gas.

Day/Night - Continue to wake baby every couple hours in the day and sleep at will at night so that he learns day and night. As for wakefulness, waking baby early before feeding for some awake time is easier than trying to keep baby awake after a nice satisfying meal. Even if his wakefulness is a bunch of crying, that counts as awake time. Baby probably can't stay awake for more than 2 hours at a time.

One minute - Dr. Moore's big thing is letting baby cry one min. per week of age so that baby eventually learns to soothe himself. It seemed to work with Tobey, thus discovering that he could sleep through the night at 10 weeks but it will be a little harder to institute with Eli since we don't want to wake Tobey. And so Tom's additional question is do we let Eli cry at the expense of Tobey waking up too? And the answer is no, the point isn't to make more work for us. We did clarify this time though that this one min. per week goes for any time baby cries, whether it's middle of the night, waking from naps, whatever. We couldn't remember with Tobey what the "rules" were.

Nursing - Dr. Moore told us at the hospital not to feed more than 10 min. per side or I will be sore. Frequency, not duration, was the key -- apparently, the key to getting my milk in. Now that my milk is in, baby can nurse longer if he wants and if that's what it takes to "drain" that side. I may also find that as he gets older, he may actually nurse less on each side because he's gotten more efficient at draining a side faster -- could be just 5 min. per side. I look forward to that day but I don't know if Tobey ever just did 5 min. per side. Maybe it's because sometimes I can't really tell if I'm that empty.

Flat heads - My mom thought Eli's right cheek was smushed, as if he favored that side and then I thought I saw that Eli's head looks pointier at certain angles but wasn't sure if I was being hypochondriatic-ish just because my mom mentioned uneven cheeks. I thought my mom was "reading into" things because she also thought Kelsey's cheek was smushed and blamed it on her always being held on the same side. Since at two weeks old I hardly thought this was the case, I was ready to dismiss the question but I decided since we had Dr. Moore cornered that I'd ask it anyway (and of course blame it on my mom's paranoia). Turns out, Dr. Moore did notice that Eli favors one side (always observing, that Dr. Moore) but wasn't going to mention it until 2 months if Eli didn't even out his preference. His guess was that Eli was sitting that way, neck squished, in my tummy and so that's the position he likes. We can do exercises with him (10x10 second reps, chin to left shoulder) to encourage him to look left, but that's if we wanted. Nothing to really look for until 2 months.

The things I forget (or just never got straight in my new mom confusion) the first time around. I know people have differing opinions on everything mentioned above and more. But so far, every piece of advice that we have followed from him has worked on Tobey and we hope will continue to work on Eli.

As for this appointment specifically, Eli cried through the whole thing. That was my fault because I brought him hungry. I couldn't remember if he would get shots and if he did, I wanted to be available to nurse/comfort him afterward. Turns out, no shots but an angry baby the entire time. Dr. Moore doesn't even hear the crying anymore and there were even a few times that Eli stopped crying for a precious few seconds before he gained energy to start up again. Dr. Moore had us laughing most of the time, especially after he saw Eli's new weight, he said, "Well, that about ends all the questions I had for you!"

With his raspy voice, humor and upbeatness, and willingness to explain and almost teach us, Dr. Moore really does remind me of Charles, who had just visited us with Genevieve and baby Julianna that morning. Now we know why Dr. Moore is so popular. We're so glad we got "in" with him while we could. And we're glad that he also recovered from his medical leave earlier this year. Now in just 3 weeks, we get to go back, with another post-it of questions but this time for Tobey's 2-year.