A Big Move

Having a baby a'int easy; Jessica and I have learned over these past months that having a support system for both the baby AND the parents is crucial. We were blessed with being close to Jessica's sister and her family, but we were quickly finding the cost of living in the bay area was getting to the point where we found it difficult to see how we could make ends meet, while still having a nice quality of life and providing the best possible opportunities for our little man.

And so, we decided recently to make a move to the great wet Pacific Northwest, specifically the Portland, Oregon area. We have rented a house in a nice suburb (Tigard) only 3 minutes from my cousin and her family, and 5 from my aunt and uncle. Additionally, my sister and her family are just 15 minutes (without traffic) away in North Portland. I also have quite a few other family members in Oregon, friends in Seattle, and we're still just a 1:15 hour flight from the bay area.

Schools here are wonderful, the cost of living here is wonderful (plus no sales tax!), people here are almost ridiculously friendly, lots of focus on the environment, and locavore, and the outdoors, and healthy living, neighborliness, etc. We are finding things so far to be very welcoming and positive, and are really looking forward to exploring more as the sun starts to come out (we have seen it come out, so it's a real thing here too), and to sharing with our (now slightly more distant) loved ones.

We will certainly miss the Bay Area - Jessica lived there for 12 years, and I for 20; nearly all of my adult life has been in or around San Francisco; it's a great place, and we've made some amazing friends and memories over the years. Now however, our focus is on Liam, and the best for our family for the long run, and Portland is a terrific place to do just that.

:-)

who am I?

I know my titles - wife, mom, daughter, sister, yaya - but who is my true self. Maybe she is a combination of each of those titles, depending on the day. Needless to say, I'm having a bit of an identity crisis since becoming a parent. Some days I don't see Jessica in the mirror or in the eyes of my family and friends. In the blink of an eye you become a entirely new person who you're supposed to immediately connect and identify with but I haven't. I'm sure (and hopeful) that as time passes I'll figure it all out, and yet, today I mourn the loss of that ability to recognize who I am outside of those titles. Isn't it important for my husband and son to know that woman too? It definitely is. It's also equally - if not more - important to know her myself.

no RX

On the evening of September 5th we gave Liam his final dose of phenobarbital. What a blessing! It felt so good, so right. I truly wish that he had never had to take it in the first place but am extremely grateful that it's over with. We even met with his neurologist last week and hearing her say that there would be no need to meet with her again was pure relief. Thank you and adios, Dr. Kuperman.

I'm still dealing with the guilt I have deep inside. The fact that he was so ill at birth due to some unknown event in utero haunts me. I'm certainly coping with those traumatic ghosts better than I was a few months ago but even watching a TV show about a woman giving birth takes me so swiftly back to that dark place.

My hope is that in the days, weeks, months and years to come as we watch him develop into whomever and whatever he's going to be that those bad memories fade away. As I watch him nap so sweetly in my arms, it fills me with gratitude. He's here and he's perfect.

Sleep

One of the most common bits of advice I received from other parents as Jessica and I were approaching Liam's birth was to "get your sleep now". Which turns out is sort of impossible. There is no amount of pre-sleep you can accomplish that will at all prepare you for the sleeplessness to follow the arrival of a newborn.

After Liam was born, we started getting updated bits of advice, such as "sleep when he sleeps". This too turns out to be pretty close to nonsense, as when (if) you finally get your baby down, is when you can finally use the restroom, or fix yourself a sandwich that you may not get a chance to eat for another 4 hours. Sometimes it does work out that way, but usually out of pure exhaustion, versus some sort of preconceived tandem nap time.

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During the day, our guy can barely make it 2 full hours between feedings (just like his Dad!), so even getting significant naps during the day can be pretty difficult. Though, he's in such a better mood when he does nap during the day...a fine balance between naps and play and milk.

Right after we brought him home from the hospital, we of course could hardly sleep at all - Jessica and I were both on super high alert, with the slightest sound making us both jump up at the ready. Even too little sound would cause worry and we'd get up and check on him. Over time, the 3 of us have grown more comfortable at night, which has allowed us all to catch more and more of those precious z's.

At first, he'd get up 3-4 times a night. Then after 6 weeks or so, he started needing only 2-3 times a night...Recently, he's alllmost down to ONE time in the night. In fact, within the last week, he has bested his personal record in sleep time between when he first falls asleep, and his first feeding.

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A great nighttime strategy Jessica and I started a couple months ago was to split up feeding/caring duties; initially, we would both get up together every single time, and after several weeks of getting only a handful of hours of sleep per night, we started getting a bit ragged. So, I started taking Liam's first wake-up, and Jessica would take the next one (or two...poor thing). At the time, he would sleep maybe 3 hours at a time, which meant that with our new approach, we could each count on 5-6 hours of (mostly) uninterrupted sleep.

I've read a good bit about baby sleep in recent months, and as we began approaching the 3 month old mark, one thing I read that I found particularly interesting was that apparently at 3 months, the typical baby begins to develop melatonin, which helps baby sleep. Additionally, as baby gets bigger and is able to hold more milk in his belly, he can sleep longer.

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As mentioned earlier, Liam has been breaking sleep records. Now, I certainly don't want to jinx anything (knock on wood), but last night, on his 13 week "birthday", he slept a full 7 hours before his first feeding at 4am. His next milk was taken at 7:30 in the morning...This my friends, is a very, very good thing. There apparently tends to be a bit of regression in the coming weeks and months as he starts getting excited about the things he's able to do, and processing the new fun stuff he experiences, but for now, he's on a really nice sleep schedule, and that has made a tremendous difference for all of us.

Go buddy go!

This is an awesome kid

What an incredible journey this is. Our little guy is eating and growing like crazy, and watching him learn new things about his world is exciting like I never really knew before. Within the last several weeks, Liam has finally started recognizing our faces, and reacting to us with smiles when he sees us. He now also laughs at our funny voices and sounds and faces we make - he loves the character decals in his nursery, and immediately smiles and chuckles to himself each time he sees them:

It's not always grins and giggles of course; there definitely are still times where things are more stressful than I'm generally at ease with, but being able to count on seeing him smile at me when I get home, or laugh when I show him the wall yeti above his changing table makes all that anxiety melt away.

Tomorrow he turns 11 weeks old, and during his short time here so far, he has made amazing strides - he started 2 weeks early, and a touch on the small side, but he's now squarely in the above average percentiles in all his measurements. He eats really well (no surprise!), and is strong and healthy. He's active, and likes play time as much as he likes snuggle time. He's sleeping better and better, sometimes giving us 6 whole hours in a row within which Jessica and I can catch up on our z's too. 

Most excitingly to me is seeing his little personality begin to show itself. The little man is quickly growing into someone who is not just healthy and strong, but happy and content - which is thrilling to see. I look forward to a lifetime of joy teaching and learning from our little warrior.

Love you buddy!

with both hands

It's amazing what you can do with one hand now that you're the parent of a newborn. Pour a cup of coffee, with careful regard of just where his feet and hands are as to not burn his delicate skin, texting while pumping to catch up with dear family & friends (sorry for the visual...) and changing his diaper with one hand while entertaining with the other as to not witness him "go tomato."

The thing is I would do anything for this little guy with both hands for the rest of our lives. Some days are tough, not gonna lie. I'm sure it gets even tougher further past 7 weeks old but it's all worth it. Every minute of dearly missed precious sleep cannot outweigh the great opportunity we have to watch him grow.

Some days I witness minor victories like the beauty of a toothless grin, the soft coo of delight at whatever it is that he's looking at and how awesome I feel when I can put him to sleep simply by just holding him in my arms. I am so grateful for this gift we've been given and promise to do the best we can, always.

Geeking Out

Ok, so maybe there is such a thing as overkill, but dang it, we like keeping track of things and organizing stuff. Especially given Liam's start, we have been very diligent about record keeping of all his bodily functions. Hooray baby bodily functions!

For fun (yeah, I said this was fun), I thought I'd graph out how he's been doing so far with everything we've been tracking, which is number of feedings, amount of milk consumed (in ounces), number of pees, and number of poops. And here we are:



Order to the chaos! To me, this is interesting and encouraging - we can see that while there are some small variances up or down on a day to day basis, the overall trend is that he's being consistent with his feedings, and processing all that food, and his milk intake is slowly going up over time. Which is exactly what we want to see.

Go buddy go!