One month already

The past couple of weeks have been a big adjustment around here, especially since Justin wasn't healing as well from this surgery as he did the first one (although he did much better when he was actually in the hospital for this one).

We have been doing a lot of this around our house:


And when we aren't sleeping, Jacob is eating and getting bigger (and starting to grow out of his preemie clothes!). Here is a comparison of how tiny he was in his car seat when he came home from the hospital and how not as tiny he was in his car seat today going to his one month check-up. There is no longer room for the extra padding around his head when he is in the car seat!



At his visit today Jacob weighed in at 6 lbs, 1 oz - a whole pound (and 20%) increase from his weight less than 3 weeks ago. He also measured in at 19 inches long and a head circumference of 34 cm. He is still not on the charts as far as his development (still under 5th percentile), but hopefully by next month he will be.

In the meantime - I can totally tell that Jacob is eating lots. So much, in fact, that I am not producing enough milk for him. Because Jacob is a preemie, nursing him is more complicated than if he had been full-term. He was bottle-fed in the NICU most of the time (with milk I pumped), but even if I was there he would always get a bottle after I nursed him (preemies get super-tired putting forth all the effort to nurse). Even once Jacob came home, I continued to pump after every time I nursed him and he got a bottle to make sure he was getting enough to eat. For a while there was tons of extra milk in the fridge here until last week when I suddenly started getting almost nothing when I pumped, yet Jacob was wanting more from the bottle after nursing (even though he seemed to nurse really well). As things stand now, I am running out of stored milk. I have started taking supplements to boost my milk supply and am continuing to pump every time I nurse, which means that I am almost always either nursing, pumping or cleaning pumping supplies. No wonder I haven't been blogging.

We were also told today that due to Jacob's prematurity, he should not be around other children until he is about 3 months old. The doctor specifically told us not to take him to church - too many kids and too many people who would want to see him and touch him. However, we don't have to keep him shut up in the house anymore - the way it has been since we brought him home. That is, as long as it is somewhere where people won't be trying to touch him and breathing all over him.

Right now Jacob's elephant (from his future aunt Joanna) is bigger than he is - maybe things will be different next month.


I should also mention Colby (our first "child"). He is very curious about Jacob and likes to smell his head, and lick his feet. So far he has been really good although we can tell he is a little confused and maybe depressed that he doesn't get all the attention anymore.