Liam is 3 months old today and officially an infant. Newborn no more!!
As everyone told us would happen, life is settling down a lot these days. His schedule is emerging and he doesn't have to struggle so much to do the simple things in life. He is now only getting up once at night to eat and he usually has two eating cycles of 5-6 hours at night. He is very engaged now and is starting to get distracted by things he sees and hears. Best of all, he is smiling and starting to giggle.
When we think over the past 3 months we are overwhelmed and overjoyed. Like most milestones we look back feeling that the past 3 months have both flown by and lasted forever. We are so thankful for all of the prayers that both helped us in the early weeks when things were so uncertain, and that continue to sustain us today. We are also very thankful for all of the help from friends and family!! We can't say thank you enough!!!
Last night was picture night in the Janke house. We needed to get a family picture for our Christmas card as well as Liam's 3 month picture. It's hard to believe he will be 3 months old on Saturday!! We knew we were tempting fate when we decided to do pictures in the evening. And, sure enough, we started pictures about 5 minutes before Liam thought it was bed time. So we never did get a true family picture, but we got a good picture of Tobias and me and a good one of Liam and we got creative with the card layout.
For now here is a shot when we were all together getting ready for pictures. See, I can stand on the other side of the camera. :)
Last night Traci and Bruce and Karen and Erik came over for dinner. We had a great time seeing everyone. Liam slept most of the night, which disappointed the girls who had come to play with him. He woke up after dinner and when Abby heard him crying she looked at Kyra and Ann and said, "Oh no! Liam needs . . . little people. Let's go!" They came over and sang 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star', 'This Little Light of Mine', and 'Old MacDonald' to help cheer him up. It was very sweet.
It's taken two days but 'Bias has healed the computer and I can once again work with pictures and update the blog!!
Let's see, the news from here . . . Christmas came a little early for Tobias and me this year. We asked Liam to drop his 3:00 AM feed for us for Christmas and he dropped it last night!! We are trying to be realistic and recognize that just because he has done it once does not mean he'll do it again right away. But the encouraging part is that we know he can do it and he is getting closer to sleeping through the night.
Yesterday during floor time I decided to get some pictures of Liam since we are starting to see ourselves in some of his features. Do you see what I see?
Mommy's chin
Daddy's lips (that bottom lip is a carbon copy!!)
Liam had his follow up doctor's appointment yesterday. The good news is that all the craziness of the past few days seems to be nothing more than a growth or development phase. Infants have 7 heavy development phases in the first 12 months and 4 of those happen in the first 4 months. According to the doctor these times will disrupt schedules, make the infants frantic, and make personalities more intense.
Liam is now 10 pounds 12 oz (4876 grams), which means he put on another pound in 12 days. The doctor said if he had seen Liam for the first time yesterday he never would have known he was a preemie born at 33 weeks.
The only item we are still watching is Liam's liver. His bilirubin level is still elevated. (Bilirubin is the yellow breakdown product of normal heme catabolism. Heme is formed from hemoglobin, a principal component of red blood cells. Bilirubin is excreted in bile, and its levels are elevated in certain diseases. It is responsible for the yellow colour of bruises and the yellow discolouration in jaundice.)
The doctor said his level is not at the point he is worried, but he wants a GI specialist to have a look just to make sure everything with his liver is in order. The doctor seems to think Liam has a 'sluggish liver' which is very common in preemies. Since the liver has to start working early it takes it a little longer to really kick in. Main factors for a sluggish liver are: 1) premature birth, 2) blood transfusions at birth, and 3) being breasted. Since Liam has all 3 the doctor isn't too concerned; he just wants to be safe. So at some point over the next week we should get a referral to a specialist for some follow up tests.
Please pray that this is nothing more serious that a sluggish liver.
The past few days have been interesting ones for us. Tobias and I agree that parenting is a very humbling experience. Before Liam we both felt like pretty competent people who could approach situations logically, decide on a course of action and execute. These days we end up in situations we can't figure out and execute has taken on a new meaning.
Four days ago Liam surprised us and went 6 hours between his evening and early morning feeding. The next two days were very difficult as he fussed unlike anything we have experienced before - - not the entire day but for hours at a time. These spells leave us feeling very helpless and frustrated because there does not seem to be anything we can do to comfort him, nor can we figure out anything that his triggered the crying, screaming, fussing . . . (So much for feeling competent!) So after two days of difficult Liam is now sound asleep and approaching 7 hours since his last feeding.
Perhaps he is hitting some significant growth/development phase and this will all settle down soon. He has a doctor's appointment tomorrow to check his weight and to get the result of some tests he had done 2 weeks ago. Hopefully the doctor will be able to help us make some sense of all this. For now though we are just waiting to see how long he sleeps this time and bracing ourselves for tomorrow.
