Two Week Update

It's hard for us to believe, but Reagan has now been with us for two whole weeks. At the risk of sounding like every other parent in the world, the time is really flying by. Let me rephrase that . . . the time is flying by for me. I get the sense it is dragging by for Susan since she remains housebound by a medical protocol which was probably designed for mothers who struggle to recover from c-sections. As I've mentioned in this space before, she truly has remarkable recuperative powers. Nonetheless, she's not allowed to drive until at least August 18th, and since we really can't take Reagan anywhere yet, Susan remains a prisoner.

Reagan is doing well, but she has yet to settle into a set sleep routine. Oh, she still sleeps for probably 22 hours a day, but for two of the past three nights, her two "awake" hours have followed her middle-of-the-night feeding, and she will fuss and fuss and fuss until someone picks her up and carries her around a bit. This situation is not ideal. Last night, I ended up bringing her downstairs at about 5:00 a.m. so Susan could sleep some more, and there was nothing on TV to watch. Reagan and I ended up falling asleep to the movie "Cabin Boy," which may well be the worst movie ever made.

Tonight, we're trying a new approach. After focusing on keeping her awake more during the day, Susan gave Reagan a sponge bath after the evening feeding, which seemed to wake her up pretty good. With any luck, the additional awake time today will translate into additional sleep time tonight. We're not expecting her to sleep through the night or anything; we would just like her body clock to be properly synchronized. Now.

If anything, Amanda has gotten even cuter in her dealings with Reagan. She has stopped asking quite so many questions and now seems more interested in "helping" with her baby sister. Suffice it to say, however, there are limits to the contributions a two (almost three!) year-old can make to the care of a newborn. In fact, her help is pretty much limited to holding things (diapers, burp cloths, etc.), but it's good for her to feel involved. Amanda also wants to kiss Reagan a lot, which is just adorable.

I almost forgot to mention another milestone in Amanda's life -- she has now pooped on the potty two times in a row. She's been using the potty for No. 1 for a few weeks now, but The Deuce has proven to be a formidable opponent. We're not ready to declare victory just yet, but there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Same Old, Same Old . . .

We've settled into a routine here over the last couple of days, so there's really not much news to report. Reagan is still doing really well, and it looks like her jaundice has almost completely gone away. She's still sleeping and eating well, though the pattern is not yet what we're looking for. Ideally, we want her to be awake after she eats instead of settling into a milk coma after (or in the middle of) each feeding. We did that for Amanda, and she has always been a really good sleeper. We hope to get that straightened out in the next couple of weeks.

So far, Amanda has not gotten bored with Reagan and still seems really interested in what she's doing. She also likes to kiss her head and touch her cheek or nose. We've had to reprimand her for trying to touch Reagan's eyes, but overall the interaction has been very loving. Tonight, Susan brought Reagan into Amanda's room for her bedtime routine, and Amanda snuggled in bed with her sister, which was just adorable.

I worked full days yesterday and today for the first time since Reagan's birth, so at least I'm getting some sort of return to normalcy. I think Susan still has some residual "pregnancy brain" because after feeding Reagan yesterday, she put her shirt back on not backwards, not inside out, but BOTH backwards AND inside out. The tag was on the outside under her chin. And we both knew that brain-fart was going to go on the blog. And so it did.

Jaundice? What jaundice?

Okay, we're back from the pediatrician's office, and Reagan looks great. Her bilirubin number was down to 11, and she put on another two ounces. The doctor felt good enough with how things are progressing that she told us we don't have to use the light bed at all anymore. We can also stop supplementing her feedings with formula, which is also good news. Reagan is still a little yellow in the face, but everywhere else she's looking much paler (which is good).

Not to jinx us, but overall, Reagan has been extremely good so far. She eats well, sleeps well (including about a 4 1/2 hour stretch last night), and fusses very little. Even when she's awake, she just kind of looks around, probably silently judging everyone.

Amanda still seems excited about having a little sister, but we had our first sign of an inter-sister conflict last night. Amanda was trying to watch TV, and Reagan started crying (which she has done around the same time just about every night). Perturbed that her television enjoyment was being infringed upon, Amanda turned to Susan and me and said, "I can't hear. Can you fix Reagan?" In the coming years and decades, each sister will probably want to "fix" the other too many times to count, but we were hoping to get at least a week of domestic harmony out of the girls. Oh, well. It will definitely get worse, so we continue to count our blessings.

Space Baby/Pumpkinhead Update

The afternoon we trekked back to the pediatrician's office to re-check Reagan's bilirubin level, and it the results were really promising. Yesterday, the level had been at 19, and by today it had dropped all the way to 13. According to the PA, that's a really big one-day drop and a really good sign. Coupled with the fact that Reagan also gained 1.5 ounces in one day (0.5 would have been acceptable) and that she continues to output urine and stool regularly (to say the least), we may be at the beginning of the end of this little adventure. We're going to keep her on the light bed for a few more hours today, but then we get to stop using it pending another test tomorrow afternoon. If the bilirubin keeps dropping, we might be done, except for a re-check at two weeks and again at one month.

By the way, there is no "normal" bilirubin level since it is a waste product and needs to be excreted by the body. Ultimately, it will get to zero, and once it's on its way down, it's unlikely to go back up. Here endeth the lesson.

The Face of Jaundice

Here's a good picture showing what a newborn with jaundice looks like. Looking at it now, it's hard to believe we didn't really notice it on our own. Her head looks like a pumpkin, and for once, that's not a reference to the size!

Space Baby!

This picture may look familiar to some of the parents out there, but for the uninitiated, what you're seeing is Reagan lying on a light bed as treatment for jaundice. We thought we were out of the woods for that when her bilirubin level went down while she was in the hospital, but at yesterday's first visit with our pediatrician, the level had spiked up again. To get the bilirubin level where it needs to be, Reagan needs to lay on this light bed so the light can help break down the bilirubin so she can get rid of it easier. Unfortunately, she basically has to lie on this thing constantly (except for meal times), so we haven't been able to really hold her since about 6:15 last night.

When we first put Reagan on the light bed, she cried for a LONG time, which was just awful for Susan and me to hear. We felt so helpless. Since then, however, she has actually been pretty good (maybe because she tired herself out), and she slept better last night than the previous two. She woke up hungry at the appropriate times (1:00 and 4:00) and ate well. So after a rough start, Reagan has adapted to the light bed quite well. Hopefully, that's an indication that she'll adapt very easily to change, just like her sister.

Speaking of Amanda, she also had jaundice as a newborn and needed to lay on one of these contraptions. However, that was at the hospital, so it didn't seem as weird or serious as having a piece of medical equipment sitting in our house. This time around, it's almost like Amanda knows what Reagan is going through because she has asked no questions whatsoever about the light bed! Ha ha ha, not really . . . she won't stop asking about it.

We go back to the doctor this afternoon for another bilirubin check. While we're not expecting to be able to ditch the light bed after one day, we both think Reagan looks less yellow today than she did yesterday, so, fingers crossed. The doctor's office said the beds are usually used anywhere from two to three days up to a couple of weeks.

And when this is over, if I ever have to say the word "bilirubin" again, it'll be too soon.

Two Kids is HARD!!!

Well, we made it home Saturday with very little difficulty. The only hiccup leaving the hospital had to do with Reagan's decision to resist the last feeding there. She had been doing great all morning, and we wanted to get in one last meal before heading out. Reagan had other ideas and simply would not eat, preferring instead to shriek at the top of her lungs for 30 minutes. It's tough to feel so helpless as your new daughter is in such obvious discomfort. She ultimately settled down (as they always do). After a couple more problematic feedings, we were able to isolate and remedy the problem.

Bringing an unanticipated newborn into a home with an almost-three year-old has proven to be a challenge for the first couple of days. In fact, the delay in posting has to do with the fact that we have been working non-stop getting the house where it needs to be and keeping up with Amanda almost since we walked through the door. Since Reagan's timing was a surprise, we didn't have the place quite ready yet, so we've been scrambling to set up (and clean) things like her pack-and-play, swing, bouncy seat, etc. Plus we had a lot of our own laundry and grocery shopping to do since we basically haven't been home since Tuesday. And all the while, Amanda has been firing question after question after question at us with all the energy and determination that a three-year-old can bring to bear. I got to take her to lunch and to the store to give Susan a bit of a break, but it's tough playing man-to-man on Amanda, and I'm beat.

Making matters easier the first couple of days has been the generosity of friends in providing us with meals. Please know how much we appreciate your kindness. Please also know how much we wonder why no one has brought us beer.

For her part, Reagan herself has been an absolute dream. Aside from the feeding issues discussed above (which we fixed), the only Reagan-related "issue" we have concerns her sense of humor. She has decided it is absolutely hysterical to wait until the precise moment when her old diaper has been removed and the new one is underneath her to let loose her urine (or worse) one more time. She has followed this pattern on probably 75% of the diaper changes, resulting in our using far more diapers than expected. I think we went through close to 20 today alone. Ha ha ha, Reagan . . . it's coming out of your college fund. I guess it's good she's not a boy, or we'd have pee all over the walls, floors, and ourselves.

When she's not wasting diapers or eating, Reagan pretty much sleeps in the pack-and-play or in our arms. She has been awake (with her eyes open) far more since we got home than she was in the hospital, and she's got that great clueless newborn look that says, "Where am I, and how did I get here?" For those keeping track, her eye color appears to be brown, so Susan doesn't have any explaining to do. Reagan seems very content, except when she's hungry, which is just as it should be.

And for those wondering how the first night went, it was basically what we expected. We stayed up for a last feeding at 12:45, then had our sleep interrupted at 3:45 and 7:30 for additional feedings. After the 7:30 feeding, we got to sleep until almost 10:00, which felt great. Amanda may have been up for a while, but she has it in her head that she's not allowed to talk or get out of bed when she wakes up. We're not in an hurry to disabuse her of that idea, either.

Another observation I'd like to jot down before I forget is that having a newborn around has had the unexpected side effect of making Amanda appear absolutely gigantic. She has been our little girl ever since she got here, but now she's freakin' huge!

I'd also be remiss if I didn't discuss how Susan is doing. Put simply, she's fantastic. I don't know how she does it, but her regenerative powers are astonishing; she's like Wolverine. Since we got home, she's taken a little Motrin, but her Percocets remain unused. Maybe we can sell some to cover the cost of the diapers. The only "complication" in Susan's recovery thus far has been her emotional vulnerability to romantic comedies. Today she was brought to tears by both "Notting Hill" and "Failure to Launch." Fortunately, she sees the humor in the situation, so I'm allowed to laugh at her about it. You can, too!

I've added another short album, but I haven't had time to do the captions. Maybe tomorrow. Until then, feel free to submit your own captions in the comments section!