One Week at Home

(Lets see how long this will take to type with my one free hand...)

Charlie has been home for (almost) a whole week! I can't believe it - time has flown by. Things have been going very well thus far and while we're not exactly on a recognizable schedule yet, Charlie is eating well and we're all, surprisingly, getting enough sleep.

Charlie loves napping in his Boppy pillow.

This past Tuesday was Charlie's first doctor's appointment and he weighed in at 6 lbs. 2 oz. - back at his birth weight! Woo hoo!! The doctor was very happy with his growth thus far and how he was doing. He did order another bilirubin test just to be sure, so unfortunately, Charlie got poked again. His bilirubin was up a little bit (11.3 to 11.9), but with his current size, the doctor wasn't going to worry about it until it was back up at 15 or so. It was suggested that we put him in a sunny window, so we may be spending some time up in one of the study lounges sun bathing. We're scheduled to go back next week for a weight check and then the following week for his one month check up and starting some vaccinations. Aside from being a very gassy little man, he's 100% healthy.

Now that we're getting established at home, we can work on our two big goals for Charlie; to breastfeed him for at least 6 months (hopefully a year) and to use cloth diapers to both save money and be a little more earth friendly. The breastfeeding has been going much better now that we're at home. He only really gets bottles (of breast milk) at night when Jeff helps feed him. The cloth diapers, however? Not going so well thus far...

I'm pretty sure you can fit two of him in there. The cloth diapers we have (BumGenius 3.0) are meant to fit babies about 10 lbs to 30 lbs. Too bad he's a tiny string bean and preemie diapers almost slide off of his non existent butt! Pictured above is the diaper on the smallest setting. Looks like we're going to have to wait a bit before using them! Oh well - disposables it is for the time being. Good thing we got all those diaper cakes!

Despite it only being a week, there have already been quite a few lessons learned. Some of these include:
- Napping is a glorious thing that should be done regularly.
- Have baby gas drops on hand BEFORE you need them.
- A Keurig coffee maker is wonderful for boiling hot water quickly to heat bottles at 4am.
- Make it a point to eat breakfast and take a shower in the morning or you never will.
- Keep track of how many diapers you have left so you don't reach into an empty bag.
- Laying on the couch and snuggling is the perfect utilization of an afternoon.

And I'm sure there will be many, many more lessons to come.

(If you're wondering, it took about 40 minutes.)