Pediatrician Appointment

Chase has his first appointment this afternoon with his pediatrician. This means I'll actually have to have a shower and get out of my pj's before noon for a change! I'm looking forward to finding out how much our little guy weighs. When we left MUSC, they had him on fortified breastmilk, which basically means adding a few teaspoons of formula (Neosure) to his breastmilk bottles to increase his calorie intake. However, we had lots of trouble with his stools so we decided to eliminate the Neosure. Basically he was getting constipated a lot, his stools were really dark brown, and we even noticed some blood in his stool as well. It turned out our poor little fella had a HORRIBLE diaper rash (completely raw skin -- the diaper rash cream wouldn't even stay on it!), a small fissure (a tiny crack in his skin), plus the constipation and gas pains. After eliminating the Neosure, he didn't struggle as much but he was still in a lot of pain from the rash and fissure. We were able to determine it was the fissure that caused the blood in his stool, and I'm happy to report he's improved dramatically from this time last week. His stools are back to the normal breastfeeding baby stools, the fissure is almost completely healed (no more blood!) and his diaper rash is gone! So while we were able to fix the diaper area issues, it required decreasing his calorie intake, so I'm curious to see what impact (if any) this has had on his weight gain. I'll post an update later on how it goes!

I'm also pleased that my sweet boy won't have to worry about any shots today. His PC, Dr. Horne, said he shouldn't have any immunizations until after he's 2 months old. So since he's only 7 weeks right now, there will be no shots today! Woot! Unfortunately we'll have to play "catch up" later... ((sigh))

He'll also see Dr. Horne again on Friday, which will mean another echo to make sure Chase's heart function is still looking great. I expect another fantastic report!

Totally random, but can you believe there's only 8 days 'til Christmas? LO has been having a hard time keeping track of how much longer 'til Santa comes, so I helped her out: I bought candy canes for the Christmas tree the other day and had her put 12 of them on (the number of days that were left until Christmas). Every night before bedtime, she takes one candy cane off the tree and places it in her stocking. This way she can visually see how many more candy canes are on the tree and understand how many more days until Santa comes! So far it's working out pretty good. The bonus is that if she's misbehaving, I can "threaten" her by telling her if she doesn't behave, we won't take a candy cane off the tree before bedtime, meaning it will take that much longer for Santa to come. Is that wrong? I dunno. But it works!!! :)