Five Weeks

Sorry for the gap in posts. Life with a newborn is unpredictable at best. I'm sure there have been times in the past couple of weeks when I could've written a post, but I probably chose to sleep or stare blankly at the wall during a moment of peace. Most likely I was washing bottles.

Anyway, little man is now over five weeks old. We just flew right past that one-month mark. I'd like to tell you that he's a perfectly well-behaved child who never complains, but that would be a lie! He has good days and then bad days when he's fussy a lot and doesn't sleep much. Those days wear me out. I know he's got reasons to be fussy, though, so I don't get mad at him. We are still battling the thrush monster, which we've been doing for several weeks now. I know it can't feel good to have that stuff in his mouth. I think it might even make him want to eat more because it might make his mouth feel better. The usual meds for it, Nystatin, didn't work, so we've been trying gentian violet on the recommendation of our pediatrician, which stains his mouth purple for a day. It does knock down the thrush a lot, but then it usually comes back the next day. We gave him purple mouth yesterday, and today I've been swabbing his mouth with grapefruit seed extract in distilled water to keep it away. It seems to be working so far, but if it comes back he may need stronger meds for it.

Purple lips from the gentian violet

Liam has also been having some stomach issues lately. It seems he may have a milk sensitivity, so I've stopped eating dairy for the little bit of breastfeeding I can do, and we've switched him to a soy formula (all under the recommendation of his pediatrician). Hopefully this is just temporary and we can switch him back in a few months once his digestive system is more mature. However, the soy formula seems to slow him down if you know what I mean. So going number two is painful for him. He's still very new to the soy, though, and hopefully this is just his body having to adjust to the new formula. He's actually made great progress in that area today. But yeah, this has caused a lot of fussiness lately, and I hate to see him in pain. But enough of our problems, let's talk about the good times...because there are good times as well!

Liam is smiling a lot more now! He's given us little gassy grins since pretty early on, but now I think he's starting to smile on purpose sometimes. This weekend he totally smiled at me three times in a row on purpose. He has a few different smiles, but the most common one is where he smiles with just one side of his mouth. All of his smiles are so cute. They're also fleeting, so I haven't really been successful at capturing one on camera yet. I took some pictures of Liam for a Father's Day present for Will, and these are the two with the best examples of him smiling:

He also is making cute noises sometimes. They're hard to describe, but they're so cute and I think they usually surprise him when they come out of his mouth. He looks at and focuses on us a lot now. He's starting to hold his head up better, but it's still too heavy for him. That's one thing I'm really looking forward to: neck control.

He's a good sleeper at night, even if he's had a really fussy day. He'll sleep a 3-4 hour stretch at night, and goes right back to sleep after I feed him. I'm thankful for that. We try to play during the day, but sometimes he's too fussy and doesn't want to have anything to do with that. I read to him everyday, and I sing to him pretty often. No one else in the world gets to hear me sing but him. I usually sing Beatles songs, most often "I'm Only Sleeping" and I also sing "Jesus Loves Me" to him. He tolerates my singing for a few minutes, but then I think he grows weary of it. He gets the hiccups ALL the time. Sometimes he tolerates them well, other times not so much, but crying or drinking something usually gets rid of them. When he sneezes, he sounds like one of the chipmunks (Alvin, Simon, Theodore) sneezing. It's pretty cute. I love my little man!