Four Weeks

Four weeks?!

A month has already passed since our son was born! In some ways it doesn't seem possible. In other ways, a lot has happened in that short time.

First off, we had our son baptized when he was 5 days old. This took some doing as our parish priest was to be absent for 2 of the 4 Sundays following his birth, had seven people scheduled to receive the sacrament of Baptism on 1 of the 2 available Sundays, and the remaining Sunday not only fell in Lent, but was too late to for our comfort and too late in order to submit the baptismal certificate as proof of existence when filing for our son's social security number (which we needed in order to enroll him in our healthcare plan.) We had to settle for a visiting monsignor to administer the sacrament. Also, hosting overnight guests and providing food for visitors and for a baptismal party is a bit difficult only 5 short days after a birth too!

In the end, we discovered that our new county's health department will file for a social security card for you when you file for a birth certificate. Bonus! In part I suppose this is because our county does not have a social security office, and perhaps the fact that there is a large Amish population. But it turns out the statewide system for recording birth certificates is down, so we haven't received either. Thankfully, my husband's employer accepted an affidavit of his birth on a temporary basis so that he will still be covered by our health insurance. Whew!

My sister, who had been staying with us in order to help out, left two weeks after our son's birth. We are grateful for her help and the three weeks of her time she sacrificed to spend with us, etc. She washed a lot of dishes and folded a lot of laundry while here. She also entertained my children, who adore her.

The baby is doing well. He's a handful in more ways than one, but sweet and pretty mild mannered all in all. (After the infancy of our oldest son, most babies seem mild mannered to me!) He's given me a string of worries though. First there was the fact that he lost 10% of his body weight the week he was born. That's the high end of normal, but 10% of 11 pounds is pretty substantial (as compared to 10% of 7 lbs.) and therefore takes longer to gain back. After a month he is finally a half pound heavier than he was at birth. And it was doubly concerning for me, as my other children didn't lose weight initially and packed on the pounds right away.

Another worry was that it took him 8 days to pass his first bowel movement (not counting multiple meconium diapers, of course.) He's doing well in that department (so to speak) now. Then there was his back-to-back 3 minute nursing sessions. Thankfully, although he still has periods of demanding this, his snack-nursing/cat-napping is no longer continuous. But it was frustrating for both of us, and exhausting too. Then his umbilical stump dried up and fell off, but left one vessel protruding from his belly button that looked as if it might have healed that way. Ugly. With lots of care and a little more time, it has dried up too though, and his belly button is now normal. 

In other news, my husband was told by a doctor today that he has a small hernia and has scheduled an appointment with a surgeon next week. He's worried about how taking care of it may disrupt his new job. He's been assisting a local order of Franciscan friars with their network. They run a radio station and record T.V. shows at their friary. He found an office space to rent within his small budget and moved in. His business cards arrived. He's been purchasing equipment for his office. And unfortunately the computer he just got for his new job is acting flaky. The monitor is going black at random. He'll have to take it to the big city about an hour away for service. He's been on quite a few conference calls for his new job, and has had several meetings with the man appointed to replace him at his old place of employment as well. He also found out that not only will he be in California for his first week on the new job, but he will be going to Taiwan in April.

Then there's all the random stuff: my oldest daughter got a cold and ran a low fever one weekend, so we had to split shifts for Mass and worried about the baby getting ill. We were notified of a recall on our washing machine. I'm supposed to get a service person to replace something because it will throw parts if you wash something waterproof. That's not good, considering I want to launder water-proof diaper pail liners and waterproof diaper covers. There was also a recall on the transmission of our new van, so that had to be taken in for service. My husband had the tire with the slow leak looked at at the same time. Of course the tires were not under the new vehicle's warranty. Speaking of vehicles, the check engine light had come on in the truck one day. Luckily an oil change that included replacing the air filter took care of that. (We park the truck in the barn and a mouse had made a nest in the air filter.) Yuck. We had a repair man come out to fix our inoperable garage door. My 3 year old finally decided that he wants to use the toilet, so we're in the midst of "potty training"... again. People came to visit in order to meet the new baby, etc. etc.

Then there's all the normal stuff. That kept us busy before our little man arrived!