Holy Cow time flies by

Yes I know! I can hardly believe I'm posting either!! But here we are . . .
So last time I posted was about three months ago. And sleep was such an issue. Ah, sleep, ever the issue. It's amazing, once night time sleep became less of an issue, napping was all I talked about. I'm obsessed. We're still working on the napping/sleeping stuff, but more on that later.
First, updates and stuff! I think I'll be skimpy on the pictures right now, and do a whole picture post later (the first picture is from around six weeks, I think, and the last is the most recent one, from just a few days ago!). So . . .
When we hit six weeks, which as I mentioned is supposed to be when things settle down, we ended up taking Gabriel for his first Emergency Room visit. On Valentine's Day! We went to the wonderful Seattle Children's Hospital because our poor baby boy was unable to eat. Skipping all the drama, we found out he had Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disorder. Otherwise known as baby acid reflux. So he's been on medication for that ever since then, and its been a fun experiment with keeping him upright as much as possible. He's been sleeping on a giant foam wedge ever since then, but I think all the propping up made him able to sit up earlier, and actually helped strengthen his little neck muscles. He should start growing out of the reflux soon, and I'm already cutting down on the medicine, trying to slowly phase it out. He's practically grown out of the wedge, so we'll be seeing what sleep is like out of that soon.
Speaking of sleep, we now get nice long chunks of sleep, or we were, until I recently decided to mess with it. My friend Merrie, from my You and Your New Baby class, recommended giving swaddling another try. That did the trick, and we got to where Gabriel was only waking up once during the night to eat, around 3 or 4 in the morning. Well I decided I wanted to put him to bed earlier (he wanted it too), so now he goes to bed at 7pm or so. This means he's hungry earlier, more like midnight or 1am. Then he sleeps (theoretically) until 7am or so. Robert has been taking that late feeding, with the idea that I could sort of sleep through it. But Gabriel is having a really hard time adjusting, so he has a very hard time falling back asleep after the midnight feeding. Hopefully we'll get it all straightened out, because being awake for two hours in the middle of the night again is not what I had in mind!
I've been breastfeeding exclusively since Gabriel was about eight weeks old. He didn't really need the supplemental formula after his first month or so, but we kept it up anyway. Then I decided that it was unnecessary, and I now breastfeed in public and pump to supply bottles. He still eats every two to three hours during the day, but he's gotten much more efficient. We may start rice cereal soon, we'll be seeing the doctor on Thursday to discuss it.
As far as napping goes, we've got a pretty good routine down. However Gabriel has been super cranky the past few days, and I think its due to lack of sleep. He's also periodically cranky from teething (early) and really bad gas (which also took us to the hospital, twice), but this is different. So normally I let him nap for as long as he wants to, which is usually only 45 min to an hour at the most. But right before I began this post, he woke up from a 45 minute nap, and I said, "Nope, you are going back to sleep mister." And he did! One habit that we'll have to break soon is the rocking back to sleep thing. He needs to be able to fall asleep on his own, not being rocked all the time. But right now I just want him to sleep.
There's all sorts of fun developmental stuff going on too, but I'll update that later as well. Really I will!

Welcome to the world, Gabriel Joseph West!!

That's right, he's here!! Our beautiful little boy was born on Tuesday, January 5th, at 2:39 in the afternoon. He weighed seven pounds, twelve ounces, and is twenty and a half inches long. He really is the most beautiful baby boy ever!! I have lots of pictures already. I'll post some here. I'm going to try to keep this updated as much as possible, but obviously its taken me almost a week to get this post up, so we'll see how that actually goes.
Gabriel is doing really well, after getting off to a rather rough start. I will do a separate post to tell all about his birth. The short story is that I ended up needing a Cesarean section to deliver, but the only effect he really suffered from that was having more amniotic fluid in his digestive system than usual. He spent the first day or so spitting that up. He passed all of his blood sugar tests, for which we were grateful. However, on Thursday, the day we were supposed to leave the hospital, we were noticing that his lips and mouth were really dry - his lips were even sticking together! None of the nurses really noticed this when they checked him. Robert pointed it out to his pediatrician when she came by for her second visit. She realized that Gabriel must be really dehydrated. She ordered that we put him on formula supplements to get him rehydrated. They also weighed him, and he had already lost ten percent of his birth weight, which is the most they want to see babies lose. I think it usually takes them three or four days to get to that point though, and then they start putting on weight again. Our little Gabriel was simply not getting enough to eat!! I felt like I was feeding a lot, so it was probably my breast milk that wasn't getting enough hydration and nutrients to him, and not his inability to feed. He was so super fussy those first two days in the hospital. He was really gassy, so we thought that was the main problem, but as soon as we started getting formula into him, he began to feel better. We waited for a few extra hours at the hospital, hoping for a wet diaper (which he hadn't had for 24 hours), but eventually they just sent us home, with a promise we would see the pediatrician in the morning.
On Friday morning we got our wet diaper, finally. The pediatrician was relieved, and so were we. Gabriel was obviously feeling better as well! On Saturday we had a visit with the lactation consultant, and we learned that Gabriel had gained back five ounces! He was eating so much, but its obvious that he knew what he wanted. The visit with the consultant showed that as of Saturday, my breast milk still was not providing quite a full meal for Gabriel, although my milk started coming in. She told me what I could do to help it along, and already its helping. We didn't give any formula supplements at all last night, because Gabriel didn't seem to be hungry after breastfeeding. Sometimes he eats so much more than the "typical" amount per feeding, but I think that if he's hungry, he needs to eat! He knows what his body needs better than my books do. I am glad that my own supply is starting to be enough for him though.
Life with Gabriel is lovely. It seems to consist of constantly feeding for me, but I know that there are other things going on as well. He's started sleeping a little more, and he has nice long quiet alert periods that he likes to spend staring at his daddy's face. We still have some frustration with feeding, as he hasn't gotten the hang of latching on down to perfection yet. But for a baby who is less than a week old, I think he's doing wonderfully. We also are still trying to figure out a lot of his crying signals. He still seems to be really gassy, so he almost always needs to be burped. That makes him unhappy, but sometimes its hard to figure out that's what he needs. Otherwise he's a lovely, happy baby.
Okay, this is the longest post ever, but I'll finish up by saying that George has been home with Gabriel for a little more than a day, and he seems to be doing okay. For the most part the only thing that upsets him is when Gabriel cries. Not every time - throughout the night George just kind of comes over and checks on him. But sometimes it really startles him, especially if Gabriel is asleep in the other room. Then when George hears him cry he freaks out and runs into the other room barking and growling. Gabriel doesn't seem to mind (he's already crying, after all), but it's still not great to have the dog running over and barking in his face. George calms down really quick when this happens, but it sort of mystifies us. I'm sure he'll figure it out eventually. Otherwise, he's really cute around Gabriel. He'll usually come over and check him out if he's on somebody's lap, getting close enough to sniff his ear. It's hard to tell what he thinks of the whole thing. He knows that he's no longer allowed on our bed, and this change doesn't seem to bother him too much. We'll keep an eye on how things progress as Gabriel gets bigger.
I'll try to do another post tomorrow, telling Gabriel's birth story. Also, I have to mention that having my mom around has been amazing. She leaves tomorrow. This post is already super long, so I'm stopping now. (Here is a link to the Picasa web album I've created - I'll be updating it as regularly as I can, so check there for pictures!)