Week 5: August 9-15

Four weeks! Kian wore his Tiger's onesie today. It's still a tiny bit big through the shoulders, but I remember just a few weeks ago when it practically fell off of him. He's starting to get to the point where we need to think about going up a size in diapers too. He's been wearing Huggies which are bigger than the Pampers for a while already. Brian weighed himself, and then weighed himself again with Kian in his arms and he seems to be about NINE POUNDS now. Holy smokes. I need to take him to the Breastfeeding Support group to find out an official weight, but it's only once a week and it's in the evening and I can't seem to remember.

Friday Grammy Tina, Papa James and Aunt Jaime arrived. It's so nice when they are here. Not only do they help out around the house, but Kian always has another pair of hands waiting to hold him and it frees me up to do some things.

Friday he started sounding just a little congested off and on, 'snortly in his nose' as I like to say. It worried me some, but at that point it wasn't too bad.

I took a fabulous bath on Saturday and shaved my legs and everything. Heaven!

Grammy Tina put herself on late night duty. She kept Kian up and entertained until 8:30 or so, then we gave him a bath and fed him and I went to sleep. She would either feed him a bottle or at least keep him until the next time he was hungry so I could sleep. It was just what I needed. Even if he goes 2 or 3 or the rare 4 hours between feedings he is SO NOISY at night. Really all the time he's a very vocal baby. He seems to make some kind of grunt or squeak or groan every time he moves, and he moves constantly :). It makes for a rough night, every night. We're pretty sure he's going to be making the transition out of our room and into his crib pretty soon.

Papa James cooked fabulous food the whole weekend, and the three of them cleaned my whole house on Monday.

That day Kian was sounding worse and worse, more and more stuffy, so I finally called the doctor. My mom had suggested having him sleep in his swing so he'd be on more of an incline, and putting Vicks on his chest. I wasn't sure the first was safe, and the second... well, I hate Vicks but the label also says babies 3 months and older. Of course, my mom knows everything, and the nurse suggested those very things, plus saline nose drops and a humidifier. We made a Walgreen's run and stocked up on all sorts of congestion fighting goods. I moved into the nursery, with Kian sleeping in his swing so that he could sleep on an incline, and the humidifier wouldn't kill Brian. I crashed on the futon mattress on the floor. It seemed to help, although I didn't sleep very well myself and I had a hard time finding a good place and position to nurse.

Tuesday they headed home, which was hard as usual. It never seems to get any easier, only harder. I'm still struggling with them missing out on being with Kian even more than I miss them myself. I keep having a lot of guilt because it's my choices that are separating them, neither one of them chose to be apart from each other. I wish we could live closer so Kian could see his Grammy and Papa and Aunt every few days. :(

Tuesday night I hardly got any sleep at all, and Wednesday morning Brian got up with him for me. I talked to the nurse on base again per their instructions. It sounded to me like he was starting to wheeze a bit, but it only happened once. Brian and I each heard a cough as well. We were told to keep an eye on him, and if the cough or wheeze became consistent to call in again. Otherwise, we should call the first of the week to update them.

What a busy week!