Gaining Weight

Henry has slept more than usual during the day as of late, but he still doesn't sleep at night. He refuses to sleep in his crib. The longest that he's slept there is maybe half-an-hour on a great night.

Grandpa came over on Friday morning to hold Henry. Grandma came over in the afternoon. This gave me time to work on my course. I had to create a handout for my students because several of them have problems with basic synonyms. In class, we went through some z score problems where the goal was to figure out what percentage of people had scores lower than a given person based on that person's z score. Well, this week's homework assignment used the phrase "below" rather than "lower than," and not just one person, but several people have had problems with this interchange of phrase. Oye. I don't think that the American educational system is doing too well. But enough said about that.

During the day, I tried to get Henry to do some tummy time. I set him up on our dining room table, hoping that he'd feel better on his tummy if he could look at me. Well, he feel asleep. But this did provide a good opportunity for Henry to pose with his new coin 2007 coin collection from Uncle Jim.

On Friday, Henry weighed 8 lbs 5 ozs.

A person from the water department came over to look at our water meter. Long story short. For several days now, we have very little water pressure in the house. In order to take a shower or run the dishes, you have to turn off all of the water to the toilets. It has made life inconvenient. Last week, it was termite week. This week, it was plumbing. The water department says that there's a problem on our side of the meter (like 1 foot on our side of the meter), so we have to fix it ourselves. Jeff called a plumber. We hope they'll came out tomorrow.

On Saturday, Henry weighed 8 lbs 7.5 ozs. We went over to his grandparents' house in the afternoon. He slept and ate all afternoon. Jeff and I took a nap in Aunt Erin's old room.

After our walk this morning (Sunday), Henry weighed 8 lbs 8.5 ozs. He continues to do an excellent job at gaining weight.

On Tuesday, we reintroduced Henry to some frozen breast milk that was pumped when I was consuming dairy and soy. This was our test to see if Henry's allergic reaction was really a dairy/soy allergy or if it was just a reaction to the particular fortifiers that he'd been put on when he came home. Based on Henry's diaper this morning, we think that he does have an allergy to the cow's milk proteins in the milk. It wasn't obviously bloody. But we think that we detected some spots that, when tested, will show up as microscopic blood. We've taken samples and have put them on slides given to us by Dr. Hassan. We'll hand them over to Dr. Hassan on Wednesday. In the meantime, we've stopped giving Henry the old milk. Luckily, we did this test via the frozen milk rather than contaminating me (via me eating dairy), which would have ruined my supply for two weeks. I haven't eaten meat yet. I've been very careful to get at least 80 grams of protein per day through a wide variety of grains, legumes, rice, and eggs. And, I have been taking pills with fish oil in them for a while now. But, I am probably going to eat some meat this week. Jeff is going to start by getting some soups made with chicken stock.

Jeff took Henry over to my parents about an hour ago. I'm spending the day writing an article review, grading, and preparing my lecture for tomorrow.

This coming week is filled with doctors appointments. Tuesday: Dr. Tsai for development. Wednesday morning: Dr. Hassan for GI check. Wednesday afternoon: Development therapy workup with Judith from the Blake Foundation. Thursday: Pulmonary check-up to see if Henry will qualify for the synagis shots (this one is a no brainer, but we have to go through the bureaucracy in order to qualify).