The Bad News...

The news is all good for Billy, but could be all bad for our trip home. After some elaborate planning for the Baby Shower in mid June, we seem to have hit a major snag and can't seem to find a way around it. Here's the dilemma. At the last doctor visit, the doctor agreed, after some persuasion, to give Billy his first round of vaccinations two weeks early at 6 weeks old. He will not give them any sooner than that. He is adamant about him having his shots before he gets on a plane or "shakes hands" with 100 people attempting to pick him up and hold him. Especially since there's no telling how many of those 100 people may have little illnesses that are no big deal to them, but a huge deal to a vaccinationless baby.

That brings up the first problem. Billy turns 6 weeks old the Wednesday prior to the Baby Shower. After his vaccinations, it is likely that he will run a slight fever for a day or two, which is likely to cause him significant discomfort and pretty much make him a very unhappy baby. If we got his shots on Wednesday, then Thursday and Friday would be rough days for him. The only day we can find where we can take a non-stop flight (pretty much mandatory when flying with an infant who is running a slight fever) is Wednesday morning, the earliest day he can get his shots. Taking connecting flights, even ones where we never have to deplane, would mean that we would be stuck in airports or airplanes for approximately 5-6 hours with a very unhappy child. In other words, that's not happening.

So we looked into the possibility of driving home. The drive from Jacksonville to Chicago is approximately 17 hours. You can probably do it in 15-16 hours if you drove straight through and stopped for gas and ate on the road. With a 6 week old baby, that's not possible. We would need to stop every 2 to 2.5 hours to feed him, which takes a half hour each time. That means we are driving about 10 actual hours for every 12 hours in the car, give or take. At that rate, it would take us 18-20 hours to get home, meaning two full days of travel there and two full days of travel back. In order to make the trip, I would have to take another full week off of work, which isn't going to happen since I just took two weeks off for the baby's birth.

Long story short, while the Party is not officially off at this moment, its not looking real promising. I would handicap it at 99.5% chance its not going to happen. One of the worst parts is that we already sent out half the invitations, not anticipating this much to happen all at once. Poor planning, I guess. Anyway, we hope to maybe push the party to August and plan a trip home where we drive home and take a week and a pair of weekends to get it done. Maybe leave on a Thursday after work, drive the rest of Thursday, all day Friday, and arrive on Friday night. Then stay for a week, leave on Saturday afternoon, spend the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday driving, and then arrive home that following Sunday. We'll see. Planning begins on that as soon as we've officially cancelled the party on Sunday. Again, I know its a month out, but I am sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused anybody in planning to be at the Party.

Now that we've dispensed with the bad news, let's move on to the good news. Billy is doing great and his Mother is doing even better. Antoinette is almost back to her prepregnancy size, down a quite amazing 23 lbs. Of course, she's getting hammered in the sleep department as she's up every 2-4 hours with the baby at night and catching what make up sleep she can during the day. She's less than 5 lbs. from her prepregnancy weight and we're just 3 weeks since delivery. She's even starting to get her abs back. She can't wait for the 6 week mark to come and go so she can get back to working out. Other than sleepiness, she feels great. Hopefully, we'll get out and get some good walks in over the next couple weeks to help her get out of the house. I know she has to feel couped up in here all day.

Its fairly difficult to notice the tiny, nearly imperceptible little changes he seems to have every single day, but if you really pay attention, you will. For instance, his vision seems to have improved dramatically. He locks onto the ceiling fan now and just stares at it. The neat thing is that the fan is hanging from a 15 foot vaulted ceiling. Just last week, his vision seemed to be limited to just 8-12 inches in front of his face. He also locks on to you from across the room. Just yesterday, as a matter of fact, I turned and looked at him and he was glued to me from the other couch. As I waved or moved my hands, he would track, even more so with an object making noise, which was good to see. His Mother gets up to walk away while talking and his head turns to follow her. All little things, but still baby step milestones in their own right.

Some other new items to relay include an increased neck strength. When laying against your chest, he seems to be able to hold his head far better, although still for short bursts. He can turn it with control to the left and right, although his movements are still jerky. He seems to be developing that understanding that his hands are actually his and are capable of exploring the world around him. If you stick your face in his waving hand, he slows for a second as if registering the touch. Then he tries to hit you again, only this time he tries to grasp when he does it. Again, his movements are still jerky and basically out of his control, but he's getting better.

Regarding the Baby Wise techniques to getting him on his sleep schedule, we'll see about that. Antoinette is tweaking the system to something she finds a bit more tolerable. For instance, the book suggests putting him down regardless of if he's tired or not. This results in unbearable screaming that can last far too long. Instead, Antoinette has decided she will attempt to quiet him and prep him for sleep before putting him down, yet still put him down without any tricks, such as fans, music, noisemakers, etc., in an attempt to truly teach him how to fall asleep. A minor change, but one we feel is necessary. Only time will tell if we are right. Now, he wakes up less and is still managing to keep his 2.5 to 3 hour schedule fairly well, which is good, because this week, he can add another half hour to that schedule and move to a 2.5 to 3.5 hour window with up to an extra half hour added for nap time.

From a growth standpoint, he hasn't exactly slowed. Billy has already grown out of his first set of baby clothes that Antoinette bought soon after he was born, which is very noticeable when all of a sudden he's wearing clothes I've never seen him in before. We went from being able to fit comfortably in about four outfits to now being able to fit in about 10 outfits (and that's after retiring a couple for the next baby already). If we don't make the trip home this time, we'll probably push his vaccination date back to 8 weeks, which means I won't have an updated weight/length measurement for some time. I can't do that, so I'll just have to do it myself and ballpark it for you. This week, we'll update his length and next week his weight and so on. As of today, little Billy appears to be measuring out at about 21.25 inches in length. That puts him in the 50th percentile at 3.5 weeks.

Billy's belly button has almost become a non-issue. After falling off a week ago and having left what we thought to be a granuloma (piece of tissue sticking up), it all seems to be healing well. None of the warning signs have appeared (various fluids leaking, redness, swelling, etc.) to indicate anything out of the ordinary, such as infection, and the overall appearance is starting to look like a normal "outtie". We'll keep treating it this week, but ultimately, I think this is the week he could get his first real bath in water (unlike the sponge baths he's been getting). Finally, the soft spot on the back of his head appears closed.

We hope you enjoy the picture of Antoinette and Billy. During our photo shoot on Mother's Day, Billy was fussing a bit, so the photographer went to help another couple while we attempted to settle him down. Antoinette only took 2-3 minutes to get him calm, so we decided that while we waited, we would take some pictures of our own using the backdrop and my cell phone. This photo is of Mom and Baby, about 2 minutes after a little tirade. Apparently, he doesn't like bright lights being flashed in his eyes. Go figure. Next week, we'll have our first family photo as the Baby Blog picture.