Week Thirteen (December 19)

Week Thirteen was just last week -- we're almost caught up!

LL is three months old! Thus, more professional photos. We also visited my tech start-up company, since there were still several of my coworkers that LL hadn't met. While there, LL posed for pictures with one of the robots, earning him a spot on the company's web page. There were some university visitors touring the company that day, and LL was introduced to them as a young intern. He's growing up so fast!

Week Thirteen was when we really started to get the whole nighttime sleep thing figured out. S responded to most of the nighttime crying, usually requiring only a minute or two of soothing. LL only needs to eat now once each night, and those are the only times I get out of bed. Finally, some decent sleep!

With sleep patterns coming together, we suddenly faced a different problem: poop. I'd read that breastfed babies can sometimes go up to a week without pooping. The previous week, I'd started to get concerned when LL didn't poop for 6 days, and I was all set to call the pediatrician the next morning, when suddenly the dam broke, so to speak. Four huge poops all in a row. LL had never looked uncomfortable or anything, so we assumed he was fine. This week, though, he again went several days without pooping, and by day 4, he was acting uncomfortable. Twisting his body, very fussy, reluctant to eat. The advice nurse gave us a progressive list of things to try, culminating in a glycerin suppository. The suppository finally worked that night, but he only pooped a little, and still didn't want to eat. Then the urine on his diaper started to appear bright yellow (it's usually colorless). These all seemed like bad signs to me. Also, I had taken LL to be weighed the previous week, after his growth spurt, because I was curious about how much he'd gained. When he wasn't eating this week, I took him to be weighed again, since I had the convenient baseline from the previous week. Infants this age are still supposed to be gaining an ounce a day, LL often gains slightly less, so I expected a 5-6 ounce change from the previous week. Instead, he'd only gained half an ounce. (And that included all the extra poop he was holding in!)

I called Dr. K, who had us start giving him bottles of diluted pear juice to try to get things moving. By Friday, he'd pooped one more time, but was still fussy and not wanting to eat. Poor guy! Dr. K was most concerned about his weight. At his two month appointment, LL had been right at the 50th percentile. We were told that the percentile itself isn't important; what matters is that babies are supposed to stay at approximately the same percentile from visit to visit. Unfortunately, LL's current weight drops him from 50th percentile to 30th, a huge drop in just one month.

I thought that maybe the weight loss was because of his increased sleep at night, but Dr. K assured me that it wasn't. So, we were under orders to keep an eye on him, encourage him to eat and poop as much as he can, and bring him in to be weighed again next week. Purely hypothetical question for the peanut gallery: do you know how to encourage a 3-month-old to poop? It's not pleasant for anyone involved.