We found it!!!

Guess what? We found the umbilical cord plug...it must
have been somewhere in his clothes, cause we found
it in the laundry basket! Somehow it survived a wash,
a dry, and made it back to us unharmed! Now we have
something else to add to the memory book. =)

Alpha and Andreas

Our beautiful Siberian Husky, Alpha, started to like
Andreas. Initially, she was a bit jealous, wanting
a lot of attention, and not understanding who is the
new addition to the family, who has an annoying cry
and smells like poop all the time ;). After a couple of days,
she started to get used to him. She actually is growling
at us these days whenever we burp Andreas. That's because,
she thinks "Andreas is a bad dog, and he is 'getting it' ".
Therefore, she is rather upset with us during those times.
Other than that, all of us have been sleeping in the big
bedroom for over 2 weeks now. S, Andreas, Alphy and myself.
We all have to be there, concentrated in a few of cubic feet
of love. =)

Such a beautiful day!

Today is a great day! First of all, the weather is just perfect!
I love September weather. Andreas was a very good baby
tonight. I just fed and changed him at 10 pm, at 1:30 am
and at 6 am. For being just a bit over 2 weeks old, that is
pretty good. It looks like he is growing day by day. He
started moving around in the crib. We put him up in one,
nicely set position, and we find him with his head near some
corner of the crib. He started doing something else during
his "tummy time:" I just saw him get his head up to about
a 45 degree angle!! That is not supposed to happen until
they are like 1.5 months old. Maybe he is just different.

We have a belly button!!

a very cute belly button has surfaced from under the ombilical cord plug. The plug just fell sometimes today. We don't know where it is...hopefully we will find it, because we wanted to keep it =) Maybe Alphy took it and ate it up?

"i'll go get it"

I have been "imprisoned" on the 2nd floor of the house for
the past 3 days now. No stairs for mommy! No sir! (or m'am)
It's not too bad..I have a laptop with wireless that I can
use from the comfort of my ... BED, have a computer in the
next room with a comfortable chair, have a TV, and a stereo.
And some books to read. This is all for mommy's mental
entertainment, because while Andreas does not require
any sort of "maintenance" =), mommy needs to do something
non-physical too. I must admit though, that I started being
able to move much much better. Considering that 3 days
ago I collapsed on the floor (though I was not in too much
pain since I was "under the influence" of pain medication),
daddy's suggestion that I stay upstairs was a smart one.
This also meant that I get: meals in bed, any snacks I want,
cold water on demand... and so on. Mommy is very happy to
have daddy. So yesterday, early morning, I was talking
to daddy, who was kind of 70% asleep. I said something, and
he gave me a very unrelated response "Oh, I'll go get it"...I
started laughing so hard, I couldn't stop. He started laughing
too, and eventually woke up. Poor daddy, he is automatically
programmed that "he has to go down the stairs and get
whatever I need". What a wonderful daddy and hubby...

Daddy said ...

... that he will tell Andreas when he grows up what a "bad mommy" I have been ;). For 2 nights in a row now, at his usual 1 am and 5 am feeding and changing time, mommy did not hear and
did not wake up while Andreas was crying. I guess mommy was too tired and really trying to recover after the C-section. Still not feeling significantly better than 11 days ago, when surgery occurred.

Sleeping ...

Katrina, Katrina

Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama. In particular it hit New Orleans, a wonderful,
wonderful town. It's horrible what has happened.
Familiar places in New Orleans are underwater at this
time. I feel very sympathetic for all those people out
there stranded, and awaiting rescue. How about those
pregnant mommas that went into labor while the
hurricane hit? and all those critical patients from the
New Orleans hospitals. I have a good friend that goes to
Tulane Univ. Have been trying to reach him by email,
but I assume their email servers and computers are all
underwater. Terrible devastation...has been called the
"American Tsunami of 2005" (in reference to the Indian
Ocean Tsunami of 2004).

Cluster Feeding? Day 9?

So we've been warned that babies go through periods called "cluster feedings". It basically means that they eat more than normal and eat more often, and they won't quiet down until
they've had enough. Andreas is being fed "on-demand" anyway...and typically he drinks about 200 ml every 4 or 5 hours. Well, today he has been a little "off-schedule", which made mommy and daddy more tired. =( At 5 pm, he woke up and started crying. I changed 4 diapers until 6:30 pm and I fed him 175 ml of milk. He was still not satisfied. He wouldn't fall asleep. I massaged his arms, tummy and legs. He seemed to enjoy that. But then he started crying again.
S. just came back in time from buying a small refrigerator. So he took turns at burping him and feeding him another 120 ml. He finally fell asleep at 8:30 pm. Mommy was very tired!

Lactation Consultant Amazed

So, we go and talk to Nancy, the lactation consultant associated with the pediatric clinique.
I show her my record since Thursday of how much milk I pump each day...which is about 1.5 liters. She's like "wow, that's great, you do make lots of milk." The only idea is to pump 5 or 6 times a day, to keep up the milk supply. She was very nice. Gave us instructions on breast milk storage procedures, and made herself available for any future questions we may have. That went great!

Pediatric said he's doing great!

That makes us happy. Monday, at the doctor's appointment, he was 10 lbs 5 oz...meaning that
he has gained 11 ounces since birth. That's about 400 grams, so now he is at the incredible sumo weight of 4700 grams. No wonder, after he's been drinking about 1 L of milk a day. Yummy...But, because of this, he's hard to pick up. Other than that, everything looks great with him. We'll see the pediatric in 3 weeks! what a relief...it's such a hassle to travel with baby.

Sleeping and Eating too much?

I don't know what to think; tomorrow we'll go to the pediatric
and ask. Our Andreas seems to really be eating and sleeping
a lot for his age. He has been eating about 200 ml of
expressed breastmilk every 4 or 5 hours a day. For a 1 week
old, who is supposed to have a *small* stomach, this seems
a bit too much. We'll see what the doctor says tomorrow
and how much weight he has been gaining.

Butterfly

Andreas is 7 days old today. He started eating a bit more
than yesterday and had shorter nap times. At 8:20 pm he
was laying in his crib, but instead of falling asleep, he
became interested in the musical butterfly.
He started touching the wings, which make a swishing noise.