Peregrine at One Month

[Written on July 12, 2017]

Our whole family is delighted that Peregrine is finally here. The bigger boys certainly understood what they were getting, but even Griffin is happy to have a little brother and talks to him in the sweetest way. Dan loves his newborn son with such joy, and I am so in love with our littlest guy--we all are!

Peregrine has been doing a wonderful job being a baby. He eats, sleeps, dirties his diapers, and cries. Lol. He started out at 8lbs 3.92oz at birth--4oz for all intensive purposes--and was 19" long. On day one he was 7lbs 15oz, 8lbs 1oz on day three, 8lbs 5oz on day five, 8lbs 10oz on day eleven, 8lbs 14oz on day fourteen, and 10lbs 5oz on day twenty-seven. How's that for detailed?! Good grief! It all seems somewhat miraculous to me, though, because immediately after birth Peregrine couldn't latch. We worked really hard at it, but he just wouldn't. We took a break while he was weighed and examined, only to have the nurse discover a tongue-tie. By the grace of God, the one midwife at the birthing center who was certified to cut tongue-ties happened to be outside gardening at the time. The Dar a Luz team was amazing--within minutes they called our insurance and got approval to cut it, and went ahead and cut it less than two hours after Peregrine was born. Melanie, the midwife who performed the procedure, still had gardening clippers in her back pocket while cutting Peregrine's tongue-tie, which was just too funny. How amazing that we could take care of this immediately and Peregrine never had to learn how to latch the wrong way?! He's had a great latch ever since and clearly eats well!

Peregrine eats roughly every three hours--if we're lucky he'll go about five for the first stretch of the night giving me four solid hours of sleep--but this is no guarantee. During the day, sometimes he's ready to eat after two hours, as is more typical when I attempt to cluster feed him in the evenings. For awhile Peregrine ate every two hours during the day, but when he was about three and a half weeks old he started getting really fussy through feedings and would refuse to latch. After two days of this, his slow-learning mama realized that perhaps he wasn't hungry yet. The next day we switched to a three to three and a half hour feeding schedule. Miraculously Peregrine would latch, eat, and eat for a sustained period of time. Want to know the interesting thing about all of this? Thanks to my handy baby app, I know that Peregrine ate for the same total number of minutes in a 24-hour period both before and after switching from feeding every two hours to every three. Fascinating, eh? He simple eats longer albeit slightly less often now.

Sleep can be challenging and elusive for me, but Peregrine is definitely a newborn/young infant in his sleep needs. He sleeps nonstop minus feedings most of the day and night with a few scattered awake periods. If he's up for more than two hours he gets pretty cranky--newborns aren't supposed to be awake for that long but it does occasionally happen. And I've found that getting Peregrine back to sleep in the night is getting somewhat easier. For several weeks each night waking involved walking Peregrine around the first floor of our house for a good twenty to thirty minutes to get him to sleep. He'd cry for the first ten or more, and then fall asleep. But if I didn't keep walking he'd wake again and possibly cry for another ten before falling asleep again. Despite how desperate one would think I'd become, I find that maybe because we're planning on Peregrine being our last child, or maybe because I know I'll sleep again eventually, it hasn't been terrible for me. It's been peaceful alone with him in the dark, even, and is a great opportunity to catch up on my thoughts or pray over friends and family. Certainly I wished he'd nurse back to sleep, but the walking wasn't distressing. Thankfully, over the last week and a half the number of nights of walking has decreased and the nursed-back-to-sleep nights have increased. However, I'm still up for about 45- to 60-minutes because I hold Peregrine for the first 20 minute of sleep during his light sleep phase. (I wish I had known to do this with the older boys--it would have saved me so much frustration!) I'll only put Peregrine down once he's achieved deep sleep because it guarantees that both he won't wake himself from flailing and that I can go to sleep and not expect to wake in five minutes to a fussy baby. Thank God for iPhones and FaceBook, lol. It gets to be a long wait, but it's worth it.

Eye color

Everyone in the family is convinced that Peregrine is going to have blue eyes, but I'll admit that I'm skeptical--and I just confirmed my skepticism after reading Griffin's one month blog post: apparently we were guessing blue for him, too. Peregrine's eyes have looked more blue, but I think they're getting murkier. My vote is brown, everyone else is voting blue, and only time will tell.

Pacifier.

Well, we're traveling uncharted territory with Baby No. 4--we're attempting to give Peregrine a pacifier. Before Auggie was born Dan and I were essentially taught that they were evil. Eland sucked his fingers (and still does!), and Griffin also sucks his fingers. We actually briefly gave Griffin a paci, but then I chickened out and took it away, and after a delayed second attempt he repeatedly refused it. So yeah, uncharted territory. But Peregrine hasn't always been the happiest while awake--although he's definitely improving in that regard--so the paci helps. And it's been great in the car. I guess my biggest fear is that I'll be waking up at night just to put it bsck in his mouth and that he'll be a toddler who either doesn't talk or talks through his pacifier, but I suppose we can just make sure these things don't happen, right? So far the paci isn't involved in sleep. If he starts falling asleep with it, it kind of wakes Peregrine up with renewed sucking, so we've used it mostly just to calm him. Plus he can't seem to keep it in his mouth without help yet. It will be interesting to see how things go.

Brothers

Auggie, Eland, and Griffin adore their baby brother. ALL OF THEM. The big boys in particular are constantly wanting to pat his head and hold his hands--even when he's asleep (!!)--and they love holding him. Griffin loves his baby brother, too, and will sit next to him on the bed, get up close, and talk to him. He likes to tell Peregrine, "It's okay buddy," when he is crying. Sweet brother.

Hiking, day trips, getting used to the car seat

Peregrine has been on two hour-long hikes in the East Mountains. He's slept through both like a champ. He's officially been up to Las Conchas at Cattle Call Wall, but it rained so we weren't out of the car for long. We took the long way home and he did great in the car--mostly thanks to Nana sitting next to him ready to help with the pacifier.

Head shape paranoia

Fear of not having help from family--"I can do this!" mindset

Oh my goodness, how am I ever going to post this?!?! There is NO TIME!


MONTHLY NOTES

07.08 - Peregrine's first trip up to the Jemez. Day trip picnic and mountain drive with some kiddie climbing. He slept great in the car the whole way out.

Has been waking more frequently at night and is drinking all my milk till I'm empty. Is there a four-week growth spurt?! Sure seems like Peregrine is trying to build up my milk supply.

07.07 - Peregrine has "vocalized" four times now in the past two days--three times with me and once with Nana Donna. It's so exciting to hear him practicing using his little voice, and so exciting that he's making sounds besides crying or grunts.

07.06 - 4 week appt w midwife: 10lbs 5.4oz and 22.5"! Amazing weight and height gain. He averaged a 45g (1.6oz) gain per day since his 3-day visit. Amazing little guy!!!!

07.05 - Light sleep vs deep sleep

07.04 - Feedings every two hours vs every three and a half: same total amount of time in a 24h period. Fussy about being fed too much.

07.02 - Went to church for the first time--first weekend in our new church building.

07.01 - First hike. Tunnel canyon in Tijeras.

06.30 - Got to meet Nana and Papa for the first time. :) First trip to Costco, with Nana.

06.28 - Twice today, for the first time, Peregrine seemed attentive and interested when I talked to him. I told him I loved him, how important he is, and how happy we are that he's here. He watched my face with wide eyes as I spoke to him and was truly attentive. Such a sweetie.

Peregrine got to meet Grandma Jan today. She brought us all kinds of baked goods. :)

06.27 - Our little guy slept wonderfully last night! He slept from 10:15p to 3a, and went nearly 6 hours between feedings. While this is a major first, I don't expect this to happen again anytime soon--and he was awake for 1.5h with the next feeding. And that was pretty rough. And I didn't sleep the whole time, but still! I'll take it!

Peregrine continues to be pretty grumpy while awake. He's occasionally content, but this almost always leads to crying. I wouldn't call it colic by any means, but he's not having the smoothest transition to life on the outside. Often with all the crying I'll eventually hear his stomach rumbling, so I suspect that he's dealing with painful digestive adjustments to life. Griffin was the same way. Peregrine, you can do it buddy! It will be okay!

06.26 - Peregrine rolled over! Obviously it was a fluke since he's so young, but he was on his back on a changing towel on the floor, and while I turned away for a moment, he rolled! He must have kicked at the floor to get himself over, but he was thoroughly surprised by it and definitely bothered.

06.24 - Our 15-day-old is such a great little guy. He's doing a great job eating and on 06.22 he clocked in at 8lbs14oz--up nearly 1lb from his lowest weight after birth. His complexion is that nice tanned skin tone that Auggie and Griffin have, inherited from Dan. He seems like he even looks bigger, and while everyone in the house is hoping he has blue eyes (to balance out our mixture of eye color and hair color), I don't think we'll be able to tell for a few months yet.

Today Peregrine got to ride in the Beco baby carrier for the first time while we attended a swim meet. He slept through it all, so when I thought we'd attempt our first walk around the block in it later I expected him to be fine. He got grumpy about halfway through, but along with healing from his circ (I don't think that was bothering him), he's also still healing from his umbilical stump falling out, so it's possible that he was sore there from the movement. Who knows. He really only fussed halfway through and then slept the rest of the way. Perhaps he was just fussing to sleep as he often does.

Night sleep is still pretty rough, but last night Peregrine's night wakings were only about 55m long as opposed to the usual 1h+. That's progress, right?! And I was vigilant for once about cluster feeding him in the evening and I think it really did help him sleep a longer stretch last night. He went 9p-1a, which means that I got three while uninterrupted hours of sleep, lol! Hey, it feels good. :)

This little guy is often pretty fussy while he's awake, but he's not outright miserable, and the fussiness is to be expected. Nonetheless, he's a great little guy and every single one of us is so happy Peregrine is here. All his brothers are thrilled, and Dan just couldn't wait for him to be born and is also so happy he's here. It feels good to know we're complete now.

06.20 - Peregrine's umbilical stump was off when I changed his diaper first thing this morning! It was lying in his sleeper! Yesterday it was finally getting loose--after it seemed like it never would--so I was predicting another day or two, but this is a nice surprise. No more folding diapers around it!

06.19 - Peregrine's first bath. Several nights ago we stopped co-sleeping. After spending 9p - 1a awake because every little movement from Peregrine would wake me up, I had about lost my marbles. Dan encouraged me to lay him down in the bassinet. I knew this meant he would cry, but I was exhausted and had to try. Peregrine only cried for a minute or so before falling asleep. And that continued for the rest of the night after wakings. The next night he didn't cry at all. Unfortunately it's no longer that easy, but I just need to learn how to lay him down when he has super sleepy cues. I feel like I've been waking him up too much during nursing somehow.

06.15 - My mom leaves today and I am wondering how we'll survive without her. At the same time it will be good to begin life on our own. She is a tremendous help and I'm a little teary about her departure.

Sleeping-wise, Peregrine can go for about 3-4 h between feedings at night. He's been sleeping next to me in bed, and what's funny/annoying is that anyone else can lay him down to sleep in the bassinet except me. Seems like he wakes within 5m anytime I do it. Arrgh. It's endearing that he likes to be next to his mama, but at the same time it would help me to be able to sleep longer if I wasn't next to a moving, sleeping baby for part of the night. Oh well. We may have to move the rock-n-play upstairs and try that, but I worry about his head shape. Maybe I can attempt to not let him wake me up so much tonight. Lol. :)

I've also been struggling to nap during the day. My mind races and I seem to startle anytime I get close to sleep. I had this problem after Eland and Griffin were born, so I know I'll grow out of it. It's just very discouraging when I need encouragement most. Falling asleep in the evening is similar. Doesn't seem like I'm really out until it's proper nighttime.

Peregrine is eating so well, and I think I am miraculously past the engorgement stage of breastfeeding. That's a milestone to celebrate.

Griffin is definitely taking this transition the hardest, but my dear friend Kendra reminded me yesterday that in another month or two he won't remember life without Peregrine. Yes, a wonderful reminder of life to come. Life of the four brothers.

Also, Peregrine is out growing some of his NB sleepers. The 3m ones are still too big, but the arms on a couple of his sleepers only go halfway down his forearms. :) He's growing!

06.14 - Peregrine's first visit with Dr. Allison. It was essentially a consult for his circumcision. This little dude was up to 8lbs 5oz! He's gaining beautifully! Dr. Allison encouraged me to forgo Peregrine's posterior tongue-tie consult. He said the research regarding posterior tongue-ties is all very new and ENTs generally aren't in support. He thinks that since the initial tongue-tie is dealt with, Peregrine's tongue movement is great, and I'm not in pain nursing that we don't need to bother. This sounds good to me--I'm happy to have one less appointment to take him to.

06.12 - Peregrine is up to 8lbs 0.4oz at his 3-day midwife visit--down just 2% of his birth weight.

06.10 - Choked on thick saliva possibly from birth and spit it up/worked it out quite a bit. Some massive meconium poops. Needed skin-to-skin contact to wake up enough to eat along with me first expressing a little bit of colostrum to entice him. (Expressing for enticement was the nurse's suggestion at Dar a Luz and definitely a helpful one.)

Through his first night he slept well between feedings and hardly fussed, didn't cry.

Peregrine checked out beautifully at his 24h in-home visit with the midwife today. His latch was perfect and he displayed his healthy new appetite. He weighed 7lbs15oz.

Tonight so far has been another thing entirely from last night. He wakes himself within minutes any time I set him down. Admittedly he is gassy. He's much more alert and demands nursing to calm down. Swaddling seems to help but also leaves him frustrated. Thankfully, co-sleeping seems to do the trick - I can rest and he can nurse. I remember it being so helpful with Griffin in those first two weeks.

He's supposed to nurse every 2h in the day and 3h at night--a total joke--we'll get nowhere near the 3h mark I'm sure.