Baker :: Two Months Old

Another month down! This one wasn't as jammed packed full of doctor visits as month one but we still had our fair share of doctor offices. I've heard through the Down syndrome slash special needs grapevine that appointments will taper off eventually but for now I'm still grateful we have lots of watchful eyes on our guy.

At two months old, Baker weighs in at 9 lbs 8 oz - that's a whole four pounds over birth weight! Sayyyyy, what?! Oink, oink baby.

His weight gain has been amazing and we're sooo glad about that. It's one of the top concerns as we move our way towards open heart surgery. The bigger and stronger he is, the better. He's 20.5 inches long.

We finally used the last newborn-sized diaper but he's still wearing newborn clothes and sleepers. He's filling them out quite nicely. He still mostly breastfeeds but will take a bottle without issue. We realized he's still using the preemie nipple on the bottles which may explain why it takes him a while to finish so we just made the change to level 1 for a faster flow. He seems to tolerate it just fine.

Another month 2 milestone? He rolled over from front to back! I thought for sure it was a fluke the first time and totally missed getting it on camera but then he did it a 2nd time with Justin as my witness! So proud of our strong boy!

We've never had good sleepers (both girls will wake up during the night for one reason or another...) so I'm not really expecting Baker to be much different. I would say he's still pretty sleepy due to his heart condition but we're having more and more alert time! Some nights I'll get a 4 or 5 hour stretch before he's up to eat again and other nights he's up more often. Wednesday night was a rough one - I think he was dealing with some gas pains and reflux; Justin thought he sounded awfully congested. Either way, he was up from about 3am - 5:15. It was a party....

I forgive him though because he is so stinking' close to smiling it kills me! We'll have the most amazing eye contact and he'll start to get all excited only to fight it and purse his lips together to stifle the smile. Such a tease.

Most importantly this month, we're celebrating our first Rocktober, Down Syndrome Awareness Month. A chance to intentionally spread awareness about all things Down syndrome. As if we needed another reason to share how amazing Baker really is.... ;)

His two-month well visit turned into quite the debacle yesterday morning. At the every end of the appointment, before the round of vaccines, his pediatrician wanted to get an oxygen reading. They had never taken his O2 stats in that office before so she wanted it on file as a baseline. Baker was being a stinker and it took a few tries to get a reading alternating between his hand and foot.

Everything they got was in the mid to low 80s which isn't great. Every other O2 reading I've seen of his (in the NICU and cardiologist office) had been in the mid 90s, with it being 91 at his cardio appointment 2 weeks ago.

As a precaution, our pediatrician placed a call to the cardiologist across the street to see what he thought. It was getting close to preschool pickup so I was kinda starting to sweat thinking I'd be late to pick up Gracyn. Leighton was content with the iPad but she's a wild card and could start melting down at any given time so I knew I was pushing my luck!

Because our doctors are amazing and have his best interests in mind, the cardiologist, of course, wanted to see him right away. I quickly texted our neighbor who happens to send her daughter to the same preschool and asked if she could grab Gracyn (she agreed, have I mentioned we have the best neighbors ever?!?!) and I called Justin to let him know what was going on. He was luckily working in the office (versus out in the field like he normally does!) so he was actually able to meet us which was a huge blessing because I was stressing just a tad.

Any way, his echo came back without any major changes but his oxygen was still low. The cardiologist thought he was breathing a little fast and a tad harder than he liked to see. He wasn't having retractions or anything but enough to raise an eyebrow. Because of this, the doc thought there was possibly fluid in his lungs and prescribed a diuretic to help flush it out. This can be very common with Baker's heart defect and totally something we knew could happen leading up to surgery. I wasn't necessarily expecting it to happen at that moment but we're quickly learning to roll with the punches over here!

This should't change the timeline for surgery or anything like that which is good. As long as Baker continues to grow well, something like this can be managed with meds.

Sweet Baker, you continue to amaze me, dude. You're the strongest little guy I know. We all love you so much - especially those sister girls.

Cheers to month THREE!