The picture above was taken on Saturday and Dylan is now 5 weeks old!  (Thank you for the adorable shirts Aunt Sara!! )  Dylan is now eating 3 oz every 3 hours.  and he is getting up 1-2 times a night… which isn’t too bad.  We still have him sleeping in our room for convenience at night rather than having to go upstairs so much.  We are not quite sure when we will take the leap and move him to his room.

Dylan and I are in a good routine now during the day and I am enjoying every moment being with him.  And… big brother Drew is the best big brother in the world!  He goes on and on about “baby brother” and every day when I pick him up from school he calls all of his friends to come see him.  Although it is so sweet, I do keep my distance from all the kids… I am trying to keep the germ spreading to a minimum! 

Yesterday was Drew’s Halloween parade & party at school.  We all had such a nice time.  Drew was a “Fire Chief”… he said he is going to drive the fire truck.  He is totally obsessed with fire trucks!  I decided to dress Dylan in his costume to go to Drew’s party and he was a Giraffe.  I took Drew into school yesterday late since I wanted to see the parade… so Dylan and I followed the line of children into each classroom as Drew and all of his friends showed all the other kids their costumes.  Then in the afternoon, David came and we were all at the party.  It was a fun day and Drew is very excited to go trick or treating on Saturday! 

As of today… we are falling into our new routine very well.  We are getting up about twice a night to feed him and during the day he can go for about 3 hours at a time before the next feeding.  I am cautiously getting out and about now and are enjoying the bonding time we have during the day.  He continues to be such a good baby… and certainly seems to be loving being a “cuddle bug”… Drew was always like that and continues to be (of course… when he wants to)    A difference we have noticed between the two boys is that Dylan doesn’t care quite as much about being swaddled.  I’d say about 30-40% of the time he just wants to be left alone.  With Drew, it was absolutely necessary that he wanted to be swaddled when he was sleeping or napping.  As long as Dylan sleeps… that is all we care about right now! 

Last week Drew got sick, so we ended up keeping him home for a few days which made for a long week!  David went back to work last Monday so it was certainly an interesting way to break in our new routine with having both boys at home with me.  The most challenging part was having to keep the two of them separated because David and I are terrified of Dylan getting sick with all of these sicknesses floating around.  So… we had Dylan quarantined to our room and Drew had the living room to play with all of his toys in.  Thank goodness, Drew is doing much better and he went back to school today.  We’ve realized that it is best on us all to stay in our usual routine and we are so fortunate that Drew loves his daycare and looks forward to going!  It is such a wonderful place!

This weekend was nice and we had decided that we were going to go on our first outing as a family and pick out a pumpkin to carve for Halloween.  Last week we had noticed that a local landscape place had a large trailer of pumpkins for sale and wanted to go pick one out there.  Once we got out and drove down there, the place was closed… so we were a little upset and our first outing wasn’t as fun as it could have been.  So, then David mentions that he needs to get his oil changed.  So… after all that, our first outing consisted of driving around in the car, pulling up to Texaco Express Lube and sitting in the car watching them change David’s oil.   

How exciting!  HA HA…  Oh well, our intentions were good…

Today is going well and I am enjoying every moment bonding with Dylan.  He has been such a good baby.  We have been having to wake him up during the night to feed him… we have had no issues with him getting days/nights mixed up.  Boy are we thankful for that!!  (knock on wood)   

My healing process has been much quicker and I am moving around pretty well now.  Dylan’s Jaundice is much, much better… His skin clarity has dramatically improved and he is pretty much back to himself.  Now, I am off to get him dressed for the day…

More updates to come soon…

Before we left the hospital one of the things that they checked on Dylan, as they do all babies, is his Biliruben levels.  Biliruben is considered the extra blood cells that Dylan had after he was delivered that he didn’t need.  The body has to get rid of that and it does so through the liver.  Most babies, two-thirds in fact, can’t get rid of all of it and when they can’t, the baby gets jaundice and their skin turns a bit yellow.  Dylan’s levels came back at a 9 which is considered normal but on the high side of normal.  No big deal.  When we took him in on Wednesday for his checkup at the doctor they checked his levels again and this time they came back at 20.8!  This is considered very high.  With that, they wanted us to have him do some phototherapy.  Phototherapy for jaundice helps break up the Biliruben and allows it to pass through the colon and out in the poop.  While on this light therapy, Dylan has to be on the lights at all times except when feeding or being changed.  As you can imagine, this is quite difficult as we can’t take him out to play with him or just hold him. 

They had a nurse come out to the house and bring us the lights to set up in his crib and check is levels again.  Until he is off of the lights, they will have a nurse come out every day and check his vitals along with his bili levels.

At the start of day two of the lights, the nurse came out and checked him out and his bili levels had dropped to 16 which is wonderful news.  We had been keeping up with his pees, poops, feedings and temperature for the doctor to review and it was all going just perfect.  Our doctor said that with the pees, poops, feedings, and temps he’s been having, as long as his bili drops again to 14 or below today, he can come off of the lights.  The nurse has come and gone today and his vitals still look great.  He has gained weight again for the second consecutive day and he is eating well.  We will hopefully find out shortly what his levels are and whether or not we can get rid of these lights.  It is truly awful to see him laying there and we can’t pick him up or play with him.  Along with the lethargy that the jaundice has caused, it has made the past few days quite difficult.  Even Drew has been a bit sad that he can’t hold his brother but can only see him in the crib.

More later when we hear the results…

Well… today (October 8th) is my official due date and our baby boy is  now 5 days old.  My sweet husband did a great job of the posts while I was pre-occupied with other things.    As I stated in an earlier post, Dylan certainly arrived in his own fashionable way VERY early on Saturday (10/3) morning.  Looking back at it now, it was one of the most awesome experiences of my life!  I would have never guessed that my water would break or that I would go into labor on my own.  Oh, was I wrong!  At 1:16 on Saturday morning my water broke and the excitement began.  The delivery went much smoother than my delivery with Drew and it was just a great experience!  Drew’s delivery was also a great experience, just much, much longer!  St. Vincent’s Hospital is where I had him, and that hospital is awesome… I truly didn’t want to leave on Monday.  All the nursing staff, doctors, etc were so accommodating and helped with all those things I’ve forgotten over the last 3 years.

We are all back home now and have been working on developing our new routine.  Drew adores Dylan and loves to hold him.  He is already and will continue to be such a great big brother!  Drew is back at daycare and we are working hard to keep him in his normal routine during this time.  He is having some adjustments, but we did expect to have some… and I feel like he is doing better as each day goes by.  We have been making special Drew time in the afternoons when he gets home.

Will have more updates soon…

I’ve got some pictures I need to upload and will do that some time today.  I will also throw a short video together of some of the stuff that has gone on here and at the hospital as well. 

Keep coming back. 

I have posted a ton of pictures and more are going up now as I write this post.  Be sure to check out the Pics section browse the shots we have so far.

Thanks again to all of you who’ve kept up and have been thinking about us.  We love you guys.