Saturday, January 3, 2009

Pound for Pound



Apologies, dear readers, for the long delay! Ez (and his entourage) are back in Chicago after a soul-reviving trip to New Mexico. The rest of the trip was great... sunshine, snow, Christmas presents, Chanuka candles, green chile stuffed sopaipillas. That trip to the hot tub that Gabe wrote about in the last posting, though, never did happen. Our car got stuck 100 feet from the house and required hours of shoveling snow and even sprinkling kitty litter to get it going again. 


Somehow the spirit of Christmas gift-giving passed Ezra by completely. 
He slept through the whole thing. Maybe it's a good thing - we're hoping to keep him from getting too seduced by the whole Santa thing so he can maintain a Jewish identity, while still celebrating Christmas with the Gross 
side of the family... it's a delicate balancing act. 

Anyway, Aunt Katy the Photographer captured some great moments. We wanted to share a few (including one of Ezra staring, narcissistically, at his own images). 

We're preoccupied at the moment with quite a lot of stuff. On Monday, both Gabe and I go back to work (him full-time, me three days a week), and Ezra will go to his nanny's house. Through complete serendipity, our coworker said her previous nanny, Najiba, might be available. Turns out she was and she's great. So caring, great with babies - we feel incredibly lucky. But it's going to take some logistical gymnastics to get him there and pick him up in the morning (Najiba doesn't drive.) 

And then on top of that, I was dying to know his weight today so I took him to the doctor's office and had the nurse weigh him. Talk about a letdown - he only put on 8 ounces in a month. They say babies should put on at least a pound a month. We haven't had a chance to talk to our doctor about it yet. But it may be something called "foremilk/hindmilk imbalance" (who knew breastfeeding was this complicated??). That involves Ezra getting too much of the skim milk that comes at the beginning of a feeding and not enough of the fatty hindmilk at the end of the feeding. He tends to fall asleep while nursing, so that may be part of the problem. And it could also be the cause of his copious, green poops. We hope to get to the bottom of this quickly and start packing on the pounds again - be it with more breastmilk, formula or solids. 

Still, our dear little guy is as lively and curious as ever. And he just celebrated his 5-month birthday - happy birthday, Ezra James!

3 comments:

Trish said...

You have a beautiful, healthy baby! Don't sweat the weight, some months he will grow by leaps and bounds, and some months just little jumps! I love reading about him. RELAX!

Ashley said...

Thanks! We appreciate the reassurance. And thanks for reading!

K said...

I agree with Trish--Emelia likes to freak us out as well. I found that she'll eat less and sleep more for days at a time. That's when we started to increase her "dream nursing". Sneak it in there and she'll slurp away. Anywho, look at how much he's gained overall, the champ!!
Sorry you missed the spa, btw.