Audrey Update

I don't have any pictures for this post, but I thought I would give a little update on how Audrey (and the rest of us) are doing. Up until about the week and 1/2 mark, Audrey was a fairly easy baby. However, every time I said that, I would knock on wood and follow it with a disclaimer that it may all change. Well, it did. Audrey started to get a little more high maintenance and fussy. She was eating sometimes every hour during the day and was sometimes barely going 2 hours between feedings at night. This was resulting in a very tired mom! This past Wednesday night was the worst. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep broken up throughout the night. Audrey just was not happy. I had to call in reinforcements (aka. my mom) to help me through Thursday with the girls. Even before this, she had been grunting a lot and seemed to have gas or something. It seems like she swallows a lot of air when she nurses. It just kept getting worse. At her 2 week check up, her pediatrician suggested Mylicon gas drops and warned me of the symptoms for acid reflux and even warned of colic. I had to try something so we tried the gas drops and having her sleep propped up in her swing at night. That next night was a million times better! So, I've been continuing with the drops which seem to help a little. She still has periods of being very uncomfortable and grunty, but it seems tolerable. I'm fairly convinced that this is a gas issue and not reflux since she is not presenting classic signs on reflux, so we'll keep treating like that's the problem.

Last night, I used the same routine of gas drops and the swing and Audrey slept from 7:00pm until 12:30am! She has never even come close to going 5 and 1/2 hours between feedings! Too bad I wasn't sleeping during all of this time since I kept waiting to feed her again one more time before I went to bed. Lesson learned...don't wait for a baby to wake up. Unfortunately, Audrey had a little trouble getting back to sleep, but by 2:00am or so she was snoozing again. Then she didn't wake up until a little before 5:00am! Amazing. She even went back to sleep until 7:45 and then was up for the morning. Although I don't feel extremely rested, I do feel optimistic that we are at least headed in the right direction.

Friday was the first day I was alone with the girls all day by myself. It went very well! I even got to rest a little on the couch while Lily and Audrey snoozed. I actually felt like I might be able to handle this:) On another note, I am truly amazed at how well Lily is adjusting to having Audrey here. Sure we have occasional behavioral issues, but even those have gotten better since the first week. Lily doesn't seem jealous or ever want to be mean to Audrey. When I'm nursing Audrey, Lily will hang around and maybe I'll read her a book. But sometimes, she'll just go in the playroom and entertain herself! Wow! It's funny because whenever Audrey is crying, Lily says "drink milk? drink milk". In other words, her answer to making Audrey be quiet is to get her to drink milk. It makes sense since that definitely gets Audrey to calm down!