Andrew Update

Well, already a month has gone by since our little guy was born. It's been a bit crazy the past few weeks too. I had intentions of blogging all these cute pictures and updates on how things were going, but time seemed to slip quickly through our fingers.

Andrew is growing very well. He's probably the best nurser out of all my kids (which is a big blessing, considering how much pain I was in with the other two). I'm guessing he's about 9 lbs now (since at 3 weeks old he was 8lbs 9oz). And he's grown 2 inches since birth too. The smiles are becoming more frequent now too. He's starting to make more eye contact and grinning at mamma's smiles and Kyra's goofy faces (he really responds well to her and she has been most helpful and calm at times when he's fussy).

The sleep however has not been going the best. For awhile he was waking up every hour in the middle of the night, which left a very tired mom and dad. Fortunately I have an incredible sister in-law (you'll never know how grateful I am Kris), who came in the nick of time to help fix meals, wash dishes, rock Andrew while I took in a few snoozes, and keep the kids occupied with her kiddlings. She was truly a life saver. Andrew now seems to be sleeping a little bit better, but is still waking up every 3 hours (unlike my girls who seem to only wake up once a night from the get go). Fortunately, he goes to bed right after I feed him.

We also seemed to battle with a few medical conditions. It's nothing too serious, but enough to make me a little more exhausted on top of the lack of sleep. The poor guy has had numerous trips to the doctor's office and hospital. He had a hard time getting rid of the jaundice. We had him under a Bili blanket for close to 1 1/2 weeks, and he had to have blood draws over a dozen times. Hopefully his poor heels won't be scarred. For a while it seemed we were headed to the lab almost every day. And the girls couldn't take his crying, and asked to sit in the hallway to wait for him to be done. Fortunately his levels went down and we are done with the poking.

Then today we headed to the hospital for an EEG which I believe measures some kind of brain waves. We're trying to rule out possible seizure activity. Since he was born, he has had these mild twitches, but they aren't going away, and don't go away when you hold him close. Most likely this is just his nervous system still developing (and I'm hoping that's what it is). But in a week we will hopefully know the results of this test. We're praying it's nothing more than his little body developing. He sure didn't like being hooked up to all those electrodes though. He let the tech know for sure with his wailing and hand grabbing the wires off several times. He made her work for her money this morning.

We know that we are blessed by this little guy. Like I mentioned, we've hit a few bumps in the road (which were more or less inconveniences in our lives as we get used to this little guy), but know it could be way worse. We have encountered a few friends these past few weeks that have dealt with far more difficult circumstances, which puts in perspective how fortunate we are and also makes us realize that God is in control and we have to give our concerns to Him. We take joy in knowing God gave us a growing, beautiful little boy, and thank God that he has blessed us with this new addition.