A Clara Update

Parents obsess over the movements of their children's bowels. Since Clara's birth I now understand why: it's one of the few ways that you can know what is happening inside a child's body. If you are one of those who would rather not hear talk of such things, I recommend you skip this post.

Last Saturday afternoon I noticed blood in Clara's diaper. I called Kristin upstairs to inspect. We didn't see any external signs of bleeding, so we decided that we should keep a close eye on it. We were over visiting some friends that evening when the next dirty diaper also had blood in it. We ended up calling the 24-hour hotline for our doctors office and talked to a nurse who took a ton of information and had the doctor call us. The doctor explained that, as Clara is formula-fed, Clara is probably having a hard time digesting the proteins in the formula and that we should switch to hypoallergenic formula and see how she does. She also told us to call the office first thing this morning and get Clara in to see one of the doctors in the practice.

Bruce and I immediately ran out to buy some of the new formula. We also picked up some Dibs to soothe the agitated mother's soul. Back at their house, we made a bottle of the formula, which the doctor had warned us is more expensive and smells like beef broth, and Clara took the bottle without fuss. We were concerned that she might not like the new formula, but luckily she cooperated. Such a good little girl.

At the doctors office this morning we saw the doctor we will be seeing for her two-month check-up in February. We came armed with the most recent dirty diaper and pictures we'd taken of the Saturday diapers. The doctor had the the diaper we brought checked for blood and it came back negative. (A good sign that the new formula is digesting fine.) He confirmed what the other doctor has suspected, that Clara has allergic colitis, which means her colon inflames when cows milk proteins are present. It occurs in about 4-7% of all babies, and most children grow out of it. He said it can also be a sign of allergies later in life, which wouldn't be surprising as Kristin has wicked hay fever. We're also to plan on using the hypoallergenic formula for the rest of the time she's on a bottle. The one option we have is to try soy formula - 40% of babies allergic to cows milk also can't handle soy - but we're going to wait a while before we try that. It should take her intestines a week or so to heal, during which time we might see traces but not as much as we saw on Saturday.

They also weighed Clara today. She's tipping the scales at 9 lbs 15 oz. That's a 22 ounce gain in 13 days! The doctor says she doesn't look chubby, so she must be putting that all on in height. At home we measured her at 22.5 inches, up an inch. Shocking that this child might be tall. {INSERT_SARCASM_TAG_HERE}

So, the good news is that Clara looks okay. The bad news is that the hypoallergenic stuff is twice as expensive as normal formula. As Kristin said to me after dropping $50 on one week's worth of formula, "at least we're not dirt poor trying to buy the stuff." For that I am grateful.

Liquid...Diamonds??

Another chapter in the Clara-formula saga unfolds.

She had her two-month well-baby visit on Monday and looks great. She's up to 11 lbs 10 oz (75th percentile) and 23.5 inches (90th percentile - big shock, right?), so she's growing well and keeping pace with where she's been since her first visit the day after she was discharged from the hospital. She's right on track developmentally and is doing everything she should. However...

Last week I took another diaper in to test for occult blood and it came back positive again, despite having been back on the hypoallergenic formula for two weeks. So on Monday I brought another one, they tested it, and yep, still positive. Our pediatrician recommended we make the jump to an elemental formula, one that contains no protein chains whatsoever. It's completely amino acid based, so there is nothing in it that should continue to irritate her colon. Sounds good, right?

The downside - because it's such a speciality product, you can't purchase it in stores but have to order it directly from the manufacturer instead. Well, I guess you could order it through a pharmacy, but it's easier in my mind to go straight to the source. Our first order just arrived. Four cans, 14 ounces each. One can should last us about 3 days right now. Guess how much that cost us. Go on, guess.


$135 plus shipping.

That works out to $33.75 per can. The rest of the math depresses me in the extreme, so you can go figure it out on your own.

We think Clara has decided to spend every penny we have in the hopes that it will convince us not to give her any siblings.

Don't get me wrong, I want nothing more than to get this little girl's insides healed up and we'll do whatever it takes to make that happen. But yikes is it expensive. Our pediatrician referred to her as a "high-maintenance kid." Yep.

Mom's Update

The little Boo is sleeping right now, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to send out an update of my own.

Clara will be a month old tomorrow, and I feel like we're starting to get the hang of this. She's still not going for more than about three hours between feedings - the people who say one-month-old formula-fed babies usually go four hours between feedings are liars - but I'm adjusting to waking up two or three times each night. Most nights she just wakes, eats, and falls right back asleep anyway, so that's not too bad.

She's starting to give us real smiles, which are completely adorable. We'll have to try and get some pics and post them soon. She usually pops them out just after a good nap when I'm changing her diaper. And she's getting much better at holding her head up and just surveying the landscape. She loves the mobile in her crib...come to think of it, the mobile sometimes gets more smiles than Mom and Dad do.

We think the colitis is starting to heal up, although she still seems to be having some pain at times because of it. I love my daughter with all my heart, but anyone who has witnessed her latest trick of intermittent screaming for a couple of hours each evening would agree that she has the ability to turn into a full-on bad-tempered shrew. I'm hoping that this is because her belly is still healing and will die down soon. Please, please, no one say the word "colic."

We've been price-shopping to find out who has the best price on this liquid gold (otherwise known as hypoallergenic formula) we're now feeding her, and guess who comes through for us again? Wegmans. I have great love for Wegmans and will be devastated the day we move away from this land privileged enough to have one. For those not in the know, Wegmans is quite possibly the greatest grocery store ever built. Ever.

So that's life in a nutshell. It's a lot of fun to see her growing and changing every day and to know how much we have to look forward to. But at the same time I can't help but feel sad that my little baby isn't quite so little anymore...definitely not the same tiny newborn we brought home a month ago. I've already had to pack away some clothes she has grown out of. I'm guessing one day I'll just blink and she'll be five and off to school, then another blink and she'll be graduating from high school. But I won't think about that now...I'll just go and snuggle with my baby girl.

Bath-Time

One of my favorite parts of my day is when Mommy and Daddy give me a bath. Here are a few pictures of me in the bathtub that should help you understand why I love my bath so much.

This is my washcloth. I loved to dip it in the water then cram it in my mouth and suck all the water off of it. Mommy says this is disgusting - something about gross bath water - but any liquid tastes better than my formula, so I get that thing as wet as possible and go to town.

And here we have my cup. I have five colored cups for playing in the bath, but I only like the purple and blue ones. If you look closely, you can see the drops of water from my splashes, another one of my favorite things to do. I started sitting up in the tub about a month ago, and ever since them I've been splashing like crazy. Mommy and Daddy always get really wet when they bathe me. I wonder why they don't join me in the tub. I always have a good time.

Towards the end of my bath, Mommy and Daddy let the water out and turn on the shower to rinse me off. I love the feeling of water on my head. If I'm really careful, I can catch the water in my mouth - remember what I said about liquids that taste better than my yucky formula - without getting too much in my eyes. I also try to grab at the water, but can't grab hold of it. Once the tub is empty I crawl around to explore. Here I am trying to get to my soap and shampoo and inspecting the drain.

Once I'm out of the tub, I get in my towel to dry off. Daddy always drys me off and puts on my pajamas while Mommy makes my bottle. Sometimes we read a book, most of the time I'm crying by the time I'm dressed, and after few quick hugs I settle down for my bottle and a good night's sleep.

From Daddy: From time to time we catch Clara in a certain position - on her side, propped up on one hand, a leg still in front of her - and we joke that she is doing her Venus Reclining. Well, in the tub tonight we captured Clara Reclining. Enjoy.

Shopping @ Shoppers

The Shoppers Food Warehouse near us recently underwent a major renovation in what appears to be an attempt to upgrade their image in response to Wegmans entrance into the local supermarket space. Giant similarly embarked on a marketing campaign to tell the world that they now have fresh produce - one of the main reasons we forsook Giant for Wegmans, the second being price. With the Shoppers upgrade they have new deli and seafood counters, upgraded produce, and a redesigned interior that departs from their past bargain basement image. Additionally, they dropped 'warehouse' from their name and are now called simply Shoppers.

We stopped by Shoppers this morning to pick up some formula for Baby Clara. As she posted last night, the tummy troubles continue and are now accompanied by what appears to be a rash all over her face. Kristin and I decided we should give the hypoallergenic stuff a second shot. So, on the way to the bus stop this morning we stopped by Shoppers and I ran in to get some formula and a few other necessities*. While scanning the signs announcing the items found on each aisle, I chuckled at what they had chosen to include in the aisle I sought: baby needs, feminine hygiene, magazines, and greeting cards.

I wonder if the people in charge of layout don't think men buy greeting cards.

*One of the areas Shoppers has always been tops is their colossal donuts. They are baked fresh daily, are fairly inexpensive, and there are always plenty Chocolate Frosted Custard Filled. Today our necessities consisted of two chocolate frosted custard filled and one raspberry filled. One guess as to which of us ate two...

Deliquent Parents

My friends Nuala and Bran have a good Mommy and Daddy. They already have a six-week update on their blog. I was born on the same day, but my Mommy and Daddy dropped the ball and haven't posted anything about me for a few days now. The nerve. So I guess I need to do it myself.

I'm still having problems with my tummy, but we saw a new doctor today and hopefully it will get better soon. I'm kind of tired of all these doctors I've been meeting lately. They're really nice and everything, but a girl can only handle so many pokes and prods. On Monday they decided to have me try soy formula, but I don't think it's working too well. You'll see in the picture below that I'm breaking out in a rash on my face, and it might be because of the formula. So Mommy may have to come up with something else for me. To quote my friend Colter, I'm having a really hard life.

Actually, most things are going pretty well for me. I'm smiling more and more now, and most of the time it's at Mommy and Daddy instead of my mobile. I can hold my head up pretty well and can lift it off the ground during tummy time, when I let my Mommy give me tummy time. Mostly I hate it and just cry until she picks me up. I like my toys more and more all the time, and tonight I had fun with Daddy on my play mat. I still don't think I like my swing or bouncy seat, but Mommy is determined I will. Maybe someday I'll decide to humor her and stay in them for longer than two minutes before I cry.

Here's a picture of me playing with Daddy and wearing my I (Heart) Daddy onesie (thank you Grandma Debbie).

And here's a picture of me in the bath the other day. I'm not embarrassed to post it since my parents made sure it's not baby porn. You might not be able to tell from this picture, but I'm still pretty skinny; Mommy said she wonders where I came from, since she never thought one of her babies would ever be skinny.

I think that's all for tonight. It's really late and everyone needs sleep in this house. Mommy told me I need to be a good girl and sleep for more than three or four hours at a time, but I don't think I want to do that yet. Maybe next week. Or not.

Where Does the Time Go?

I just realized it's been a week since our last post. Bad us. So here's a little Clara report to fill the void...

It's been a little over a week since we started giving her Neocate, and after a few tough days of adjustment (she HATED the taste at first), she seems to be doing well. Now our challenge is finding the right way to thicken it; it's about the consistency of skim milk and because it's so thin her reflux became much worse. The GI specialist recommended using rice cereal so we've been trying that, but it's less than ideal for her. He also suggested a product called Simply Thick, a food thickener made for people with swallowing problems. It's often used for reflux babies in an attempt to keep their food in their bellies. Our first shipment of the stuff is on the way today, so hopefully it will work better for her.

One positive thing about the new formula - ever since we started her on it, she's been sleeping for one six or seven hour stretch almost every night. Joy! Maybe this sleep-deprived haze I've been living in for 10 weeks will start to lift.

She's becoming much more interactive with us, "talking" and smiling a lot. She's even starting to laugh a little, especially when she's being tickled. She's also developed the coordination to knock her bottles out of the way when she decides she's done. If you try to push it on her, she gets this look of outrage, yells, and swats at you. Never one to have opinions of her own, this child of mine.

I just heard her making noises upstairs, so my time is up. Here are a couple of photos for your viewing pleasure:

Tummy Time Fun














During tummy time one of three things usually happens: 1) she cries and won't do anything else, 2) she lays there licking her hands and won't do anything else, or 3) she falls asleep. Here is evidence of #2:














Oliver might kill me for posting this, but this is what I saw one morning when I walked into Clara's room:

Cookie Cutter Babies

Evidently we only know one way to make them. Brown hair (yes, brown, despite Oliver's fears of a red-headed child), chubby cheeks, and oh-so yellow skin.

Actually, fluorescent orange might be a better way to describe their color during the first few weeks of life. Here is Clara at about four days old:


And here is Anna at about six days old:


(Her skin is actually much, much more orange than it looks in this picture. You can compare her face with part of Oliver's arm and Clara's hand to get an idea of how far from nicely pink-white she really is.)

Anna also seems to be following in her big sister's milk-intolerant footsteps. Not sure if it's truly going to be an allergy or just a sensitivity she'll grow out of over the next few months, but the course of treatment is the same: expensive, stinky hypoallergenic formula. Here's hoping Anna doesn't end up on Neocate like Clara did; our student budget would most certainly not appreciate that.

We'll get some more pictures up soon...I was going to do it now, but the two-year-old with a nasty head cold isn't sleeping and I need to go convince her that it is, in fact, nap time.

Two Little Feet

So, recently Clara hasn't been sleeping very well. We're running into problems with her formula. Neocate tastes awful. You know it's bad when the company publishes a list of things to do when you child starts refusing their product. Since we've introduced solids, Clara won't take a bottle unless she's half asleep. This has resulted in her getting accustomed to being held while falling asleep. We are not happy about this, but have decided getting her the food she needs is more important right now.

In the mornings, in an attempt to help her get a little more sleep, we bring her into bed with us. Combine this with a slightly more mobile child (Kristin just commented that Clara's movements seem significantly more deliberate than those of a month ago) and you get some interesting experiences. The other morning she was flailing about in her sleep and came close to clocking Kristin in the eye. She better watch it. I don't want to be blamed for my wife having a shiner!

So this morning I woke up to the pressure of two little six-month-old feet pushing on the middle of my back. Is someone trying to kick me out of my own bed?

Playing Catch-up

Have a bunch of things to post so I'm going to post them all together.

• My buddy Stuart got into composing music a little over a year ago. Since them he has set up a sweet home studio. In the past few months he has composed an amazing song called Wonder of Flight. He played me the *almost* final version. It was near flawless. Being the perfectionist I am, and knowing the perfectionist he is, I knew trumpets weren't to his liking. He spent hours perfecting them. You can hear the final piece here. Definitely worth checking out.
• It's no secret that I'm a heavy sleeper. BC (before Clara) Kristin would have to kick me for about fifteen minutes before I'd be coherent. Alarm clocks don't wake me up. On the random morning when Kristin would let the alarm clock ring until I turned it off, she'd lay there so long that she'd just get frustrated. And kick me harder. Wasn't good for anyone involved. So when Clara arrived, Kristin quickly noticed that I would wake up if Clara was placed in my arms. Aha! A new way to wake me up! So now our morning routines is Kristin bringing Clara in to cuddle with me. It's so much fun to cuddle with the little one and take some time to see how close Kristin got to losing it overnight. Yesterday morning Clara came in to cuddle with me and Kristin snapped some pictures.
  
• Recently Clara has taken to pacifiers. Before now she would suck for a second or two then spit the pacifier out and take her crying to the next level. In the past two weeks she has made it known that pacifiers please her and that we should always have a ready supply. And the definition of ready supply is the Gerber Nuk pacifier. Not the type we got for free at the hospital or the first type we bought, but the Gerber Nuk pacifier. This is the only acceptable pacifier in her view. Another cute thing she has started doing is holding on to whatever is in front of her when we are feeding or pacifying her. Most times this is a rank, smell burp cloth, but the other night I was rocking with Clara in the chair trying to get her to fall asleep it was my hand. I was holding her pacifier in, as she kept pushing it out of her mouth then complaining, loudly, when it was gone. Her fingers started grabbing at my hand and wrist, trying to get something to hold on to. Her little nails tickled my skin.
• Another great post from RedKudu can be found here. She's teaching The Lord of the Flies to her students and employing some interesting techniques.
• Clara food update: As we have blogged about many times before, Clara had some difficulty digesting certain types of formula. If you remember we started her on powdered Similac. When that caused her problems, we switched to powdered Alimentum. When she wouldn't eat that, we switched to ready-made Alimentum. When that caused the same problem as the powdered Similac, we switched to powdered soy. When that constipated her, we went back to ready-made Alimentum. And low and behold she's fine. This really confused us. Why did the first ready-made Alimentum react with her system exactly like the powdered Similac did? When I bought the first batch of ready-made Alimentum, the labels on the containers were loose. I remember telling Kristin that the stuff smelled exactly like the powdered Similac (a welcome relief as powdered Alimentum smelled like DEATH). Independently, Kristin and I both wondered if someone at the store had switched the labels on the ready-made Alimentum and ready-made Similac bottles - Similac is $2 a bottle cheaper. I think they did. Now we check every bottle we buy to make sure the serial number on the bottle begins with "ALI."
• Last night was a tough night for Kristin and Clara. Between the hours of midnight and 7:30am Kristin got about 2 hours of sleep. At 7:30a I took Clara, called the choir director at church to tell her she needed to find a sub for me, sent Kristin to bed, and BlackBerry messaged a friend to tell him to ask another friend if he'd teach my Sunday School class. Kristin was able to get three hours of sleep Sunday morning. Didn't quite make up for the bad overnight, but was a bit of a start.
• Last Tuesday I was downtown at the Paper, and a coworker came up to me. "Oliver, I have to tell you that my boyfriend and I are totally addicted to the Warm Delights." She explained that they'd purchased two of the chocolate brownie, one of the lemon swirl, and one of the cinnamon crumb. They ooopsed and put the topping on the cinnamon crumb before they nuked it - it's supposed to go on after it bakes, unlike most of the other flavors - but otherwise loved the things. We agreed that the cake is the product's strong suit and that they need to tweak the toppings a little. Regardless, we have another convert! Yeah for Betty Crocker® Warm Delights™ Desserts!

My New High Chair

We had a big event at our house this week. Mommy and Daddy bought me a present. A high chair! That's right, I'm starting in on the world of solid foods. Mommy tried feeding me solids in my bouncy seat, but I kept trying to turn around to see what was behind me. The new high chair holds me in place so she can get me to try new foods. Here is a picture of me in my new chair:
Daddy says I'm super cute. Mommy and Daddy took turns feeding me, I don't know what it was but it didn't taste too good. Of course, anything tastes better than my formula, so I try not to complain. Here are some pictures from the event.

Daddy wasn't as good as Mommy at keeping my face clean.

I got to drink out of a cup. Well, I more licked the cup than drank out of it.

Once I was done eating, Mommy and Daddy let me play in my high chair for a while. I checked and, sure enough, the shoulder straps are not edible. You always have to test these things. Daddy caught me testing the shoulder straps on video. Check it out!

Artificial Market Pressures Redux

Some of you may remember that during my pregnancy I found yogurt-covered raisins to be a gestational diabetes-friendly snack food and would always have a couple of bags in the pantry. Oliver posted about my experience with the sporadic availability of my favorite brand at Wegmans. If you need a refresher check out his previous post. I'll wait.

Back? Well, today I discovered my next mission to single-handedly influence supply & demand. Last time I was at Wegmans I picked up the last four bottles of Alimentum (the hypoallergic formula Clara needs). Today I purchased the last six bottles on the shelf. How many times will this happen before they are fully stocked? The experiment begins.

100 Calorie Blog: Hostess 100 Calorie Pack Cupcakes

Product Name: 100 Calorie Pack Chocolate Cake with Creamy Filling
Manufacturer: Hostess
Flavors: Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting, Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Points: 1 point for 3 cupcakes
Available at: Most grocery stores, though there appears to be a shortage in many parts of the county as Hostess did not anticipate the amazing reception the product has received.
How did I hear about it?: Alicia

I first heard about these tiny cupcakes from my coworker Alicia. She never goes down the cupcake aisle, and one day she decided to go down the cupcake aisle and saw them. She bought two boxes and brought one box in to share, the yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Later, Sonja found a box of the chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Kristin found a box of the latter kind, and that is what I used for this review.


First impressions of the product are, "Too small. Will never satisfy." It's difficult to get used to a smaller-sized cake when the larger size has been the norm for the past 90 years (reference).

At first bite, the cupcake doesn't taste too different from its full-fat cousin. The cake is chewy, the frosting gooey. A little too gooey, perhaps. I noticed that the packaging stuck to the frosting and my fingers weren't "just lick them clean"-able. There was a good chocolate taste, without tasting artificial. The filling - notice that the package says creamy filling, not cream filling? - is a perfect touch. Had they not been filled it wouldn't have been the same. Overall, they were a delightful snack to fend off hunger and satisfy the want for something sweet.


I have to call out three particularly smart moves Hostess made. First, rather than include only one cupcake for 100 calories, they included three. Snackers want to feel like they are eating enough, not having to sacrifice quantity for the sake of low calories. Second, as I mentioned above, they recreated the cupcake - cake, frosting, and filling - rather than dropping the frosting or filling. Third, they included five grams of fiber. Per the Weight Watchers point formula, fiber lowers your overall point score. This means that the three cupcakes are only one point. For comparison sake, two Hershey's Kisses are one point.

The brilliance of the Hostess 100 Calorie Cupcakes lies in the fact that the calorie conscious eater feels like he is indulging without bankrupting his daily caloric allotment.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Family Photo Session

The sad truth: the last time our little family was photographed together was Christmas...of 2006...when Clara was six days old. Bad, bad us. Oliver heard through one of his classmates about an amateur photographer who is working to build a business and charges really reasonable rates (important for those of us on a student budget). So we decided to call her up and schedule a session a couple of weeks ago.

Rarely have I been so exhausted as I was by the end of that session.

But don't you just have to sit there and smile and look pretty while someone else does all the work, you ask? Well, in a normal family that may be the case. But normal families do not have a Clara to contend with. The child hates - HATES - to be confined against her will and makes her discontent very clear. Occasionally she'll sit nicely on your lap, but those moments are rare, especially when there is new territory to explore (and most particularly if that new territory is outdoors).

We got the pictures back this week, and I'm posting a few with some description as to what was going on in each. Hopefully the reason for my exhaustion will become clear.

The session began with the photographer attempting some traditional posed family portraits. This did not go over well with the little one. As soon as one of us would grab her to put her on our laps she would scream and try to wriggle away. This picture was taken immediately before a successful escape; you can see the indignation on her face:


Here we have Oliver attempting to wrestle with her a bit to see if we could get her happy enough to sit for a couple of shots. Sadly, this was not to be:


Finally, the photographer decided to try for some candid shots and then return to the posed shots once Clara had expended some of her excess energy. We can always hope, right? (I'm sure those of you who have spent time with my daughter are laughing right now.) We did end up with some cute candid shots, though:






After a few more attempts at some posed shots, we finally stumbled on the magic formula for taking photographs with our daughter. We just had to play together and would freeze for the camera on occasion. Oliver would run at me with Clara in his arms, we would turn and smile, and hope that the photographer could capture the shot in the brief moment that Clara would smile before she insisted on getting down. Or we had to hide from the photographer behind a tree and pop out to surprise her while she took the picture. This was the trick to finally getting everyone smiling together:


So after over an hour of running, wrestling, tossing, chasing, hiding, and falling, I was wiped out (keep in mind that I'm also a pregnant lady). But I am very glad that we finally have some pictures of us all together; as the main camera-wielder in the house I have been conspicuously absent from most photos for the past two years.

I think we might wait another year before we do this again, though.