Working Mom

I have officially gone back to work, and somehow I am surviving it. My first day back was two weeks ago, on February 4th and so far it hasn't been too bad. Right now I'm working every Thursday from 6 am to 6 pm and then I work every Friday and Saturday 6 pm to 6 am. It's working out well especially since David is still out of work. He is able to stay home, and he's getting more comfortable with staying alone with Zach. The only thing he needs to learn is that Zach likes to be up around 8 am and David is still going to bed around 2 am. You can do the math, but that does not let dad get a ton of sleep. Once work picks back up and they have a job for David he will still be able to watch him on the weekends, but we'll need to find someone to watch him during my once a week day shift. Sasha has volunteered, along with a couple of nurses I work with which includes my boss. I think it will work out okay and maybe once he starts sleeping through the night I may try to work 3 night shifts a week and not worry about babysitters.

Zach is still such a good baby. He hardly ever cries, and when he does we can usually figure out what he needs. He's eating like a champ, but we have an appointment with his nephrologist on Monday and I hope the dietician doesn't increase his amount to where I need to put the NG tube back down. I'm hoping that at some point rather than expecting him to take a lot of formula, we can just introduce him to plain ol' water to keep him hydrated.

He had an appointment with Sally, his developmental coach (for lack of a better term), and he was pretty sleepy the entire time. She comes out to the house again on Monday and I'm hoping he'll wake up for her this time and show her how well he's doing. His neck is getting stronger everyday and can hold it steady for longer periods of time. He still hates tummy time, but is starting to tolerate it more. He smiles like crazy and is starting to talk to mom. He'll open his mouth and you can tell he's trying so hard to make sound come out but nothing will. He's figuring that out and we love having talk time.

Other than that, he's doing pretty awesome. He's spending less time sleeping during the day and his awake periods are lasting longer. Hopefully pretty soon that will translate to sleeping longer at night. For the most part we can put him down around 10:30 or 11 and he will sleep until 3:30 or 4, which is perfect timing for his medication. I'm hoping he will continue to do well with his feedings and eventually his meds will change to every 12 hours instead of every 6, and he'll slowly increase his nighttime sleeping. With his kidney condition though, he may be ready to sleep through the night sooner than we can let him. We'll just have to wait and see. He'll be three months old next week and we have a doctor's appointment when I'll have updated stats and pictures for you.