This post covers Spear’s second week of life ( Dec 8th – Thur Dec 14th…but since a big event occurred on the 15th I went ahead and extended this post through that day!). He was 1 week old during this week!
We were also in Florida this week for the second week of our ICPC stay. This week, though, was MUCH less hectic than the week prior and for that I’m SO thankful. While it was lonely on my own for most of the week, it was also such a wonderful opportunity to truly relax, get in a good rhythm and routine, and BOND with my son. I’m very thankful for this special time we had together. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it!
Feeding: This week I shifted from 2 oz bottles to feeding him 3-4 oz per feeding. I had a good stash of breastmilk with me and my goal is to do two breastmilk feedings a day until he’s 6 months old then 1 a day until a year old if I’m able to have enough milk (got any to donate? email me at journeyofphood@gmail.com our family has been SO blessed with milk donations!).
He took the bottle great but was a SLOW eater. Which frustrated me b/c I had assumed bottle fed babies would eat quicker? I was wondering if it was my nipple on the Medela bottles so I did switch to the medium flow nipples on my Medela bottles and it helped a little to speed him up! He didn’t gag or choke or spit up so I felt like he could def handle the quicker flow!
He did also have some cluster feeding towards the end of the week where he seemed hungry earlier and tended to eat more. So I assumed it was a growth spurt!
Nothing in there buddy 😉
Sleep: While it was so lonely being solo that week, it was also SO nice having a space completely to ourselves and able to just fully focus on him and his needs. We got into a great routine very easily. He continued to go three hours between feedings and continued to have very, very little awake time. He took so long to eat that he’d typically go right to bed after. He also slept great at night but with his weight concerns I set an alarm to make sure he was eating every 3 hours.
His schedule was: 7, 10, 1, 4, 7, 10, 1, 4.
On 12/10 I did breastmilk at 7 then formula at 9 to kinda “tank him up” then would let him go for 5 hours during the night.
It was ROUGH having that little sleep for myself but I did like just sticking with a solid 3 hour schedule even through the night because it made the days the same every day too. I’m a believer in starting Babywise at birth and even though he wasn’t two weeks old yet, he was already falling into that natural 3 hour schedule and natural 7 am start time for the day!
Spear’s 4th bedroom…the master closet at the condo 😉
Burrito Baby!
Already starting to shift in his sleep!
And breaking out of the swaddle!
I bought a new battery for my Snuza before Spear was born and brought it with me for ICPC. I bought the battery direct from the company and it was SO frustrating that it had issues. It would go off randomly and just didn’t seem to work the way it had in the past. I’m not sure if it’s a battery issue or product issue and I need to call (Spear is now 10 weeks old…I still haven’t called haha). It’s all I had with me (I have an older Angel Care monitor at home) so I did the best I could to make it work!
Dude sleeps HARD and does NOT like to wake up! His deep sleeping made me eager to get to a point of just letting him sleep at night rather than waking him!
Moms on Call Schedule for this week! I ordered the books (here) but they’d be delivered to my home address so I purchased the app (here) so I could compare it with Babywise and try to combine the two for him!
He did have a few fussy times, especially towards the end of the week where he was cluster feeding/growth spurting. I had brought along a travel swing and gave it a test run with him (it didn’t help haha)
I also had a sweet set up with Spear’s DOHM sound machine and my diffuser! My first “oily baby” 😉
Other Stuff with Spear:
My ICPC changing table!
My must haves:
Aquaphor as diaper rash preventative
Young Living Seedlings Baby Oil
I diffused some Sniffle-Ease for him because he seemed pretty congested to me and I figured it could help!
I also started giving him Probiotic Drops each day (I buy the ones with Vitamin D because I know auto immune stuff is being mega linked to a Vitamin D deficiency so I wanna do everything I can for all my babies!).
I also got some Saline Spray for him to help with his congestion.
When he gets the hiccups I give just a bit of Gripe Water…the dosage seems like SO MUCH to me so I just give a bit to help!
Boy Probs haha
He’s also my first tush-less baby haha child has NO BUTT and his diapers completely come down! So frustrating because he ends up peeing all over everything in his crib!
Prayer Hands!
Trying out our bouncer for the first time!
This is totally a new mom wardrobe! It’s interesting to me that I did NOT give birth yet I still just really have craved comfort clothes during the newborn phase!
Sending selfies 😉 He’s always looking sexy in a suit…
while I’m makeup free and scrubbing in 😉
Spear had his first bath over the weekend when Zach and the kids were in town with us!
These are a few pics I didn’t post there 😉
That hair…so handsome!
And we had his first Disney Day! I shared this in a Disney group I’m a member of and I was blown AWAY with the amount of love on it! A lot of people use that group to complain and people just loved seeing something so happy and positive. Disney people are so my people 😉
I also mentioned Spear’s eye in an earlier post. It def looked worse this week to me than the week prior. Swollen and red and bruised on the lid but everything I read said not to stress it!
The day after Disney (so on Wednesday) we had our FIRST DAY of just totally relaxing ALL DAY. It was literally the first day of his LIFE where we didn’t have a lot going on!!! Crazy right?!?! 13 days old and FINALLY just RELAXING! It was such a great day and Thursday was a repeat of the same thing. Two full days of bonding and resting and sleeping (and blogging for Mommy!)
By Thursday I was getting very nervous about being able to go home over the weekend. Zach and I weren’t sure what to do. I wanted to be together as a family. I couldn’t handle a full weekend alone after the several days solo. I wanted him to just come down with the kids but at the same time I didn’t want to have him make that trip with them and find out we could go home ya know? It was a delicate thing with the timing and we just had no clue if we’d get the go ahead to come home on Friday or if it’d be into the following week!!! Eeeek!
As a compromise I debated checking out of the condo and we could travel somewhere further north to be closer to home and have Zach bring the kids just for the weekend to that location which would be way closer to home than Orlando. I’m so thankful to everyone for their suggestions of places to stay! I did talk to the condo where I was staying and they were SUPER sweet and said they’d kinda “pre book” my room to keep it held for me in case I needed to stay past our plan of me checking out Friday.
I had a bit of a breakdown Thursday night after 5 pm when I hadn’t heard anything. I had been refreshing my email like a bazillion times and I just felt so disheartened that I hadn’t heard anything. I was SO READY to be HOME with my whole family. It was just a moment of weakness for me and I just had to have a bit of a pitty party about it!
In the end we decided for me to just stay in the condo. Zach waited to come and we decided IF we heard we could come home on Friday then he’d rush down and help me leave (I had too much stuff to all fit in the vehicle I had) and head home. If we didn’t hear then he’d load up the kids and come down for the weekend.
Sure enough I got THE EMAIL at 8:30 Friday morning! We were cleared to LEAVE!!! Whooo hoooo!!!!!
Zach rushed down and while he was on his way I got everything packed up and ready and loaded the car. It was funny b/c I literally could have gotten everything in IF we hadn’t decided to leave some of the other kids’ stuff down there from their last visit. Oops! Zach was so precious in his excitement and I was so amped that I wasn’t even too nervous about the long drive! I was just SO PUMPED!!!
Spear and I actually didn’t wait for Zach to arrive before we headed out. Zach met with the real estate agent at one of the houses we’d looked at to look at it again since it was such a good opportunity to do so and then he went to the condo and grabbed the rest of the stuff and hit the road behind us!
Officially two weeks old and headed HOME!
I stopped every hour to get Spear out of his car seat. The drive was a BREEZE thanks to all my energy and excitement! We stopped at a Chick Fil A again so I could feed him and that’s when Zach caught up to us!!! Oh my goodness he’s never looked more sexy to me. Such a sight for sore eyes and I was just SO HAPPY.
We got home to THE BEST welcome. I wish I could have had it on video. Keeli happened to be driving by and she said she saw the kids come running to us and she started crying haha so sweet! They were waiting outside and just RUSHED to us. Jumping up and down and just SO HAPPY. It was THE best moment EVER!
They had made an adorable, precious Welcome Home sign for us too!
HOME as a family of SIX!
Proud big siblings!!!
They all just wanted to hold him right away!
So, so thankful to be together forever!!!
The realtor sent donuts for the kids too!
Omg SO SWEET to come home to a clean house AND flowers!!!
And all the packages haha!
The kids were SO pumped to show Spear his room!
First changing in his room!
At. Last.
Whew so thankful week 2 was more relaxing than week 1 but even MORE thankful knowing that week 3 would be at HOME all TOGETHER!!!
A few other notes on Spear this week:
- He sneezes three times in a row JUST like Kye!
- His little body is SO hairy which I also remember Kye being like that too (must be testosterone related)
- He was congested a bit on 12/11 so I did some saline drops in his nose to help
- He’s always sleepy during feedings but then when I change his diaper his little eyes pop open and he’s awake a bit before bedtime
- He does NOT like being naked! (this is NOT like Kye ha!)
- He does best burping just sitting upright rather than over the shoulder.
Love this precious boy and will always cherish this quality time we had together at the start of his life!
Videos from this week:
- hiccups
- not wanting to wake up
- still sleeping
- and still sleeping 😉
- not impressed with waking up
- hiccups again
- sweet sleeping and breathing sounds
- showing Spear his REAL bedroom!
Sibling Comparisons:
Out of all the kids I think he favors Tess the most. I know, I know he isn’t blood related but it’s still fun to see the similarities 😉
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