Status Quo

Not much to report on the home front this week. Things are going along as they normally do - Jonathan does everything slowly, with just a little difference from day to day. He's like the tortoise who wins the race in the old fable; and we make an inordinate fuss over little things that he does "new". I suppose we've done that with all the babies but with Jonathan we get more time to savor each new thing he does because he plays with that one thing for a long time before he goes on to the next one. He can hold his back and neck straight enough that he can sit on people's laps now, and he has a very hard grip. He likes to play a game with Aaron where he pulls himself a few inches off the floor by pulling on Aaron's thumbs. Pretty good for a baby who could barely even close his fist when he was born!

He can also nurse for 45 minutes at a stretch. When he first started, making it even 30 seconds to a minute was a big deal. Of course, now that his jaw is stronger, he is CHEWING on everything. He chewed on my finger so hard that it hurt the nerve in my knuckle and my right forefinger was sore for a few days. I didn't know babies could do that, and I've let a fair number chew on my fingers now.

We took him out of the bassinette and put him in the crib this week, since he was almost as big as the bassinette and would whack his arms and legs against the sides all the time. He is apparently a creature of strict habit, because he hasn't slept good all week in that crib. He'll sleep all night, but he hasn't been taking naps there during the day. If we want him to sleep, we have to put him in the bouncy chair (which he's finally grown into).

We're messing around trying to figure out how to take care of his skin right now. He has eczema, I believe - his skin is rough and rashy on his stomach, legs, and behind his ears. The rash has a weird way of flaring up, though, and the weirdest thing is that in his diaper area, the skin is perfect: smooth, un-rashy, and not irritated at all. That would seem to indicate his clothes are causing an allergic reaction...but his back is good too. Just a band across his belly on and the tops of his legs and a patch across the bridge of his nose. Giving him baths in water and baking soda seems to help, but we're searching to find some kind of lotion that won't make his skin worse. Vaseline helps sometimes and sometimes it makes it worse. So we're working our way through the vast array of skin lotions without fragrance in hopes that something will work consistantly.

It's just a picky problem, though, and he doesn't seem bothered by it. We just don't want his skin to start cracking and bleeding or some such thing.

The medical bills are finally coming in and there's been a lot of to-do trying to negotiate with the hospital and the insurance company and so forth. The strangest thing has been the problem with the colostomy bags: first off, they're considered a "prescription item", so Blue Cross won't cover them unless the doctor has specified he needs them. And then they won't cover the purchase of more than ten of the little bags and seals per month...unless the doctor's office sends them a letter specifying Jonathan needs more than that.

The problem is...the little bags are only sold in boxes of FIFTEEN. So you can change it every two days IF you don't have problems with a wiggly baby who wiggles at just the right time, breaks the adhesive, and makes the brand-new bag useless because it develops a leak.

In other words, I don't know about adults, but with babies - between keeping their skin healthy (the barriers get eaten away pretty fast and if that stuff touches their skin they get instant irritation) and recovering from what we affectionately call "blow outs" - it's pretty easy to go through more than fifteen a month.

And just one of those boxes costs $75.

Why Blue Cross is so chary about paying for these when they drop thousands of dollars without blinking over tests the doctors ordered more or less for kicks and giggles is beyond me.

Ah well. In another month or so, we will hopefully be done with hospitals for a while. Jonathan's heart is doing so well that I doubt he's going to need heart surgery any time in the foreseeable future (so long as everything keeps growing well), and if we can get the surgery on his intestine done and everything working right again, we'll be doing good.

It's a good thing we are such a healthy family normally. None of us have glasses, braces, or any outstanding medical condition. We don't even take prescription allergy medication!

Jonathan's been nursing so well that we've begun going places all together again. For the last two weeks we've all been going to violin lessons, which relieves me of another "Substitute Mom" duty. We've been deliberately picking our places to go - we still wouldn't take him to the mall, for instance - but we've been going out to breakfast on Sunday mornings, visiting friends, and running some errands without having to constantly be providing for Jonathan's feedings. I tell you, this bottle stuff is really for the birds. Nursing makes for so much more independence!

Of course, if we were talking about bottles and formula it would be a different story, but because Mom has been feeding him by pumping her milk, we were pretty well constrained by pumping time.