New Things To Report

Jonathan is seven months old today!

I've not been posting because I've sort of been waiting for something new to report. With nothing exciting going on like new surgeries or illnesses, life has sort of settled down to normal for our family. Jonathan is finally absorbing into our usual routine and we don't have to make extra arrangements to take care of him. Not that we ever really had to do a lot, compared to many people who've had sick babies, but the whole situation with feeding him put a damper on us going anywhere the past six months, and the thing with his colostomy bag took baby care a slight notch higher. Mom also worried a lot about him getting another cold, but this last cold was a big gift from God to Mom: Jonathan proved to be very capable of catching and successfully healing from a fairly nasty virus without any more trouble than anyone else...actually, with less trouble than Mom had! So I think she is feeling much more relaxed about her abilities as a mother and Jonathan's body's ability as a capable, well-oiled little machine.

As a matter of fact, I didn't realize how much we were compensating until all of a sudden we don't have to anymore. You do what you have to do and it doesn't seem like that big a deal until you look back and say, "Wow, look at all the stuff we don't have to do anymore!"

The terrific news for today is that the pump has been packed up and sitting in the closet for two weeks now and Jonathan has not had ANY bottles for three weeks. In that time he's gone from 14 pounds to 15 lbs 6 ounces, so we're confident he will no longer need supplements to nursing until it's time to eat solid food.

This is a really huge and major accomplishment. I can't stress enough how proud I am of Mom and Jonathan: Mom for sticking with the long slow process of getting Jonathan to nurse and Jonathan for not giving up and continuing to work at it even when it made him so tired.

It is very rare for someone with Jonathan's history to be nursing full time, from what I understand. Many women do not have the experience going into the past seven months that Mom had, which gave her the stamina to keep going when other women might have been afraid they were failing and had to put their baby on formula. I can definitely see why that happens now. With the pressure put on mothers for their babies to gain weight or else, it becomes a scary thing to not be able to monitor how much your baby's getting and be constantly trying to judge if your body is producing enough milk for him. Not to mention the whole situation with nursing, pumping, and then feeding the baby a bottle. Every feeding takes an hour and then you get a half-hour break before it's time to start over!

But it's worth it. Jonathan is a much healthier baby than he would be with formula, his jaw and mouth and tongue and throat will all be far stronger than a bottle-fed baby - and he needs all the muscle-boosting help he can get! - and we never had to go through the process of figuring out what formula he'd be allergic to. Which I think might've been quite a task, considering the allergies he's exhibiting even to things that Mom eats.

And we're free of bottles. I never realized how much freedom nursing gives a person and a family!

The other new thing Jonathan is doing is traveling by rolling and lifting his head up strongly while on his stomach. I suspect he won't crawl for a few more months yet, but it's really exciting to see him pushing himself up and showing some good strength in his leg, arm, and belly muscles. I'm sure getting the hernia around the colostomy repaired helps his abdominal strength a lot, but I think he's also getting stronger all over and it's just easier for him to move. Yesterday he rolled halfway across the living room until he ran into the leg of the piano. He's figure out that if he tucks his arms against his chest and flexes his body, he can roll smoothly from back to belly to back and so on without getting stuck. He can also roll over with his arms under him and free them so they're not just stuck there.

Toys are becoming much more fun to him - he does things with them besides just chewing on everything. He holds them up and looks at them or shakes the rattles or plays with the little cloth bow on a stuffed dog. He's not babbling a whole lot, but he will "talk" when he's chewing on stuff, like he's commenting on the texture or something. He'll probably grow up to be a professional chocolate taster or some other position that requires commentary on what he's eating.

In other words, he's doing what every other baby you've ever seen does: watching everything and always trying to figure out new things. We take him everywhere we go, including grocery shopping (if we all go) and cutting the grass at our houses on Mondays and Fridays. When we go to violin lessons, he sits in his car seat and watches intently - he actually starts fussing if someone picks him up and he can't see what's going on. He's continuing to be a very easygoing fellow who can sit and concentrate on one thing for very long periods of time. It's interesting to see that because it's like he picks one thing to absorb and then sits there and drinks it all in.

The only time we've noticed him getting kind of fussy (except when he needs to eat) is when there's too much going on around him and he can't stick with one thing to watch. He'll sit and look kind of worried and won't smile all the time like he does normally.

He seems to be seeing much better these days and he sits in his stroller and watches everything we do with that wide-eyed curious look all really young children have. Sort of like, "Hey, whatcha doin' now? What is that? Where are you going? Can I come too?" I love watching people do this: it's like you're seeing them absorb everything they can get their eyes on and they get excited about everything because everything is brand-new and interesting.

I think that's why people who have little children around a lot (although, granted, they have to be well-behaved children!) get more excited and enthusiastic about things, because to a young person who hasn't experienced much...you get to have them taste their first strawberry and watch how they find out how good it tastes. It's like tasting it yourself for the first time all over again.

We really want to get a formal photo portrait done of all of us now that the whole surgery and sickness thing is all over and we can sort of count on being able to show up in any kind of shape to get our picture taken. I bought a really nice outfit back when we had that first ultrasound where things looked pretty bad and Jonathan is just able to wear it now. It includes a real buttondown light blue shirt, nice pleated linen pants, and a little blue and green vest. He has light blue shoes that match the shirt and his hair has grown in so much we can brush it and part it on the side like the other boys. He looks so big when he wears it!

He's not that little newborn baby we got to have for so long anymore. But that's fine because he's still Jonathan and he's just getting to be more and more enjoyable.