Long time, no blog

Whew. Things around here have been a little crazy lately.

Cooper is one fussy and gassy little fella. He has been since the day he turned three weeks old. And when I say fussy, I mean sometimes he screams out, like he's in pain. :( He acts like his stomach hurts (just my opinion of course, I really don't know what hurts, but something sure does) and he is REAL gassy. You have no idea, haha. This mostly happened in the evenings, like from 5-9ish. And the only way he would stop is if he nursed. Like for the entire 4 hours, constantly. There would be a day or so here and there that he wouldn't do this, but it was extremely rare, and usually if we were out doing something. At first, we thought he has acid reflux, I think I've mentioned this before. The doctor suggested it as a possibility (when we went for his weight check at 3 weeks, we discussed his fussiness) So he was put on some medicine, and that really didn't help at all. So we stopped that. I don't really want to give him meds when he doesn't need them.

Then, with the help of everyone's bff, Google, I thought that he might be cluster feeding. I had never heard of this before, but apparently some babies want to nurse for several hours in a row before they go to bed. Like they are fueling up or something. So I went with that for a few weeks. But I still don't feel like he;s just cluster feeding if he's screaming when he's not nursing. That doesn't sound right to me.

So then, we thought that he had colic. Not really bad, but just a little colicky. I had colic when I was a baby, and it's supposed to be more common if a parent has had it before. The more I read about colic, the more convinced I was that he had it. I guess we could have called the doctor, but there's really nothing you can do for it so we didn't think it was necessary.

Anyway, this week it seems to have gotten much worse. It's not just in the evenings, it's during the day a lot now too. Yesterday and today were rough. He wakes himself up from his naps a lot, just screaming. I know that he could just be going through a bad period, but if there's something I can do, I want to at least try it. So I finally decided to cut dairy out of my diet for a week or two to see if that helps. Yesterday I suddenly remembered when we were at his 3 week check and the dr asked if I drank a lot of milk when we talked about his issues. I said no, because I don't drink milk, I don't like it at all. I didn't really think anything of it at the time. But, I do consume a lot of dairy. I like cheese, a lot. And yogurt. And I make a lot of recipes with milk. So I'm going to give this a try. I started yesterday afternoon. Hopefully by the end of this week we will see some kind of difference. I know that it can take longer to see results, or sometimes it's immediate. Tonight he didn't try to nurse all evening, so that's good, but it could be a fluke. It's really not a huge deal to me to give up dairy (especially if it makes Coop feel better) but I am sad that I will not get to have my ice cream cake for my birthday next week, haha. Yes, I actually thought about that this morning! I look forward to that all year :)

Tomorrow Lee is going to watch Coop so that I can run a few errands alone and just have some 'me' time. This is a big deal. I haven't left him for even 30 minutes since he was born. I'm paranoid that no one else can take care of him, even if it is Lee. I need to get over it. I'm stressed out, especially after the past few days, and as much as I hate to say it, I need some time away. I feel guilty about it but there is it.

Oh, what's that you say? You want to see some pictures of his cuteness? Well, okay then...

I am obsessed with leg warmers. I stumbled upon them online several weeks ago and immediately bought him 4 pair. You can't really tell in the picture, but this first pair is OU and I just had to get them for him for Lee. They are a little big, but I've washed and dried them and he's quite a bit bigger than this now.

These are just brown and blue striped, and much smaller than the OU ones
The mornings are my favorite time with him, he is ALWAYS in such a good mood :)
These were from a bedroom photo shoot last weekend. We were looking in the mirror. He LOVES looking in the mirror. We're all vain like that in our family :)
He was giving some BIG smiles that day, but only in the mirror :)
His 2 months check up is next week, I can't wait to see how much he's grown! We think he weighs somewhere around 11 lbs right now. What I CAN wait for are the shots that he's going to have to get :(