Clairebear

So, I have this baby:

I feel a little bad for not writing about her more, but the thing is, newborns don't do a whole lot. When Landon was a baby his every arm movement was recorded, but now we see this three-year-old running about stringing his own sentences together and the sleeping 20 hours a day doesn't seem quite as newsworthy. Which is not to say that Claire isn't completely and utterly captivating and that we don't spend hours at a time just staring at her and smiling at the faces she makes or making up the things we think she's thinking. I just forget to put her "news" down on paper and get out the camera to get pictures of her doing the nothing that she does so cutely, so I spent yesterday trying to correct that.

Claire's biggest news is that she's allergic to milk protein (among other things) and is now on the same crazy expensive formula that Landon was on. It all started about ten days ago when we noticed the little "seeds" in her stool were getting bigger. These little dots are actually un-digested down proteins and should be quite small in a breastfed baby. Claire was a combo breast/formula baby, thanks to her voracious appetite, her squawking in anger and hunger after each nursing session, and my own general ambivalence about the whole nursing thing, but still, the poop was not normal. Then after a few days of this odd change in her diapers, she started spitting up, a lot, after each feeding, whether breast or bottle. She also pooped immediately after every meal and soon that poop had a lot of blood. So off we went to the pediatrician with a sample diaper tucked in my purse (as I've said before, motherhood is so glamorous) and Claire was immediately diagnosed with milk protein enterocolitis. We left with samples of Nutramigen (a very expensive hypoallergenic formula) and were told to put her on it immediately.

We did and the spitting up stopped with the first bottle. Three diapers later and the blood was gone too. Friday's sudden change in diet seemed to make Claire mad, thus the non-stop crying on Saturday night, but her tummy and digestive system are definitely much happier and now Claire is too. I'm done nursing- if I felt strongly about it I could have tried a total elimination diet, but given Claire's big appetite (she's nearly 12 lbs!), the fact that it can take up to 6 weeks for the dietary changes to take full effect and we aren't completely sure what outside of milk proteins Claire is allergic too (roughly half of babies like her are also allergic to soy proteins which are in just about everything), and the fact that I really just don't care whether I'm nursing or not- I'm done. I like that she's just getting one constant, unchanging food source and it has done wonders in making her more comfortable. Most babies grow out of these allergies between 6-9 months, like Landon did, and we can try soy formula in about month, after we let her digestive system repair itself and stop bleeding. But right now I'm just glad the problem was so easily, even if expensively, fixed and that Claire now practices her smiling after eating rather than crying.

Otherwise, she continues to be a very content and happy baby. She loves to hang out in her play gym, stare at herself in the mirror, and sit in her papasan chair looking around her world with wide eyes. She sleeps well- still getting up just once around 3 a.m. She loves to snuggle and sometimes squawks at us from her chair just so we'll pick her up and hold her. She spends at least one nap a day sleeping on me while I type or watch TV. She sticks her little butt out, stretches out her neck, and then rests her giant head on my chest with a sigh and it is truly one of the most awesome parts of my day.