We've got some more photos up, including some shots from when Dorothy's Uncle Keith came to visit.
I did it! The photo in the sidebar is now truly a random selection from the Gallery of photos. Every time you reload this index page, you'll see a different photo. The image is also a link to that particular photo in the Gallery. Yay!
I'm not a member of any political party, but the party whose official views (which, admittedly, are often different from how politicians in those parties actually vote) come closest to my views is the Libertarian Party. I certainly don't agree with some of their positions, but I have more problems with the Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, it seems that the Libertarian Party can't nominate anyone respectable for president. Of course, our electoral system is not the optimal one for choosing the people's most preferred candidate (and no, I'm not suggesting a popular vote is best either), so that causes the candidates we get to be sub-optimal. But improving the voting system is extremely unlikely to happen, so we're stuck, it would seem.
Go read this headline from The Onion. It sounds like we're at least partly to blame for the incident. Sorry!
:-)
"First X Prize attempt set for Sept. 29"
Yee-haw! :-) The result of the contest is not a foregone conclusion. Even though SpaceShip One did a test launch in June, there's a second team making their X-Prize runs at the same time in September. It'll be exciting to see how it all turns out. I just hope that none of them fail so bad as to kill the pilot, since that would really delay the sub-orbital tourism industry.
...and I've got Dorothy. Yes, that's right, I'm training my daughter to respond in a predictable manner to certain stimuli. Specifically, when it's time to eat and she's fussing and yelling, I bring the bottle in her field of view so that she can see it oriented vertically, and then I rotate it and bring the nipple towards her mouth. Today (and, I think, the last few times), she's quieted right down when she sees that bottle headed for her mouth.
So, what other science experiments should we perform on Dorothy next? ;-)
Dorothy is just too cute for words, so I went and uploaded some more pictures the other day. Even these 35 new pictures can't capture all of her cuteness. It makes one despair of even bothering to try. And yet, somehow, I toil on, taking pictures, so that the grandparents don't starve. :-)
My Mom came out this past week to help us out, after Elizabeth went into the hospital. This morning she's flying back to Chicago.
Yes, it might have sounded crazy to plan on going to Boston's Logan Airport on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. But I think people really did decide to either take vacations this week, or else went into work really early to be able to get home before the highway closes at 4pm. Traffic on Rt. 93 to and from Boston was extremely light this morning, from 8 to 9am, when I dropped Mom off at the airport. I zipped right up there, and right back. The only delay was brief, in the northbound direction, as the police pulled trucks over to the side of the road to search them.
All in all, a surprisingly easy trip! Now I just hope Mom's experience in the airport goes as well...
I've been meaning to write this blog entry for a few weeks, but never got around to it. I'm writing it now, before it's too late.
Dorothy is, simply put, the happiest baby girl in the world! She goes "goo" a lot (and yes, it really sounds like someone saying the word "goo" unlike with dogs, where "bark" really isn't at all what that sound is like), and smiles. Boy, how she smiles! It's the greatest feeling in the world when she turns her head, looks at you, and a big grin breaks across her face. I really can't put down in words how wonderful it makes me feel to hold her and have her grin and make happy noises at me. We can just go on and on, her making happy noises, me laughing because it's so funny, and she starts making happy noises again.
That all being said, we worry that we're in the calm before The Storm. What storm, you ask? Teething. It may start tomorrow, or it may not begin for a couple of months. But when it comes, I fear I'll lose my happy gurgly little girl for a screaming banshee. We'll just have to wait and see. Until then, I'm having a ball!
As you may have noticed, I've started working on getting a random thumbnail image from the Gallery to appear in the sidebar of the blog. At the moment, it's all static, since I've only barely started mucking with it. Eventually it should be a new image every time you visit this page, but for now it's just the same image(s). So you don't have to bug me to tell me that the image never changes -- I know. I'll post an announcement once it's fully working.
As I was uploading the newest batch of photos, covering almost two weeks' worth of picture-taking, I was struck by competing desires to, on the one hand, put up all the cute or interesting photos, and on the other hand keep things (relatively) small. Some people probably just want to see a couple of photos of Dorothy. But her grandparents want to see everything we've got, and then some. So I try to compromise.
For those who are keeping score at home, we currently have 672 pictures online in the gallery, almost all of which are of Dorothy. Offline, we have over 2,200 pictures total, taking up around 1.5GB of disk space. And she's barely four and a half months old!!
Sexy Lawyer Chick is back home! Yaaay! Now I don't have to deal with heating bottles for a screaming baby at 3am! Hip-hip-hooray!
Ahem.
So, yes, Elizabeth was released from the hospital today. The doctors never did figure out what was wrong with her. Was it the fluid above the uterus? Perhaps it was the rare fungal infection? Or maybe it was space aliens? We'll probably never know. But the doctors finally gave up on trying to pin it down, in the face of her fluctuating temperature peaking at lower and lower temps (100.3 last night).
She's still not feeling at 100% healthy, but she doesn't feel bad enough to be in the hospital. She's going to rest tomorrow, and then probably (assuming she feels good enough) go back to work on Wednesday (despite her discharge papers saying she should stay off work until a follow-up exam which won't be for 10 days).
Thanks to everyone for all the support and well wishings!
Elizabeth is still in the hospital. The ultrasound they did on Friday indicated that there was some fluid "above" her uterus, and while it didn't appear to be a problem, it was the only abnormal thing the doctors could find to potentially explain Elizabeth's "illness." Her temperature has still been cycling up and down, although the peaks have been lower -- they haven't broken 101 in two nights.
The doctors have said that if Elizabeth simply had a runny nose, or cough, or some sort of symptom that could be connected to the fever, then they'd release her because they'd know what was going on. But since they can't find other symptoms on her, they're concerned about what's happening and don't want to release her from the hospital. I mentioned to Elizabeth that I had what appeared to be a few spider bites that have been really annoying the last few days. She said she wished she had some spider bites, because then maybe the doctors would use that as the explanation and let her out of the hospital!
Some cramping returned yesterday; that, combined with the temperatures, made the doctors decide to do a CT scan today of the fluids above the uterus. They didn't see anything unusual about the fluid area, so I'm guessing they won't aspirate it. Oh, and I almost forgot: In order to do the CT scan, they had to give her a contrast agent which is incompatible with breastfeeding, so she has to pump and dump milk for the next 24 hours, which means we'll be burning through the frozen stash of milk.
As I have for the last few days, I'm hoping that Elizabeth will be able to come home tomorrow. Luckily, my Mom offered to come out to help us out, and she arrived this morning. So now I'll have help with Dorothy, and keeping on top of all the crap that needs to get done around the house (not to mention maybe getting a bit of my own work done).
Aside from all the raging health debate about whether to feed babies breastmilk or formula, I have to say that breastmilk is great from the father's perspective. Why? Because 1) it means Dad isn't the one doing the night-time feedings (unless it's expressed milk, as I've been finding out the last few days), and 2) it comes pre-heated. Whenever Dorothy wakes up and starts fussing for food in the middle of the night, Elizabeth can just get up, get Dorothy, and boom! start feeding her. Neither of them fully wakes up, and they're done in 5 or 10 minutes.
When the breasts aren't available (because, for example, they're in the hospital), though, things get more stressful. As a father, I'm less attuned to my baby's noises at night. (I'm not spouting off something I've read in some dumb book; on nights when I've been awake late working, and come to bed just at the time that Dorothy first gets up to nurse, I've seen Elizabeth wake up while Dorothy is barely making noises I could hear; that's why I generally haven't woken up the last few months when Elizabeth nurses. And these last few nights, I know Dorothy has been making relatively loud noises (although not yet to a full-fledged cry) by the time I wake up.) So rather than getting up, giving the baby a breast, burping her, then climbing back into bed, the last few nights have instead been a process of getting up, trying to give Dorothy a pacifier to calm her down while I go start heating the milk (I generally don't bring her with me to the kitchen, because although that would calm her, it would also expose her to bright lights, which Elizabeth says makes Dorothy really wake up). I get out a bottle (or put some milk into a bottle if I didn't prepare one in advance), turn on the bottle warmer, and stick the bottle in. Then I go back to Dorothy and continue calming her, usually by picking her up and rocking her. Roughly 8 to 10 minutes later, the milk is warm enough to drink. Then I give her the bottle.
Of course, if I'd thought that she'd only want 2 ounces, and I was wrong, then I have to repeat the above process as I heat more milk. (We don't like to use more milk than she'll drink, because Elizabeth's daily production is not infinite. Normally we're pretty close, at around 3 or 4 ounces, but Dorothy's not completely predictable, surprisingly.) When she's done eating, then I can burp her and put her back in the crib to sleep. All in all, I don't think Dorothy and I have gotten back to bed in less than a half hour for night-time feedings the last three nights.
That's why I give a strong, whole-hearted vote for breast-feeding.
Dorothy's asleep and I should be too, but I wanted to post a brief update on Elizabeth's status.
First off, she's not home yet. We'd thought she might come home today, but her temp went over 101 last night, so they wanted to keep her one more night to monitor her. For whatever reason, they decided not to do the CT scan today, but wait instead to see if her temp went over 101 again. It didn't (highest was about 100.5), but she did get some of the cramping that had been gone for a few days.
Basically, if she were a bit sicker, they'd let her come home. That's because if she had a cough or runny nose or something, they could easily chalk the temperature up to the flu or some common illness and let her go. But because her temp hit 104 the other day, and keeps fluctuating up and down, but she's not really showing any other symptoms (except the neck and shoulder aches when her temperature is elevated), they're perplexed.
We're all hoping that her temperature will come down and stay down in the 98-99 range, and that the aches will go away, and they'll let her come home Sunday. But if it goes up again tonight (the temperature spiking has mostly occurred at night) over 101, then she'll go in for a CT scan Sunday, and probably stay in the hospital until Monday, at least. Here's to hoping she gets better ASAP...
BTW, we were all at the hospital from around 10 this morning until 7:30 or so this evening, so Elizabeth got lots of Dorothy snuggles in. But now it's just me and Dorothy at home, for the 3rd night in a row!
I'm getting ready to go pick up Dorothy from daycare and go back to the hospital to see Elizabeth, and just wanted to post an update for those one or two people I haven't already spoken with on the phone. :-P
Elizabeth is feeling somewhat better. The doctors (she's not only seen her gynecologist, but also the entire Infectious Diseases Team) don't think that the last couple of days were a gynecological problem, and they don't think she has meningitis. They suspect that the fever of 104 might have been caused by one of the antibiotics she'd been prescribed on Wednesday. Since being in the hospital, they've had her on intravenous antibiotics, but different from the ones she'd been taking. And her fever hasn't seemed to spike again so far.
Right now, it looks like they'll keep her overnight to keep an eye on her and see if her fever goes up again. If it doesn't, then they'll probably send her home tomorrow.
None of us thought we'd be headed back to the Brigham & Women's Hospital again any time soon. But Elizabeth's fever spiked up to 103.8 earlier today, so the doctor wants her to go in for some IVs and observation. They say that the antibiotics they gave her should have already made her feel much better by now, so if she's still cycling in temperature and how she feels, it might be something else. So we're packing everyone up, and heading up to the Brigham (because that's the hospital where her doctors are admitted).
Last time we checked, her temperature was down to 102.5, but this morning it was down at 99. But then it went back up to the high 103s, and she seems to be going up and down roughly every four hours, so we'll go in just to be safe.
Unless they "admit" Dorothy to stay with Elizabeth at the hospital (assuming they do keep Eliz for 24 hours), I'll be bringing her back home this evening and watching her myself overnight. Yikes! My first time for handling all the night-time feedings. Wish us all luck!
Today I had to take my sweetie to the doctor because she had a fever near 103, and body aches. Except the sweetie I had to shuttle around was not the one I'd thought I'd have to skip work to take to the doctor. Dorothy is fine and healthy, so far, but Elizabeth is miserably sick. She's had some cramping for the last couple of days and went to the doctor the other day. But last night she started running a fever, and this morning it was as high as 102.9! She was feeling light-headed, but got an appointment to go back in and see someone.
Luckily, Dorothy was in daycare, so we didn't have to deal with her at the same time. I packed Elizabeth into the car in mid-morning, and drove downtown (her doctor's office is right near Elizabeth's workplace). She also had an ultrasound appointment, so they could look for anything amiss (the doctor commented that she had an "unremarkable uterus," which we think would make a good band name!). Basically, all the various tests showed that she had some sort of infection, but there were no signs of it anywhere, except for the cramping and muscle aches. So they prescribed some antibiotics and sent her home.
All day, Elizabeth's condition has been fluctuating. Sometimes she can barely stand up and feels terribly chilly, other times she feels almost normal. At one point this evening her temperature reached 103.3 (!) but then a couple of hours later was down around 101. Hopefully the antibiotics will do the trick and she'll get better soon...
I'm still reading Jeff Vogel's The Story About the Baby. The very last section "It Has To Be Said") of volume 11 (each 'volume' is about 2 book pages long) just made me laugh out loud, and I wanted to share with everyone. :-) Go read his stuff. (And buy his games, too -- Elizabeth is a big fan of SpiderWeb Software).
Dorothy has been faced recently by a gross unfairness of life: Not only is it almost impossible to put both your fists into your mouth at the same time, but it's also impossible (at least if you have baby-proportioned limbs) to hold yourself up on your arms during tummy-time and put your fist in your mouth. I'm sure I'll be hearing lots of complaints about the unfairness of life once she's a teenager, so I figured I'd get her started off early by listing this whole fist thing.
Dorothy's pediatrician says that she is a model of health, which is always nice to hear. The doctor said that everything looks good on Dorothy, and she seems to be developing well both physically and in behavioral milestones (e.g., trying to sit up).
Despite fluctuating milk supply as well as consumption lately, Dorothy's certainly been packing on the pounds. She's up to 15 pounds, 8.1 ounces! That means she's been gaining an average of just over 1 ounce per day since her last visit (for her mouth pains) 5 weeks ago. Weight, height, and head circumference are all around the 75th percentile, which is roughly where she's been for months and months. So in the future, if you want to know how big she is, just use the government data, and assume Dorothy's in the 75th percentile group. :-)
Oh, as for her height: we can now use units of "feet" when talking about her height, instead of just inches. :-) She's 2 feet, 1 inch tall. 3 more inches, and she'll be too big for the current car seat.
She got her four shots again today, which of course caused lots of screaming. I had a bottle of milk ready, and gave it to her immediately. She eventually calmed down, but it took longer than last time. Maybe that's because she was getting a bottle instead of a breast, or maybe it's just because she's two months older. In any case, she eventually calmed down, and was in fact asleep by the time I got out to the car. She was so good I went grocery shopping on the way home. She's been pretty out of it all afternoon, which the shots have done to her before.
Her next check-up is at six months. We'll see how enormous she's grown in September!
I'm wondering (yet again) if Dorothy is abnormal. Almost all parents I've spoken with proclaim the ability of a car ride to lull their baby to sleep. Now, Dorothy isn't very cranky at all, so I'm not in particular need of a car ride to calm her down. But she seems to be immune to the Power of the Car. When she was less than a month old, car rides would put her to sleep. But since then, she'll stay awake and look around. Heck, she sometimes even gets fussy and cries during car rides. What kind of weirdo is she?
In related news, any type of rocking/swinging chair also does little to calm her if she's not in the mood. The bouncy chair is OK, again if she's in the mood. But if she's upset, putting in any type of chair will only upset her more. "Screw this chair thing" she says. "I want to be held! And you better start walking, you Parental Unit! Not good enough -- dance! Dance and swing! OK, that's not too bad....zzzzz....."
I took some pictures of Dorothy's crib today, including some shots from her point of view. I noticed that things like her mobile don't look nearly as interesting from her point of view as they do from the parents' (i.e., the buyers') point of view.
Coincidentally, this evening, I read Volume 7 of "The Story of the Baby" (a hilarious series of journal articles by a new dad, which I just discovered today) where he said basically the same thing.
Tomorrow (Tuesday), Dorothy has her 4-month check-up. Which means another batch of 4 shots. And this time, Elizabeth won't be along to stick a boob in Dorothy's mouth, so we'll see how things go. I'm not sure if I'll try to have a bottle ready, or just try to use the pacifier, and bouncing her.
I'm also looking forward to finding out how big she's getting. Her head circumference is up, as is her weight. I'm guessing she's between 14 and 15 pounds; we'll see if I've underestimated again.
Dorothy has added at least one new thing to her original repertoire of Eat, Sleep, Poop: Now she can Drool! Her drool production has been ramping up over the last couple of weeks. She's not an actual flood yet, but if she's vertical and without a pacifier in her mouth, then she's usually got a "leaky faucet" kind of steady drip........drip...........drip....... going on.
Her mouth is open a lot, which at first I thought was weird, because it would dry me out. Then I realized that she's got so much drool, keeping her mouth open is a good strategy to try and dry things out a bit. I think...
Is anyone out there having trouble viewing some of the entries to the blog? For Caroline, she can click through to some entries, but not others. She's tried reloading pages, rebooting, etc. but nothing seems to work. For example, the entry called "A Special Gift" never works for her, whereas others (such as "Poison Boobs") always work fine. Has anyone else seen problems like this?
I love my Mom dearly, but I do hold a grudge for being raised listening to way too much Barry Manilow. :-)
In a sense I'm carrying on that tradition. Namely, I'm playing my music for Dorothy. While we do sometimes listen to the children's music CDs that we've received (thanks everyone!), I certainly don't limit myself to that music when Dorothy is around, especially when she's up in my office on my desk. Up here in my office is when we crank the Ray Charles and Jimi Hendrix and a bunch of other rockin', soulful musicians. I want Dorothy to grow up appreciating the classics! :-) (I'm sure Tom Egan is going to make some amusing replies to what I'm referring to as classics...) And yes, sometimes we do listen to classical music too. But without some hard soul in at least some of your music, what's the point in listening?
It seems like most blogs out there (well, the ones we read, anyway) have titles that make them sound like magazines, or a column, or something ("Trixie Update," "Daddy Types," "Defective Yeti," etc.). Our "Nugent News" just seems too bland by comparison. So, I'd like your help in renaming the blog.
Submit suggestions for names in the comments section. Once a number of suggestions have come in, we'll try to pick our favorite.
Here's some random ideas we've had:
Not all of these are obviously baby-related, because I do sometimes post non-baby items here (and may do more in the future).
So, what ideas do you have? Post them in the Comments section (see below)! And feel free to tell us which one(s) you like too.
Dorothy has just been too cute lately, so we were forced to take more pictures. Some of them are now online.
Yes, the subject of this post is "Poison Boobs," but we'll get to that story in a few paragraphs.
First, I should mention a number of "Daddy blogs" that Elizabeth has pointed me to. The most famous is The Trixie Update. It's a well-crafted site, combining blogging with daily pictures and lots of great commentary by readers. But even better is that the author has written a bunch of web scripts that he uses for tracking sleep patterns, diaper usage, bottle consumption, etc. It's great to be a geek dad - I wish I'd done it first! :-)
Some of the other amusing blogs are Daddy Types, and Defective Yeti which covers more than just being a new parent, but which has a whole lot of funny stuff in there. I really do wish I could write stuff that was as funny as some of these other guys, and do it in what appears to be such an easy manner.
In any case, there are a number of sites around where a parent will refer to their spouse with a descriptive name, instead of their real name. So, for example, at Stork Notes, each pregnant woman's husband is called "dear hubby" (which is abbreviated to "DH"). And on the blogs, some of the men refer to their wives as "Queen" or "Fabulous Babe." After seeing this behavior repeat in a number of places, Elizabeth asked me why I didn't call her something like that on this blog. Ignoring the fact that some of these blogs never mention the owners' names, and hence using descriptive names is a way of helping to maintain anonymity, I pointed out that I called her "sweetie-pie" (at least to her face) a number of times. Somehow during the discussion, which included titltes such as "Attorney General," the suggestion "Sexy Lawyer Chick" came up. I seized upon it as a proper title (and one which just might also make her regret bringing the topic up in the first place), and declared that henceforth I will refer to her as Sexy Lawyer Chick, which I will at times abbreviate as SLC.
Well, it turns out that Sexy Lawyer Chick must, at times, possess Poison Boobs. That's the only theory we've been able to come up with to explain why Dorothy at times will scream when SLC tries to nurse her. Most of the time, Dorothy is happy to latch on and slurp up the nummies. But occasionally, she'll just scream and refuse, acting as if SLC were trying to poison her. It's lucky for us she's able to detect those times when Elizabeth's breasts turn poisonous...
In related news, Dorothy has been drooling a lot. When she was first born, we'd had a bunch of bibs, but almost never used them. Now we're more frequently putting one on her and leaving it on for most of the day, to catch at least some of the drool. Much of the drool is making its way onto her hands, which allows her to bypass the bib and smear the drool around.
So, in summary, the things that Dorothy has recently learned to do include:
Who knows what will happen next?!
I was looking at some of the early photos of Dorothy this evening, and was struck at how much she's changed in such a short time. I'll never again be able to hold her as a 9 pound, teensy-tiny newborn (who, by the way, apparently had much more hair than she does now). Of course, she's lots of fun as a 14 pound happy bouncing 4 month old (in 2 days!) infant. But I feel like I didn't get enough of the earlier time with her, even though I was certainly spending more time with her then than I am now. I'm afraid how I'm going to feel in another 4 months...
Happy 4th of July to everyone. It's a peaceful Sunday morning (Dorothy is sleeping in the bouncy chair on my desk, while Elizabeth catches a nap), and I feel like I should post something, but no one specific item comes to mind, so I'll just blather on for a bit.
It is so cool how happy Dorothy seems to be lately. You can just go up to her and let her see your face and you'll probably get a smile back. She's making lots of vocalizations, too, so you can also have a 'conversation' with her that goes on for a while. I think she's said her first word already, and it is "Yeeaaaahhhh". :-)
Dorothy still seems to squirm a lot in her sleep. For the last few weeks or month we've been swaddling her at night-time, to keep her from startling herself awake. It helps her to sleep for longer periods of time at a stretch, but being wrapped up makes her really warm. We're going to try to get some lightweight sheet material to use instead of a blanket. And I'm hoping that her startle reflex will decrease soon, so we don't have to use them at all.
Uh-oh. I just heard a sploort, so I better go change her. No rest for the wicked. ;-)
Derek Webber wrote a good article for The Space Review about Scaled Composites' SpaceShip One and how it has changed the world.
I'm back from the conference I went to. I'm even more sleep-deprived than "normal," so I'm not going to post much right now. Suffice it to say, I got a lot out of going to the conference, but I missed Dorothy dearly. Thank goodness for screen-savers and a laptop backdrop that both featured all Dorothy all the time!
Oh, and it looks like she's starting to reach out for stuff. More on that when I get a chance to breathe (and observe it more than once).