Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!  To celebrate, Eleanor had her first playdate today...with 3 older boys!  (The boys were 4-5 months old, so not TOO much older).  It was so nice to get out of the house and hang out with other mommies and their babies.  More playdates are in order before I go back to work :)  Tonight Matt is taking Eleanor and me out to eat at one of our favorite local places and then (oh so romantic) we are going to stop at look at carpet on the way home since our house badly needs new carpet. 

Swallow Study

Eleanor had her swallow study done on Friday afternoon.  Of course, she didn't choke once the whole time we were there!  The speech pathologist put some really thin barium in her bottle and had her start with that.  While Eleanor was drinking it they had her lay sideways on the table and they watched on the x-ray machine as the liquid went down.  They didn't see any problems with any of the parts or how things were working.  They said everything looked great!  That only took a couple minutes.  Then we put some actual formula in Eleanor's bottle and the speech pathologist had me feed her like normal.  Again, no choking.  Again, everything looked fantastic and she didn't see anything concerning.  Through all of this we were using a regular bottle and nipple, not the Haber.man feeder that we've been using.  The speech pathologist said that she doesn't see any reason for us not to continue using the regular nipple.  This is nice because feeding should take a more normal time frame rather than the 30-60 minutes it takes with the Haber.man.  Also, we only have one Haber.man but lots of regular nipples so this means we don't have to wash it out after every feeding!

On one hand, we are so glad that everything looked good!  But on the other hand, we wish we knew why Eleanor is choking when she eats.  The speech pathologist did show us some differnt positions that we can hold Eleanor in while we're feeding her to try to help with the choking.  So right now we are starting each feeding with Eleanor on her side.  This way the formula falls in her cheek first rather than straight back into her throat.  This does seems to be helping.

We'll keep an eye on things and hopefully they get better as Eleanor continues to grow.  The speech pathologist seemed to think this would be the case.

1 month appointment

Eleanor had her one month appointment today.  It's no wonder my arms are starting to hurt after holding her for a while - she's up to 9 pounds 7 ounces!  She's also grown almost 2 inches since she was born and is measuring 21.25 inches long.  Eleanor is in the 48th percentile for weight and the 45th percentile for length.  Since she's still having some choking when she eats (it's better with the slower nipple, but still not gone) they did order a swallow study.  I should know by Friday when that is scheduled for.  Eleanor also had to get a shot today.  I hadn't prepared myself for that!  She did great though and only cried for a few seconds afterwards.  But that little blue bandaid on her chubby little thigh makes me hurt for her.  This was her second round of the Hepatitis B vaccine.  She got the first one in the hospital when she was born.

Here are some photos of Eleanor over the past couple of weeks.  I take tons of pictures on my phone and really need to figure out how to upload them here from my phone rather than emailing them to myself, saving them to the computer, and then uploading them.  Anyway, here she is.  As you can tell, she's getting more alert and really starting to look at the things around her!  She has a good chunk of time each evening where she's awake and generally in a good mood.

One month old!

Little miss Eleanor is one month old today!  How is that possible already?

The bear next to her was mine when I was little :)

Family

Matt and I don't have family here in town.  Our closest family members are my parents, who live 2-2-.5 hours away.  That's not far, but it's also not super-close.  And while my family has been able to come up and see Eleanor and help out some, it's just not the same as having family here.  But having Eleanor has helped Matt and I realize that even though we may not have actual family here, we do have a family, a community.  Family isn't necessarily defined by blood, but by relationships.

-Family is having meals brought to your home three times a week from the week after we brought Eleanor home until mid-February.  I'm not kidding.  With the exception of last night, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday someone brings us a cooked meal.  And usually there is enough food that we can have leftovers the next night.  It is such a blessing to not have to worry about making dinner while trying to adjust to our new normal.

-Family is our house church giving us cans of formula that they haven't used after we had to make the switch to bottle-feeding.

-Family is members of our house church emailing or calling to check in and see how we are doing.  This is after we made it back to house church for our first time since having Eleanor and I cried a lot, since this was the day after we made the switch to formula.  It's so nice knowing others are thinking of us and care about us.  And that we can be vulnerable and honest with them when things are hard.

-Family is people reaching out with their stories of struggling to breastfeed and having to switch to formula.  It's the reassurance that things will be okay and that it's okay to grieve the loss of breastfeeding.

-Family is spending an entire Saturday afternoon with friends who are incredibly excited to meet your daughter.  We were able to spend the afternoon with the family that I started babysitting over seven years ago and it was amazing to watch their entire family love on Eleanor all afternoon. 

-Family is friends offering to come over for a morning or an afternoon and being willing to sit downstairs with Eleanor while I take a nap.  This happened a few times the first two weeks that Matt was back at work and it was such a blessing to be able to get a solid hour or more of sleep and know that Eleanor was in good hands just downstairs.

-Family is getting phone calls from coworkers just to check in and see how things are going.

Matt, Eleanor, and I are so lucky to have amazing family - both in our blood relatives and in our community here in Indianapolis.  It's definitely a reflection of Jesus for us.