Everett at 2 1/2 weeks old

Our little man is almost 3 weeks old already! He seriously is a little angel baby. Anthony and I can't get over how much better we are handling these newborn days than when we expected to :) The last few weeks have been filled with appointments and follow-ups for Everett. First, a few days after we came home from the hospital, we took him to Anthony's work for a check-up. He was 7lbs 5ozs when we left the hospital and at the appointment a few days later he was 7lbs 2ozs! He was really sleepy all the time and a lazy nurser, so we decided to make a better effort to wake him up consistently to feed him. I felt so bad that he hadn't started gaining his weight back again! He also was still pretty jaundiced, so we decided to get his bilirubin levels checked at the end of the week if he still looked yellow.

The next day I started having a lot of pain while nursing and I was scared that things were going to be terrible like they were with James, so I called a local lactation consultant to schedule a home visit for later that day. She came in the evening to evaluate everything. She said it didn't look like thrush, but it seemed like he wasn't latching on just right. Once she showed me what to look for to make sure he was on correctly, it looked like we fixed the problem. After a day or so, the pain cleared up and now nursing is back on track! Hopefully it stays that way. We've given him a few bottles here and there to try to help flush out his jaundice but he doesn't seem to be a big fan of them. He gags really easily and all the bottles we've tried just flow too fast for his liking. Maybe when he is bigger that won't be as much of a problem?

At the end of that week I took Everett early in the morning to the lab to get his bilirubin checked to see if his jaundice was improving. Anthony got the results later that afternoon and the news was not good, his levels were still really high! So we started giving him time in the sun to simulate the UV lights they use in the hospitals and tried to feed him even more. At the beginning of the next week we got him rechecked and his levels had come down by a lot. It still wasn't officially "normal", but headed in the right direction. Now, almost a week later, the yellow in his eyes is almost completely gone so it doesn't look like we will have to get him poked for a third time. Thank goodness!

I also had to take Everett back to the hospital to get his hearing rechecked. He failed his hearing test right after birth, which they said was most likely due to fluid in his ears from the delivery. Sure enough, when I took him back he passed the test with flying colors! They even gave me a little certificate that says he passed :)

On Saturday I took my first solo trip outside of the house with both boys (!) to visit Anthony at work for lunch. Since we were there, we went ahead and weighed Everett and he was 7lbs 11.2ozs. Yay!!! He is back up to his birth weight! My first adventure out with the two of them went really well and after lunch I was even able to stop to get gas. Everett slept in his car seat almost the entire time and James was so happy to be out of the house. Seriously, it has been really hard on him to have to stay home all the time. I am trying to avoid public places as much as I can with the baby, but life must go on!