More Teeth

We believe Nate is getting in more teeth. Nate has been a little fussy of late, plus he seems to be drooling more, and he even has a little runny nose. Nate only has six teeth so far, but those seem to be the tell-tale signs of new teeth coming in. Right now it appears that Nate is getting his lower lateral incisors. I don't see the teeth breaking through yet, but I can see what looks like teeth right below the surface.

Currently Nate has both his lower and upper central incisors and his upper lateral incisors. So we are expecting a few more nights of iffy sleep. We'll keep the Tylenol nearby even though we rarely use it. Hopefully this shall pass quickly and he'll have another tooth or two to use to smile at people.

Nate's First Six Months

I thought I would reflect a little on the first six month's of Nate's life.

I didn't write for the first month of Nate's life. Most of the first month we were struggling with getting Nate home, dealing with the constant feedings, and the wonderful change to our lives. Nate started small, but he was a very good eater (after some initial difficulties). That first month is still quite a blur.

Breastfeeding - I'm still glad that we choose to breastfeed Nate. I never realized that mom and baby had to work so hard to get breastfeeding to go smoothly. It was a struggle at first. I can see where people may give up or move to formula at least part-time. Nate has been a very healthy and happy baby. I believe that breastfeeding helped on the health and growth side. It also meant that Nate and mom got to spend a lot of quality time close together. While we have started Nate on some solid foods, at six months Nate is still getting the majority of his nutrition through breast milk. Another great benefit to breastfeeding, his poop has very low odor which makes changing diapers much more pleasant.

Diapers - Wow, a baby goes through a lot of diapers. I went from basically never changed a diaper to where I can almost change a diaper in my sleep. We decided to use cloth diapers and while they can be a hassle I still believe it is a good decision. Also never realized how much poop can come out of such a small kid. As Nate has started to eat solid foods his poop has started to change. I'm afraid the days of very low odor poop are almost over. Poop has started to change as solid foods have been introduced. It is interesting to see how different foods go through Nate. For example, I never realized out fibrous bananas are.

Hiccups - Interesting how much Nate hiccups. His hiccups have decreased over time, but he still has them quite often. For the first couple months the hiccups didn't seem to bother Nate at all, but now the hiccups seem to be a little annoying.

Sleep - This is still one of the areas that we struggle. Nate sleeps reasonably well, but he still wakes up at night more than we would like. This means that we are still not getting the sleep we would like. The regular sleep deprivation is something we are looking forward to getting over at some point. While Nate has proven he can sleep over 8 hours at a time, that is more the exception not the rule. And even when he does sleep long periods it is on his schedule (not necessarily ours).

Teething - At six months, Nate has one tooth and another will come through any day now. Nate has cried a lot when as these teeth have come in over the last month. He also produced amazing amounts of drool. We believe that teething may be behind some of the recent sleep issues and certainly makes Nate fussy at times.

Gas - We were lucky that Nate did not have colic, but he did have a lot of gas. He now handles the gas with no problem, but there was time where he didn't sleep well and was rather uncomfortable because of gas. We spent a lot of time in first couple months trying to figure out how to prevent and relieve gas pains. In the end, time seemed to be the best cure.

Food - We started Nate on some solid foods at about five months. We've fed him rice, oatmeal, banana, avocado, squash, and apples so far. Nate eats pretty well and hasn't turned down any type of food, but the plain rice and oatmeal are certainly not his favorites. Of late, Nate seems to be spitting up less, but we still have cloths/rags scattered everywhere around the house to always be prepared for when Nate spits up next. I will say that the wood floors in the house have been great as it makes cleaning up really easy.

After six months Nate has gone from rather small (6lb 2oz, 19") to a healthy, growing (17lb 15oz, 26"), and smiling baby.

Nate at Birth	Nate at Six Months

Nate has been a blessing. We never expected Nate to be easy and his first six months have certainly had its ups and downs. The positives certainly outweigh the negatives. His smile and laugh make the difficult times melt away. Seeing those firsts (smile, laugh, turn over, sit up, etc) have all been exciting. Then there are the firsts to come (crawling, words, walking, etc) that we are looking forward to experiencing. The next six months should be exciting.

Celebration of Life

We've been gone the last few days. We made a trip with Nate to see family and celebrate the life of his great-grandmother. Unfortunately she passed away recently, but not without living a very full and rewarding life. Nate won't remember Mimi, but Mimi did get to meet Nate a couple times. Nate certainly brought lots of smiles even though she wasn't feeling her best.

Nate was really rather easy to travel with. The drive was a little over six hours each way and except for breaks when he was hungry he mostly sat quietly chewing on something or slept in his car seat. Him sleeping so much in the car during the day meant that he didn't sleep as well the first night. Combined with being in a different bed in a different place meant less sleep for everyone.

One thing we discovered while we were away was Nate is getting really close to cutting his first tooth. He has been drooling heavily for weeks, but we can finally feel the tooth beneath his gum. Nate has been a little fussy of late, but we can imagine that it could certainly be worse. Besides lots of drooling, Nate is also trying to chew on everything. He is getting very good at grabbing things and first things he does once grabbing something is try and put it in his mouth. As we go through teething I'll talk more about experiences and what seems to help and what doesn't.

drooling, drooling, drooling

We have a drooler! Over the last couple days Nate has started producing ever increasing amounts of drool. Doing some reading, drooling is often associated with teething. Oh no, not teething already. We were just starting to get Nate into some better sleep patterns (except for two nights this week that he had his own plan) and we don't need teething to get in the way.

Well it could be teething, but most likely the effects of teething (actually cutting of tooth) are probably several weeks or even months away. It seems that the teeth starting to move upward are a catalyst for the body to produce more saliva (drool). With Nate it is certainly working.

I'm now finding out there are a lot of benefits to this saliva, even though it seems to be going everywhere.

• The saliva helps heal esophageal lining that is most likely been damaging by stomach acid that is present in spit up. And Nate does spit up regularly so that is certainly a benefit.
• The saliva will help the process of digestion once Nate starts eating some solid foods, which could be soon.
• Saliva also help control bacteria in the mouth. This bacteria is a cause of gum problems and bad breath. So Nate should have less morning breath, even though he normally just has milk breath.

Babies don't produce any more saliva than adults, but babies don't know how to swallow it and it ends up running everywhere. The last couple days Nate has been wet. Sherri and I have ended up wet as well as lots of things that are near Nate. Just Nate growing up.