Day of firsts

Daddy P was off today (yay!) and got to cart around his two favorite gals (I'm being presumptuous here, I know, but considering how many kisses Kate gets, I'm fairly certain about at least one of the counts being accurate).

First off, the doctor. Kate's first trip to see the pediatrician. He said she looked good, albeit yellow, and seemed happy with how she was doing. We asked all of our long list of questions (yep, we really came with a list), some of which we knew fell into the paranoid parent category, and others we thought were actually reasonable. I liked our doc even more for normalizing our worry, and even including himself in our paranoid parent category. Our question list included:

1) How are her hips? Mom and aunt have a history of hip dysplasia and seeing as she was breech for so long one of the docs from the weekend was worried about her. Our ped said that he thought a trip to the pediatric orthopedist would be a good idea, although he didn't see anything that looked concerning.

2) Why does she stop breathing?!?! Apparently, it is normal for babies to hold their breath. Freaks me out though.

3) Does a swaddle delay motor development? No, he said, nothing to be worried about.

4) This whole grazing thing -- eating for 20 minutes, breaking for 30 and then starting up again... Anything to do about that? Answer: Not really, she's tiny, and jaundice, so she has to be fed whenever she's hungry or even when she isn't.

5) She hiccups after EVERY feeding. Anything to do? Nope.

6) The lactation consultant at the hospital was adamant that her tongue couldn't reach as far as it needed to and she needed surgery. Neither of the two weekend on call peds thought it was a problem, and our doc didn't either, so we are going ahead without surgery. She sticks her tongue out and nurses just fine as far as we can tell. No surgery, thank you very much.

After all our questions were answered, we made our way on to our next of firsts...

The next stop was to get pricked at the lap to check on her bilirubin (jaundice). This was my first visit with her to get pricked (Daddy P had plenty of experience with this at the hospital over the weekend). Apparently, her jaundice is getting worse so we are supplementing with formula today and she has to be pricked again tomorrow to see how it worked. I have opted out of the trip tomorrow. Can't watch/listen to that whole thing again. Daddy P let her suck on his finger during the event to try to help her calm down. He said he now has a better appreciation for what breastfeeding might be like. I think his expression was: "she's quite a little sucker!"

We then had our first time of breastfeeding in the Target parking lot, and then shopping in Target. I desperately needed some new tops to accommodate all aspects of my new figure, so we made a quick stop of it.

Then she got to hang out at Texadelphia on the patio while Daddy P bought Mamacita a little snack and got me outside for some much needed fresh air.

Now that we're home, I'm beat and headed for a nap (Kate beat me to the punch on that one). Stupid surgery.