Fryeburg Fair, Constipation & Finally Eating Better!!

Well, I am just going to start the blog off by saying that Caleb is finally eating well and it is consistent!!! I had mentioned last week that he had been doing well with a metal spoon and I am not sure if that is really the difference or if it just happened to coincide with him finally being ready to eat. All this week he has eaten really well and has been opening his mouth for every bite and eating much more volume than usual as well. We mostly have been doing either applesauce or pears mixed with oatmeal (and of course, the puffs), but this week I tried making homemade sweet potatoes and he ate those mixed with pears (since that is a flavor that is familiar and that he likes). So, I feel like we have finally turned a corner and that he is actually on the road to eating well all the time! It has been so frustrating for the last few months and it is a relief that he is finally eating. My goal now is to be able to cut out his two middle of the day breastfeeding sessions by the time he is a year old. I will keep nursing at night and first thing in the morning for awhile, but it would be great if he was eating enough food to sustain himself all day without breastfeeding. So, we'll see if we make that goal.

Last Friday my mom had Caleb in the morning and Jen watched him in the afternoon like normal. Caleb didn't nap very well for my mom, so I had poor Jen try to get Caleb to take a second nap late afternoon and of course he wouldn't, which is what I expected. He was still happy with her, though, so I'm at least glad he wasn't fussy. Here are some pictures that Jen took (the last one is from my mom).

We had supper at my parents' house on Friday night, which was nice. My dad had Caleb on his lap and started blowing in his face and every time he did it, Caleb would gasp and open his mouth wide like he was surprised, but he was smiling. He did it over and over again and Caleb had the same reaction every time. It was hilarious.

So, Friday night was a bad night. I had noticed that Caleb did not poop at all on Thursday and so I checked with my mom to see how he did on Friday. She said he had one poop but it was a lot more solid than normal. Friday night Caleb woke up fussing around 12:15 and we were able to get him to go back to sleep, but then he woke up again at 3:00 and was very upset. We first gave him some Tylenol because we thought it might be his teeth, but then I changed his diaper and he had some very hard poop in his diaper and it was actually kind of stuck in his bum (sorry for the graphic details). I ended up nursing him to get him to go back to sleep and to give him some comfort. Then he woke up again at 6:30 and seemed to be in some pain. While I was nursing him, I could tell at one point that he was trying to poop and then immediately started screaming. I had looked online to see what to do about constipation and one of the easiest things I read was to put Vaseline on his bum, so I tried that at 6:30 (he did have a little more hard poop in there at that time too), then I put him back to bed. It was obvious that he was still hurting because he ended up not going back to sleep at all, which he NEVER does. He always goes back to sleep for at least 45 minutes, but usually around an hour and a half, so I knew that he was not feeling well. So, I just got him up and we got ready to leave for North Conway for the weekend.

We went up to Aunt Toni & Uncle Terry's house so we could meet up with a lot of our family and go to the Fryeburg Fair on Sunday. We knew that we wouldn't make it to church, so we just planned on leaving around 9:00 and my mom came with us, because my dad wasn't going to come up until after church (Rad and Jen didn't go because they had too much to do). We had a pretty good trip up. We stopped partway up so I could nurse Caleb and stretch our legs a little.

Despite being tired, Caleb only slept about 35 minutes in a 4 hour trip

 

We stopped one more time to change Caleb's diaper because I could tell he had pooped and this time, it was almost back to normal, so I was happy that his constipation issues didn't last any longer. We decided to take a break from feeding him solids while we were gone and hopefully that would give his digestive system a rest. That seemed to do the trick and luckily he has had no more issues since then.

We got to the Copseys around 1:30 and Caleb was desperate for a nap, so we put him down shortly after we got there and he did sleep for an hour, so that was pretty good. We had a lovely afternoon visiting and then some of us took a walk late in the afternoon.

Baby Griffin - 3 months old

Westin is much more mobile than Caleb (and gets into more trouble)

Poor Westin was desperate for a nap

The Frosts

Poppy and Griffin

The leaf that is in his right hand he held onto the whole walk, which was pretty impressiv

Camden and Tyson

Playing with Bode

 

After our walk, we came back and visited some more and then I had to get Caleb ready for bed while everyone else was eating supper. Caleb went down pretty well for bed, so I was happy about that. I then got to eat supper and everyone stayed up talking for awhile and I think I went to bed at 11:00. So, Caleb did something that he never really does and he was wide awake and raring to go at 12:30 in the morning. Of course we were in someone else's house so we wanted to keep him quiet, so we tried the pacifier for awhile and that didn't work. Then we brought him into bed with us and hoped that he would fall asleep, but he was so awake! I finally put him back in the pack and play and Steve tried for awhile to get him to go back to sleep, but nothing worked. I finally nursed him around 2:00 and he fell asleep and I put him to bed around 2:30. He then woke up at 6:15. I had been hoping he would sleep longer than that since he was up for 2 hours in the middle of the night, but no such luck. Then I was afraid he wouldn't go back to sleep and I was almost right. I think he went back to sleep for about 30-45 minutes, so it was better than nothing, but he was definitely down several hours on his usual amount of sleep.

 

So, we got up and got ready to go to the fair. Here are a few pictures of Caleb playing with his cousins before we left for the fair.

 

The famous backwards crawling got him stuck under the chair

 

Everyone kind of went to the fair on their own schedule. We went with my parents and then ended up meeting up with everyone else a little later. We did a lot of walking around, eating, seeing the animals, checking out the John Deere tractors, and just having fun. It was a pretty cool day, but the rain held off, which was nice.

 

Checking out the sheep

Checking out the llamas

Waving to Acadia

My new favorite picture

Reading his John Deere brochure

Great picture of the boys, except Ty wouldn't smile

Someday Caleb...

Getting a ride from Grampy

The group, minus the Frosts (my mom and Aunt Melanie were taking the pictures)

 

So, despite Caleb being low on sleep, the fair was obviously too exciting and he did not take a nap while we were there. We ended up leaving around 2:00 and I fed him in the car for a few minutes before we left. He fell asleep almost immediately and slept for 45 minutes. He was then awake for awhile but then fell asleep again for another 45 minutes, which actually surprised me, but I was glad. We got home around 6:30 and we gave Caleb a bath and then I watched the (awful) Patriots game from earlier in the afternoon while I fed Caleb. I went to bed shortly after Caleb did because I was pretty tired from the last 2 bad nights, and thankfully, Caleb had a great night and didn't wake up at all from 8:30 to 6:30. He also went back to sleep until 9:15, so he was obviously catching up on his sleep from the weekend.

 

Monday morning we did a few errands and went to visit Uncle Rad, we went grocery shopping and to Babies R Us. Caleb took a very long time to go down for his nap and he was crying quite a bit, which is very unusual. I don't know what the problem was, but it was very frustrating. I was then afraid that he would only sleep 30 minutes, but he slept 1 1/2 hours, so I got a nice break after fighting with him to go to sleep.

 

Backwards crawling and got stuck under the changing table



 

Tuesday we went back to our play group since Caleb is feeling pretty much better from his cold, and we had a lot of fun. We had missed going last week. Caleb definitely seems to enjoy playing with the other babies and it is cute to watch them all.

 

 



Caleb seemed like he was about to fall asleep in the car on the way back from play group and so I put him down for his nap when we got home and he fell asleep pretty easily and then slept an hour and 20 minutes. It is nice when it is easy like that instead of fighting with him or having him only sleep 30 minutes. We didn't do too much else the rest of the day.

 

Yesterday I worked and my mom and dad had spent a couple of days in the Berkshires, so we had our friend Dede come babysit Caleb in the morning and my mom was back by noon to take Caleb for the afternoon. Caleb did good for Dede and even ate his solids for her, which I was happy about. He had a nice afternoon with Grammy, but they didn't do too much. They just hung out at home.

 

I guess that's about it for this week. Here are a couple more pictures of Caleb pulling books off the shelves and playing with them.