Sawyer's 1 month old!

Sawyer is 1 month old today! I can hardly believe how fast it's flown by! It's been a crazy intense month.. A week and a half after Sawyer was born, some problems started. We took him into the E.R. late one night when he had black poop. It tested positive for having blood in it, but by the end of the E.R. visit, his poop was already lightening. We thought it was clearing up all right, but the next day - Thursday, Alex's birthday - I was nursing Sawyer, then went to burp him, and he threw up blood. A lot of blood.

The next few days were a complete whirl wind of scariness. After taking him to the E.R. after he threw up blood, he was transferred in an ambulance to the Marshfield children's hospital. We stayed there until the following Monday, and they ran all sorts of tests like ultrasounds and an endoscope. They poked and prodded him, put IVs in, and it was honestly the hardest thing I've ever gone through. It was so awful not being able to nurse him for part of the stay, and it was so awful seeing him go through so much. I hated feeling so helpless, and I hated that I couldn't really do anything for him. 

The end result was really the best case scenario: nothing was wrong with his organs or anything like that; he just had ingested blood through my breast milk. Apparently it was possible for my nipples to be cracked and transferring blood to Sawyer, even though blood wasn't visible on the outside. That sent me through a big stressful, anxious ordeal of feeling like everything Sawyer went through was my fault. But Sawyer and I have been working hard and are doing much better. :) 

I was so worried about him losing too much weight. I mean, you can only expect a baby to lose some weight when he's on an IV and unable to breastfeed. But with everything Carson went through with weight gain issues as a baby, I was just so worried about that for Sawyer too.

But Sawyer has been an absolute champ. Even though the doctors poked and prodded him, he handled it so well. And even though he lost some weight in the hospital, he has been packing on the pounds since. Like, literally gaining a whole pound in a week kind of thing! Take this past week - he was 8 lbs 6.5 oz on Thursday and was 9 lbs 1.6 oz today (Wednesday). Since getting out of the hospital, he's had a lot of check-ups with his pediatrician, and Sawyer has frequently doubled her expectations by gaining 2 oz a day! Basically, Sawyer is eating incredibly well and growing into an incredibly chubby, chunky baby. :)

Sawyer is such a fantastic baby. He's got his days and nights mixed up because he sleeps SO well during the day but not at all at night! He hardly ever cries though, aside from when he wakes up hungry. But even then, once I pick him up he's totally fine! He's still not a huge fan of tummy time, but I'm so impressed by how well he can lift his head already. Sawyer has taken a bottle so well from the very beginning, and it's such a blessing. He also is spending more and more time awake and is such an alert, observant baby. I love it when he's wide awake because I get to see his gorgeous blue eyes that have been dark blue since he was about a week old. Well, I guess I love it less when he's wide awake at night.;-)

Sawyer is very even-tempered and so easy going. He loves the thousands of kisses a day he gets from Carson, and he loves his swing. He's such a snuggly baby, and we all just love him to pieces. I feel so blessed to have him and so blessed that everything with his health has turned out so good. :)