Thank you for smoking

Last Friday, we had an RN visit us at home as part of a local Welcome Home Baby program, which is part of California's First 5 program. Before being released from the hospital, they gave us a flier about the Welcome Home Baby program. I didn't give it much thought at the time, but after our first panic-filled day alone at home with Aaron, I called to schedule a home visit. A nurse was scheduled to come out within the week during a 3 hour window.

The Welcome Home Baby program is for first time parents and is funded by Prop 10, a tax on cigarettes. So if it weren't for the few remaining smokers in this state, we wouldn't have had this great opportunity to have someone come check up on us at home.

The RN, Alexis, arrived with a wheeled suitcase and a New Parent Kit. The kit contained some parenting books, a baby book, a DVD and a lot of resources for things like local breast feeding support groups and numbers for poison control. Alexis went over all the materials she left for us and answered all my questions I had been saving up for her visit (i.e. what if I can't get the baby to burp after a meal?) Then she took my blood pressure and temperature (both normal), then took Aaron's temperature, listened to his heart and finally weighed him (on a scale packed inside her wheeled suitcase). He had already gained back his birth weight in just 10 days!

Between the time I scheduled the in-home visit and the time Alexis came over (4 days), we had already figured out a lot on our own. But it was nice having someone knowledgeable about babies come out to the house to answer our questions.

One of the important things we got out of her visit was her suggestion to try swaddling him again, arms and all. We were having trouble with him waking up a lot at night and she said to try swaddling him in a blanket with some give (we'd been using flannel receiving blankets which were easy for him to wiggle out of). She said to try it for a week and see if he got used to it. I had a couple of receiving blankets that were a little stretchy, so I started swaddling him in those at night and he couldn't get his arms out!

I've also been using his Miracle Blanket (a gift from our friends Seth and Barb) which works OK if we wrap him up when he is mellowed out from a feeding. (I had found that if he was screaming bloody murder while wrapping him in it, he usually wouldn't calm down again, but as long as he is relatively calm going in, he'll stay snug and happy.)

So the good news is that Aaron is now sleeping between night time feedings. I don't expect him to sleep through the night at this point, but as long as he sleeps between feedings, I can get a reasonable amount of sleep. And during the day, that makes a huge difference.