Mason had a great, happy weekend and then was up screaming every few hours on Sunday night, not wanting to lay down…I knew immediately it was his ears, again. And again, no cold. I don’t understand why he gets the infections before we see the nasal congestion, it’s always a few days later. Kind of like how Lauren starts coughing and having trouble with her asthma, and then we see the nasal congestion a few days later. Anyway, Mason had a follow-up appt his our ENT yesterday already, convenient, no?
There is fluid on his ears, but no infection, yet. Of course with the fluid there, it can be an infection at any time or it might never be. However, it is affecting his hearing of course. Two weeks ago there wasn’t any fluid at his ear recheck with the pediatrician. We have a recheck with the ENT in 6 weeks and we’ll be doing a hearing test then too. The hope is that we’ll get him through the winter w/o any more infections and then likely he’ll start having trouble next cold/flu season, so we’ll likely end up in tubes next winter…that is exactly what Lauren did…2 ear infections at 6 months and then spring came and we were good until October/November when the ear infections started and we were at the ENT and in tubes by January. The concern is if we put tubes in him now (if he keeps getting infections in the next month), they may fall out in 6 months and we’ll be putting tubes in again come winter (now, Lauren’s still hadn’t fallen out at 3 years, but that’s abnormal apparently). And our ENT told us that the ear infections and reflux go hand in hand…that when they reflux, that fluid comes up and ends up in their ears since all of those passageways are connected. So, both of my kids have fluid on their ears, both scheduled for rechecks, lovely.
She scoped Mason again (through his nose, down his throat) to check on his stridor and apparently it’s “impressive” is what she said…it’s touching his airway, all but obstructing it. She upped his dose of prevacid (doubled it to 15mg) to try to be able to get him off of the steroid (Flovent) (when I take him off the steroid, he starts choking on feedings…the steroid is helping to open the airway, but they really don’t want him on the steroid). She said if we can’t get him off of the steroid, he would be a candidate for surgery to correct the stridor (otherwise, he’d outgrow it by 3 years old or need surgery at that point). urgh. She said he also has that “allergy kid” look, just like Lauren always has, the red around the eyes, etc. She also said that she can refer us out to an occupational therapist who can work with us to give us thickeners to make his bottles more like nectar consistency so he can feel that the liquid is there instead of choking on it. So, I asked how that works with nursing and for some reason she thought I’d stopped breastfeeding him when I went back to work almost 3 months ago and I said absolutely not, he’s 100% breastfed and I thought she was going to do a dance for joy!! She said if there is anyone in this world that needs to be breastfed as long as possible, it’s Mason. She said to breastfeed him until at least a year (which is the plan anyway), and if I could do it to 18 months to get him through next winter, that would be the best. I already knew that, given Lauren’s history, but it was hard to hear that I will likely be pumping for another year. If I were a stay at home mom, it would be no big deal, but I really hate pumping. Oh well, now that a dr. has told me it’s really, really best for Mason (she stressed it I don’t know how many times including telling me if I have supply issues to go to my dr. and tell them to put me on reglan), I will do everything in my power to get him through next winter instead of until September as originally planned.
Last night he wasn’t up crying, so I’m hopeful the fluid will go away. The ENT said some people are really sensitive to the pressure from the fluid and that is likely why he was up crying, but she rechecked his ears a second time during the appt, just to make certain there was no infection. Poor baby.
I’ll say it again…if ear infections, athma, and stridors are the worst my kids have…than we’ll be just fine:)
The comment we hear almost every time we are out with Mason is “he is just the happiest baby” and that absolutely is the best way to describe him!! The girl that took care of him in the gym last Saturday came out to tell me that he is now her new favorite baby and she absolutely loves him and he’s the happiest baby she’s ever seen. I loved hearing it of course and told her he’d be back on Sunday and she asked when and I told her what time and she was like “oh good!!! I’ll be here!! I’m so excited!!”. How lucky are we?? Here’s an update on Mason at 5 months.
sleep - pretty much the same. He goes to sleep around 8:30/9pm and gets up to eat once sometime around 3am-6am and then is back down (very easily, we’re usually awake less than 10 mins) until 7:30ish. Naps the same…catnaps throughout the day (30mins - 1 hour) with one long nap at some point (2-3 hours). Still swaddled. Starts off with the paci, but usually spits it out once he’s asleep and might cry once during the night to get it back. When he wakes up from nap or in the morning, I usually hear him talking to himself, looking at his mobile, totally content.
teeth - he has his 2 bottom teeth and they are very evident when he smiles, they’re so cute! (he got them at 4.5 months) Miss Lauren (his daycare lady) thought he was teething and working on his top ones last week, but so far we don’t feel any bumps or anything.
sitting - he is now fully sitting up right, all on his own! He still topples over time to time, but it doesn’t seem to bother him, even he bonks his head a bit on the floor or something, not much ever bothers him! He rarely sits though, he’d prefer to be on his tummy.
Sitting and looking at his penguin (Lauren always runs to be in the pics too!lol):
crawling - Mason started army crawling at 4.5 months!!! Yikes!! Lauren started crawling at 9 months and never army crawled, so I totally wasn’t expecting it! He can zoom across the room pretty quick, too! It’s cute watching him do it, he pulls with his arms and pushes with his feet, spins one foot out to the side to spin around to go a different direction. It’s like he is doing everything he can to just move, so crazy! And we’ve learned to do a quick scan of the room before putting him down because he’ll make a beeline for Lauren’s drawings to rip them up or for her stuffed animals to chew on them (which she claims makes them not soft so she won’t let him touch them!), etc. He will happily play on the floor in the great room or in our bedroom or bathroom for a really long time with just a few toys spread out. So very different than Miss Lauren who didn’t move and wanted the 1×1 time with us, in our arms! Mason can get his knees under him and can also fully push up on his arms, but hasn’t figured out how to do it all at once to crawl the normal way, but we know it’s really not going to be long.
eating - Mason is still on 100% breastmilk (yea!) and eats every 2-3 hours. We had kind of backed off on the cereal because he really wasn’t interested. We tried again the day after he turned 5 months and now he LOVES to eat! Weird! So far he’s had rice cereal and oatmeal cereal. He’s also had mashed up banana’s and loved them, go figure! Well, and bites of my ice cream cone a few days ago, which of course, he loved! Three days ago we started carrots and he always makes faces, but keeps opening his mouth wanting more and grunts at us if we don’t keep feeding him! He’s doing so well, that last night, I gave him a bowl of oatmeal, a 1/3 jar of carrots (small jar), and a 1/3 jar of banana’s and he gobbled it all right up! He acted like he wanted more, but we figured it was enough since it was the first time he’d ate that much in one sitting! We gave Miss Lauren the go ahead to start cereal in the mornings today. Likely we’ll get him on a schedule where he has cereal and fruit in the morning and cereal, fruit, and veggie at night. At his 6 month well baby visit, we’ll talk to the dr. about adding lunch and meats. We’re just starting slowly as they recommend, give him one new food for 3 days to make sure there isn’t an allergic reaction and then move on to the next. It seems like he’s going to be a really good eater!
Lauren feeding him bananas:
we finally brought out the highchair…love his little faces when he eats, yet he wants more!
personality - As I said, Mason is just so happy all of the time! Huge smiles for anyone he can get to look at him! It’s funny because he will sit and stare at Billy until he looks at him and then gives him the biggest smile you’ve ever seen!! He absolutely adores Lauren and every time he sees her, he gets so excited with huge smiles and kicking his arms and legs! They “play” together all the time…she’s usually rolling him up in a “burrito”, pretending she’s the teacher and it’s nap time…her very favorite game to play. He has also learned how to get our attention and make us laugh with this grunt he does…I pick him up from daycare first and then we go get Lauren and all the way home, he’ll grunt at her and she’ll look at him and giggle while he’s smiling huge and then go back to watching tv, and then he’ll grunt again…and repeat over and over on the 5 min drive home! He also spends a lot of time blowing raspberries I think to entertain himself or to make us laugh. And he is totally ticklish, laughs out loud anytime you tickle his neck, arms, legs, back, belly, etc!
Such a happy baby!
size - he can still wear his 3-6 month clothes ok, and 6-12 are just fine too.
hair - it is almost completely gone except for his mohawk! A ton of new growth has come in too, but the mohawk is what you see! And it’s almost like a “combover mohawk” because the hair in the front half is gone, but the hair from the back half comes to the front, if that makes sense. Lauren prefers when we put a clippy in it and give him a ponytail on the top of his head, like Pebbles…of course we don’t leave the house that way, Billy would never allow it!lol
You can see the mohawk pretty good here:
And here is his pebbles ‘do (and you can see all of Lauren’s dolls put down for nap in the background, there are always dolls/animals all over our house this way…good thing grammy has quilted a million blankets for her!):
eyes - still blue and we do think they have actually gotten even more blue (but still a gray blue kind of color, very cool!). We are hesitant to say it, but it appears he may have dark hair and blue eyes! gorgeous!
Here’s a picture Lauren took of Mason in the new hat grammy knitted for him, love his eyes in this pic!
firsts - Mason is now sitting in a highchair at restaurants (if he’s awake, otherwise he stays in the infant carrier). Billy is now giving Mason his bath upstairs in his baby tub on the floor in the master bath while Lauren takes her bath (in our big jacuzzi tub of course!) and I think the kids like being together for baths…it won’t be too long until they can take baths together! We’ll see how that goes, Lauren likes her space to “swim”! We took Mason swimming for the first time last weekend and he really seemed to like it! Of course, there isn’t much this kid doesn’t like (except when you mess with his nose…don’t try to suction it or wipe it, he freaks!). He stayed in the water with us for about 45 mins and would even hold onto the side and we could let go and he’d just hang there! Lauren took lessons at 6 months and so we did some of that stuff with him and even took him under water a few times and not a single tear! I’m not sure he *liked* it, but he didn’t hate it either! (for the record, Lauren *hated* it!…she just let Billy take her under water for the first time last weekend!) Here’s a few pics!
and not to leave out Lauren (and yes, yellow is still her favorite color, and she is over the moon about her yellow tutu swim suit!):
We are so blessed to have such great kids!!
