Gavin's First Month

Its hard to believe Gavin has been with us a whole month already! His official one month check-up isn't until next Friday, but here's some of his "stats".

• Eating 4-5 oz per feeding, which is about every 4 hours (during the day)
• Only waking up once during the night now, between 4-5am. 
• Loves being swaddled, especially at night time. 
• Prefers swinging front to back in his swing, as opposed to side to side.
• Has had 4 sets of casts on his feet already.
• Really trying to hold his head up.

My favorite of the above is the only-waking-once stat. We feed him his last bottle around 11, then we go straight to bed, he's up between 4-5, and then not again until around 8am. Its pretty fabulous. In a month or two we'll slowly push up his bedtime so that eventually he'll go down when we put Elias down around 8:30.

Today I took Gavin to Boston for two appointments. 

First we saw Dr. Cassidy, his hand doctor. To put it simply, it seems like the tendons in his middle fingers and thumbs are short, causing them to not extend. So to treat it we're going to cast his hand to try and stretch out his fingers as much as possible. Both hands will be cast, but we only had one put on today to spare him the agony of having all 4 limbs in casts at the same time. I don't know where my boys get their toughness from...neither Kevin nor I have a high pain tolerance, but neither Gavin nor Elias shed a tear when getting these casts. We will go back once a week to get a new cast to stretch them more and more, just like we did with the feet. 

Then we had Gavin's appointment with Dr. Gholve for his feet, and we got some fantastic news. Gavin's feet have responded so well to the castings that this set he has on now will be his last!! Thats a total of only 4 sets  he'll have had. He doesn't need a tenotomy or any surgery on either foot! So next Friday Gavin will get his Ponsetti boots that he'll wear all day and night for 3 months. 

Dr. Gholve then threw me a curve ball and asked us if we wanted to have Elias' foot surgery next Thursday. So we're going to go in on Tuesday, take some x-rays and see if the bones have ossified, and if they have indeed done so, it looks like we'll be going in on Thursday for surgery. This will be a more major surgery for Elias, as he'll be in a full leg cast for 6 weeks post-op. We'll see how he likes that...

And I can't resist not sharing these sweet pictures of Elias' little friends, Haddyn and Wyatt. We love our playdates with the Backlunds!