Because I know you all want to hear more about my son's eating, sleeping, and pooping habits

I realized the other day that I never wrote much of an update on D's low-weight/not-enough-wet-diapers/let's-try-weaning-to-formula "situation" from almost a month ago. So here's that update, for those of you who are interested. To review: D's continued to not gain much weight, and for about a week there started not having enough wet diapers, either. I took him to the pediatrician, and we both agreed it was time to supplement more aggressively with formula. How we'd do that was another matter, but as we boarded the plane to spend 2 weeks in Texas for the holidays, we hoped we'd figure it out.

I don't know if it was the measly 2-3oz/day of formula that we'd occasionally manage to get him to drink, or if I was having a temporary slowdown in supply that then went away, or what other random events conspired, but by the time we were back here in the new year D's diaper output was fine, even tho he was hardly drinking any formula and occasionally would take some water. He's been eating solid food like a champ, though-- 3 meals a day plus about 2 snacks, eating pretty well each time. He's back to allowing me to feed him with a spoon most of the time, which makes it much easier for me to get a decent amt of, say, fruits and veggies into him more quickly. And, perhaps in an effort to show me how well-nourished he is, he's become a pooping machine. I'm serious, one or more good poops a day (normal consistency, always). So clearly he's getting plenty to eat.

Last night out of sheer curiosity I tried weighing him using our home scale. Even taking off a pound to be conservative, he came out to about 21lbs... impressive considering he'd been hovering around 18/19lbs for the previous few months.

I guess motherhood is, among other things, a long string of events where you worry about something, later find out you had nothing to worry about, and the cycle just repeats itself. Though I am still always glad to be relieved of the worry, and know that things really are ok after all.

In the past week an amazing thing has happened. D has started to consistently sleep about 9-10 consecutive hours at night (thanks to a little Ferberizing). It seemed every time we started trying to do sleep training, or even thinking about it seriously, we'd have another doctor appointment, or any other reminder that would make me feel guilty about the lacked opportunity for extra calories, and so I'd give in to the night feedings all over again. But after finally truly believing the signs my son's been showing me that he's fine (active, happy, pooping loads) we went ahead with our plan to improve all of our sleep a bit. Luckily D responded really well, and was sleeping 7p-5a by the 3rd night, I think. He's now sleeping basically 12 hours (7p-7a) with one feeding at 5.

Zach mentioned how this past Saturday was the first time in a long time that he'd woken up on his own, actually feeling rested. That feeling is a priceless one. I'm sure I still have a ways to go to catch up on the "sleep debt" I've accumulated in the past almost-12 months, but getting a solid 7 hours of sleep at night makes a HUGE difference.