A Merry Update.

To sum up the salient points since Christmas in as little time as possible:

-The Snooklet developed some pretty bad reflux and vomiting problems post-pyloromyotmy. It started out as frequent spit-ups, then began transitioning into frequent forceful vomiting over the weekend. His surgical follow-up was this past Wednesday, where the surgeon's assistant wrote us a script for infant pepcid. Yesterday, we finally saw our own pediatrician. After consulting with her and making Merry do a barium swallow, we're assured that everything is structurally normal and he is just indigestiony like his pop.

-Barium gives infant poop a white pastel-like hue which, combined with the fact that infant poop is yellow, makes diapers look like Disney cartoons.

-His reflux has been markedly better yesterday afternoon and today, and there has been much less puking after feeding. I'm hoping this trend continues as we get further away from the stress of the surgery. He was so calm and sweet-tempered before the pyloric stenosis took hold, and it would be nice to have that baby back.

-We're adjusting our diets to a less inflammatory paradigm for the sake of Merry's reflux. Kerry is all but switched over, and I'm almost there (just eating through the non-compliant foods to get them out of the pantry). It is weird, surreal adventure since so many things that have always been stapes in my cooking have to be eliminated: onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, all dairy products, chocolate. We're supposed to minimize potatoes too, but that is where I draw a line. I...need my potatoes. There are pleasant surprises, though. Soy milk is delicious, and tomorrow we'll find out if rice milk is. Making biscuits with olive oil and water is sooo much easier than with butter and milk...and still pretty tasty. Quinoa, corn, and black beans tastes oddly good cold as well as hot. Trader Joe's maple cream cookies are an acceptable substitute for sex. Since the aforementioned omissions pretty much nullify the monastic soup cookbook that has been the guiding star of our diet for the past couple years, I now have an excuse to cook a lot more meat.

-We've established 8:00 as a bed-time for Merry. For five days running, we've been able to put him down at around that time. Sometimes he cries for a little bit, but he always calms down and drifts off in around three minutes. Kerry and I tend to stay awake until his next feeding, giving us some time to...make blog posts? Maybe I'm doing this wrong...

-Yesterday, our baby weighed ten pounds. Despite it all...ten pounds.

-Tomorrow, Merry will be four weeks old. One third of Kerry's maternity leave will be expended. Now I'm going to go panic long enough to brush my teeth and wash my face before going to bed. I may only get thirty minutes in before the first feed...but that's thirty minutes up over the rest of the night. Four weeks ago at this time, we were just getting into round one of Pub Trivia and I had unfortunately only just discovered that the establishment offered a house beer in cartoonishly large mason jars.