One Week

Cillian was scheduled for his one week appointment with Dr. Hirsh for the 31st of July but in the middle of the night on Saturday the 28th, Cillian's circumcision started bleeding a bit again. It had to be cauterized in the hospital because it wouldn't stop bleeding so we didn't know what we should do when it started bleeding again. (For all of you girl Mommies out there, a circumcision requires lots of care :) We went through 9 tubes of Vaseline and three boxes of gauze for the 5 day recovery period!)

Anyway, we didn't want to take Cillian into the 'war zone' that is weekend walk-in hours, so Doug said he'd go and bring one of the gauze pads to show the nurse/doctor and see if we should be worried. He came home and said that Dr. Hirsh was actually the doctor on call and that she'd see us at 11:15. Awesome.

This was not only Cillian's first trip out of the house, but mine too. I was weak - I was shocked at how slowly I had to walk and how I couldn't even push his stroller up a steep sidewalk. But, we got there and she said that we were taking great care of the wound - she was so complimentary about the amount of Vaseline we were using and said that the amount of bleeding we were seeing was normal.

However, there were some things we needed to address. In the hospital, Cillian was borderline jaundice and we had been waking him up every three hours to eat per doctor's orders. He was then and still is even now (typing this on 8/17) a VERY sleepy baby. Very sleepy. Dr. Hirsh said that his levels were higher (but that it should be expected because it peaks around day 4-5) and we should continue to wake him to eat. I asked her if formula or breast milk helps rid the body of jaundice better and she said, "I'm hesitant to say formula because you're breast feeding but formula." I told her what I'm telling you now - I'm not a breast feeding crazy woman. If formula is going to help him, I'll start making a freezer stash of milk. No big deal. And that's what we did. 2 bottles a night to help flush his system of the billirubin.

The other issue is that 4 days after we had been home, Cillian still hadn't opened his eyes. This was so odd to us because James opened his eyes and was so alert from the very beginning. We mentioned this to Dr. Hirsh and she said, "wait, like you've never seen his eyes at all or you see them rarely." We told her not at all. Ever. She opened them and checked the retinas etc and said everything looked normal to her but she gave us a card for an infant eye specialist to verify if everything was okay. Being post-partum, I cried a little. This made Dr. Hirsh repeat over and over that she was sure everything was going to be fine. I was so embarrassed to have cried but I really cannot express to you how frightening it is that your child's eyes won't open.

We got his measurements and this was weird - but at the hospital he was 19.5 but at the doctor's office he was 18.5. I told the nurse who measured him and she said, "Yeah, all the babies shrink an inch when they get measured here - not literally but we just get a different measurement than the hospital. It happens with every baby." So weird. James didn't start off at this practice - we switched in when he was 3 weeks old so I can't say if it happened with James too. So at 1 week old Cillian weighed 6lbs3oz (he was 6-8 at birth) and was 18.5 inches (19.5 at the hospital).