Day 35 – Five Weeks Old

Yesterday Corin hit the big five week mark, and he is doing very well. We had his second doctor’s appointment and he weighed in at an impressive 8 pounds, 1 ounce. The doc was very pleased and he will now just be on the “normal” schedule of doctor visits for check-ups and immunizations. The very impressive part of this weigh-in is that about 90% of his meals during that weight gain were right from Momma. We still trough a couple bottles in so Kristi can sleep for more than a couple hours at a time, or if we are out and about. But we are happy that is working out so well.

Kristi had an in-home session with a couple ladies from Le Leche League, and then went to a follow-up meeting with other members of the League of Extraordinary Breast-feeders. This is a group that specializes in breastfeeding and supporting women who do it. They gave some very good pointers and helped with some techniques. So that has given Kristi some extra options for how to feed him. He still eats from Kristi every couple hours or so, which can make it feel like all she is doing is getting ready to feed, feeding, or cleaning up from feeding. But she enjoys being able to do it, and he is growing well from it.

We took another trip down to Bloomington yesterday and got to see Grandma and Susan at their office. As you can imagine, they were very upset at the disturbance, and demonstrated their annoyance by showing him off to everyone who walked by the office. I guess that’s the price he has to pay for being so darned cute.

Day 30 – One month old

Corin hit one month old today and he seemed to enjoy it. He had visits today from Lola and from Kristi’s friend Rob. Rob had previously given Corin a lovely little death metal outfit with shoes which were much too big for him. But we dressed him up anyway for their photo together.

The second week of life at home has been easier than the first. We are hoping that trend continues, and we believe it will. As he falls into more for a rhythm and we get more accustomed to what he needs and when, things get easier and easier. Basically, the faster we learn to tailor every aspect of our lives to best suit his needs, the easier it will be for all of us.

The breastfeeding continues to move along fairly smoothly. He’s got his next doctor’s appointment next week…so we’ll see then if it really is going well or if we are slowly starving him.

We’ve got some new video up here, since we haven’t put any up for a bit. Nothing too exciting, but he is up and looking around, which is always pretty cute.

Days 26 - 28 – Four weeks old

(Kristi's friend Erica and Corin)


(Pat and Corin at the library)






(All of the Orr men together for the first time)




(Mommy catches her boys taking a nap)

Wee baby Corin turns four weeks old today. Twenty-eight days old…is that all?!? And the first 18 of that was in the hospital. It is very hard to believe that he has only been at home for 10 days. There are certainly times when it seems it has been much longer than that. Maybe that is what happens when you don’t have 10 individual 24-hour long days, and instead have one long 240 hour day, broken up by small naps.

But things have been going pretty well. A couple days ago we went back to the hospital to meet with a lactation consultant to try and kick-start the breastfeeding process into high gear. She gave Kristi nipple shields, which are basically bottle nipples that go over top of her. That tricks our not-too-bright baby into thinking that he is drinking from the bottle. That has been working fairly well. He is now getting the majority of his meals right from Kristi. The drawback is that he now eats smaller meals more frequently, so Kristi is getting even less continuous sleep than she was before. We throw in a real bottle a few times a day so she can get at least a couple good naps throughout the day.

We took our first real excursion out of the house yesterday (other than going to the hospital or to see the doctor) and went down to Bloomington to visit Grandma, Pop and Lola. We also went to the public library and Corin got to meet Pat (really she got to meet him) who was my Children’s Department librarian when I was a wee child. It was a successful trip out of the house, which was good for everyone.

Days 23 - 25 - Visitors at home

Corin is doing well and has had a steady stream of visitors at home. We had a little family cookout and he enjoyed being passed around like a little hot potato. Then we had a visit from our friends Tom and Erica and their kids. Then my sister Emily came by, as well as our friends Caitlin and Devin. Corin does a great job moving form person to person and doesn't care who is loving on him, as long as someone is.
Each night has been a little different with his sleeping. Last night he did very well sleeping soundly between his meals. That is really what we are shooting for at this point. We know that getting him to sleep all the way through the night is a long way off, but is he could keep sleeping when he's not up eating, that would be great.
Grandma took this whole week off of work, so she will be his nanny for the week. It works out very well that there is someone here who can take care of him while Kristi and I take a nap. But he is doing very well and we are having fun with him.

Days 22 – Bath Time

Corin had his first bath at home today. It went much better than we thought it would. He didn’t seem to mind being in the water at all. He was wide awake and didn’t fuss or cry at all. It was actually quite a bit of fun.

Grandma stayed with us again last night, which was very nice. We’re still trying to find a good system for getting through the night so that everyone gets as much sleep as possible. We’ll get there eventually, I’m sure.

Days 20 & 21 – Three weeks old

Corin has hit three weeks old and is still going strong. We had our first post-NICU doctor’s appointment today and he didn’t fail to impress. He weighed in at 7 pounds, 2.5 ounces, so he has gained 4 ounces in the three days we’ve been home. He’s within all the norms ranges for height, weight and head size for babies his age. So he’s looking good.

We are all still figuring out life at home together. He does fine sleeping throughout the day. He will wake up every few hours to get changed and eat. Sleeping throughout the night is something we are still working on. Night One was a bit rough, but I think that was to be expected for the first night. Night Two went great: sleeping well, eating well and then sleeping well some more. Last night was not pleasant. He just could not get comfortable and there didn’t really seem to be anything we could do to help him relax. So Kristi was up with him the first half of the night and I was up the second half.

Luckily we were able to make up some of our sleep today since Grandma came up yesterday and will be staying with us through tomorrow. We need to figure out a way to pay her so she can quit her job and come be our live-in nanny. Having a third person in the house makes everything so much easier. Kudos to all of you single parents out there who run your houses by yourself. That has got to take a special kind of strength.

Overall, things are going very well. He is eating well, sleeping well overall, and busts out a few killer smiles throughout the day that make all of the little trials fade away.

Day 19 – Day 1 All Over Again

The first day at home was, overall, a success. The overnight was a bit sticky, but we got through it. We had obviously never spent the night with him before, and he makes MANY more noises throughout the night than we expected. So it is hard to sleep when you think that every moment could be his last. I at least fell asleep a little bit. Kristi was up all night, pumping, changing and feeding. Finally, at 5:30 this morning, she came in and told me that she was done and needed to sleep. So I was up and took over while she collapsed and got some rest. She was just trying to do too much. So tonight we are both going to be getting up so I can feed while she pumps. Go Team Orr!

It is still very strange having him in the house. It is wonderful, and we love it, just still surreal that they really gave him to us. We have to learn to do things on our own without having the NICU staff there to guide us. It is all stuff that we did fine in the NICU (washing, feeding, changing, comforting), we just have to do it a little differently now. It is like we were victims of a severe brain injury and have to re-learn how to walk. We did it fine before, and we really won’t hurt ourselves, we just need to prefect our form.

So that’s what we’ve learned in day one: kids are like massive head trauma.

But we love it. We had a great time during the day. We had some fun tummy time, and then took a walk around the neighborhood with Lola. The neighbors from across the street ran over when Lola and I walked outside with Corin so they could get a look. Our friends next door (who are also having a baby soon – our pregnancy co-conspirators) also got their first look at out little guy tonight. I closed out today with a little light urination and some bubbling spit-up all over me. We’re still smiling.

Day 18 – Free at last, free at last!

Well, he did it. Just when we thought that nothing was every going to change in the hospital, he started chugging down his bottles like crazy. We are free of the hospital and couldn’t be happier to be home. The nurses at the hospital were WONDERFUL, and we think that they will genuinely miss having Corin in there. The last few days we have gone in and the nurses working with Corin told us that they had to talk other people into letting them take care of him. So it was nice to have him being cared for by people who enjoyed it.

But he is now home safely, and it is still pretty surreal. We’re not really sure how people who don’t spend two weeks with a full-time team of medical professionals have any idea how to take care of a baby. It is crazy just to be able to pick him up and walk around with him. We could not do that at the hospital since he was always on him monitor.

It has been just such a wonderful day, and yet we’re at a loss for blog words. So we will leave you with this: Tonight our family is all together in our home and we are truly happy.