Gabriel's one month old!

Wow.  It's crazy how fast time has flown by since we brought Gabe home.  The NICU stay seemed to last forever and drain me of all energy I possibly had.  Now that he's home, I'm in normal newborn exhaustion mode.  When people ask me how we are doing, that's how I respond.  And it's really nice to have a normal newborn!

And just look how much he's changed!

 Poor guy fell over after I took this picture :-)

So, to recap Gabe's first month of life:
- The first 10 days were spent in the NICU.  Gabe didn't really start to show his true colors until we'd been home for a week to 10 days.  His body was still getting rid of the strong antibiotics he was flooded with and he was sleeeeeeeeeeepy.  I literally had to wake him up 24 hours a day to nurse.  And since he was used to bottles, he was a lazy nurser.  It was exhausting, but he's nursing like a champ now and doesn't take forever to latch and stay latched.
- Gabe has some gas issues.  His poor tummy just rumbles away.
- I bought a Within Arm's Reach bassinet for Gabe...and we're not using it at all.  He just wouldn't sleep at all laying completely flat, so, out of desperation, I tried the swing one night...and I got two and a half hours of sleep in a row!  YAY! He's been sleeping in the swing the past week, sometimes swinging and sometimes not, and what's more important is that *I'm* getting sleep too.  And since I'm taking care of a toddler during the day, naps are short for me (if I get one).  When I go to sleep at night - I'm out.  I remember waking up and checking on Madeline when we brought her home...not so much for little man.  He wakes me when he needs to nurse.
- He also had a plugged tear duct and subsequently a yellow, snotty left eye.  We massaged it a few times a day and there's no more gunk.  Good thing too, his eye really did look like Tales from the Crypt!
- Gabe was 7 pounds 13 ounces when we were discharged from the hospital.  When we took him to the pediatrician three days later, he was still 7 pounds 13 ounces.  At a weight check another four days later, he had increased his weight to 8 pounds 5 ounces!  YAY!  He surpassed his birth weight and I didn't have to wake him up at night to nurse anymore.
- Like his sister (when she was a newborn), Gabe's night is shifted slightly.  He tends to go down for the night around 10:30-11 pm.  He'll nurse once in the middle of the night and then again sometime between 6-7 am.  After he's done, he usually takes a long nap and wakes between 10-11 am.  He's much too young to begin to shift him back (and we will be springing forward soon anyway), but I can't wait to get him to a normal 7-8 pm to 7-8 am routine.
- And our little man is rolling over belly to back.  I'm really not one to say a baby a couple weeks old can master rolling over.  In fact, the first few times it happened, I honestly thought it was a fluke.  But then he kept doing it.  So, I didn't document when it truly happened, but he was sometime around two weeks old.  He's been doing it daily for a few days now so I admitted that he actually is rolling over.  He's inconsistent, obviously (he is only a month old!), but his gestures do make it seem like he's doing it on purpose.  Madeline was less than two months old when she rolled over and she was crawling at five months (and three weeks, I think, so really close to six months).  Lord help me if Gabe is mobile before six months!

So that's it!