Blood, sweat and tears

Last night was pretty wild. Emmett pulled his usual sleep trick on my work days where five minutes before I come home he falls asleep after being a little bit of a complainer for the time that Andrea has him alone. So I arrived home, Emmett went to sleep, and he slept, and he slept, and he slept. Andrea and I watched a couple of episodes of "The Wire", and afterwards I stayed on the couch to sleep with Emmett. Finally at 1:30am I had to pee so bad that I had to get up and break Emmett's sleep, which by this time had totaled somewhere in the 7-7.5 hour range. Crazy. After a quick feed he actually slept quite a bit more, so Andrea and I awoke at 6:00 this morning feeling pretty good.

I have been reading some more about the Elimination Communication (the diaper-free thing), so I was ready to catch some poop today. It ends up that nearly all babies need to go to the bathroom very soon after waking, so the books recommend that when you are going to catch #2's one should try to get the morning one first as it is easiest. Feeling well-rested when I awoke, I rushed the still-groggy Emmett to the little potty we have set up, stripped him, held his back to my chest with his legs propped up, and tightened my stomach while making a grunt sound (his audio and physical signals). Well, with each tightening of my stomach Emmett would do the same thing and in short order I had collected Emmett's first poo that didn't go into a diaper (ignoring explosive potties when diapers were off). However, at the end of his movement I noticed a touch of blood in his stool. I had seen the same thing yesterday morning (just a drop or two) and had figured that he had a little cut or something as it appeared when he was really pushing, however a second day of this had me a little more concerned. Andrea fed Emmett soon after this and I set aside his first poo in the potty to have it bronzed (or maybe I just flushed it down the toilet). After the feeding I stripped Emmett again to play the pee-in-the-container game, but while I was holding him he threw up every bit of milk he had just eaten. This was very traumatic for me (and messy). We gave him a semi-bath and he didn't seem very bothered at all about having just thrown up, so we didn't really feel that there was anything seriously the matter (and the dr. appt. earlier in the week showed he wasn't having weight gain problems), but as this showed up at the same time as the blood in the stool we decided to make our first call to the nurse help line though we were sure there wasn't really a problem. We were just looking for a little reassurance.

Well, the nurse that we spoke to wasn't really reassuring and didn't really ask too many questions. It was as if she heard two check-box words, throw-up and blood, and said that we needed to see the doctor without wanting any actual details. I made the appointment and Andrea, having heard my conversation, was convinced that I made things sound worse than they really were. We both were confident that the trip to the doctor was going to be fruitless. Well, we got all ready to go and were out the door by 8:00 to walk to Laurel Village to see the doctor to have this stuff checked out. The doctor saw us pretty quickly, looked at Emmett's anus with one of those ear-checker-scopes (motivating me to watch my doctor closely to make sure that she puts a clean plastic head on the scope next time she checks my ear or nose) and found a small cut that is already healing from him pushing too hard when he poops. Then she told us that the throw-up was as we expected: after a long time sleeping without milk he eats too much and can throw it back up. So, all in all, it was a trip to the doctor that wasn't really necessary (besides the fact we don't have a ear, nose, throat, and anus checker to find the lesion) but did give us some reassurance that Emmett is still holding up alright.

The rest of the day was very pleasant. A number of our friends got together for a beautiful, hot (gasp! San Francisco?!?) Saturday hanging out in the park with eating, conversation, and throwing the frisbee (see Emmett having fun, at left). Afterwards, Andrea, Emmett and I rushed home to clean up a little for our first date since the pre-Emmett days. Belinda and Nick came over to watch Emmett while Andrea and I got out for a movie and dinner. It was our first trip on the scooter together since Andrea was about 3 or 4 months pregnant, so that was fun---especially on such a warm night. We came home and Emmett hadn't driven Belinda and Nick too crazy, I don't think, and Emmett seemed happy to see his mom for a late dinner and bed, where I think I will now go to join them.