8 Month: Cora Update

Oh Cora-bell!  This last month means we finally need to qualify the "easiest baby ever" label!  You are still the definition of sweetness, but you certainly haven't been all that easy this last month!  It seems a long time ago now that you only woke once a night.  You've been waking 3-20 times a night in the last 4-6 weeks!  Usually, most of these wakings are in the first hour after we put you down when we truck up and down the stairs 10 times to keep settling you, but most nights we get up another 4-5 times in the night with you.  You were sick with a croupy cough a few weeks back, but all this started earlier than that.

You also have been hard to get down for naps which made for some tense days with your sitter the last two weeks.  I, for one, hate coming home to know you've been napless and in tears :(  I've rearranged my schedule a few times to get you down for your morning nap before I leave for work.  (But hey, when you are up at 5:00, you're quite willing to take your morning nap at 8!)

You also had your first trip to the ER this past week.  Your umbilical hernia has been causing you some trouble.  It has seemed to be getting smaller as of late, but this past week was quite pronounced.  It is supposed to easily retract and two days last week it wouldn't.  We had an ultrasound at Children's last Friday which showed normal blood flow in the area, but Saturday night you were fussy for hours and your hernia area was hard for the first time, so our pediatrician recommended we go to the ER.  The doctor there was able to work the protruding bowel back down through the hernia, so we were sent home, but we are meeting with a pediatric surgeon next week to see if we need to close the hernia or whether we can continue to just watch it.  Umbilical hernias are common and are okay as long as things move in and out of the area easily.  The danger comes if the bowels get caught up in the hernia area, so we are just continuing to pay close attention to Cora's belly.

You could wake us up a hundred times and we'd still feel our giddy Cora love whenever we see you (but let's not test that out.)  You bounce up and down with happiness when you see your mommy and daddy or your Jack-Jack.  You learned lots of new tricks this past month: you can clap your hands, wave, bounce to the beat of music, and you started crawling yesterday!

I love getting to know you more and more.  You are a precious gift!