Converse in the North Cascades: New Year's Baby Update and Presentation Pics

Phoebe and mom seem to be doing OK. There was some concern about Phoebe’s low birth weight so we (mostly mom) have been working on getting her to put on some weight. This involves making sure she nurses regularly and involved some supplementation of the nursing which stopped doing about a day ago (hopefully for good). My part in the whole nursing process is pretty minor. I set my alarm and wake Sacha up every 2 to 2 and a half hours to make sure Phoebe nurses. Last night Phoebe woke up several times before my alarm went off, so my contribution was largely mute except for maybe changing a diaper and recording the feeding, which we are doing in order to keep track of how often she nurses.

The supplementation involved inserting a tube into the side of Phoebe’s mouth and squeezing either breast milk or formula from a syringe through the tube into her mouth as she nursed. My part in all of this was to fill the syringe and administer the formula or breast milk, trying to match the times when Phoebe was actively nursing. The trouble is that it is easier to get goodies via the supplementation than it is by breast feeding and she got wise to this quickly. She started backing away from the breast as soon as she felt the tube.

Everything else, such as bodily functions and vigor, seemed to be going OK with Phoebe so we decided to abandon the supplementation for a while and see how it will go with just normal nursing in order to keep from sabotaging the breast feeding.

This plan seems to be going OK so far. We have been weighing Phoebe every night with a produce scale accurate to one hundredth of a pound that we borrowed from a friend. The scale probably isn’t at the same level as the doctor’s scale or calibrated the same. The important thing is to keep track of whether she is gaining weight or losing. The goal is to get her above 5 pounds and keep her gaining after that. The first time we weighed her, she weight 4.86 pounds or 4 pounds, 13.76 ounces. The next night she weighed 5.05 pounds or 5 pounds, .08 ounces, her birth weight. The next night, with no feeding supplementation, she again weighed 5.05 pounds. So she didn’t gain but she didn’t lose either. Tonight she weighed 5.2 pounds or 5 pounds, 3.2 ounces. Hopefully the trend will continue.

We have made 3 trips back to the doctor since coming home with Phoebe, two for check ups for Phoebe and one today with Vashti who had a strange itch. I wouldn’t say we have been having completely rotten luck with health concerns lately but we haven’t been having really good luck either. So we, especially Sacha, are a little gun shy and figured better safe than sorry especially with a really little one involved.

Vashti’s itch turned out to be minor, just dry skin.

On a side note, while everything else was going on, I managed to put together a slide show of the places I went to in the North Cascades in 2012. Barring unforeseen difficulties, I will be presenting it at the Skagit River Bald Eagle Interpretive Center in Rockport which on Saturday the 11^th at noon. I have included some pictures from the presentation in this post so if you are curious about the stories behind the photos and you live close by, this is the time to hear them.

Unfortunately Saturday the 11^th is kind of a bad day. There is a Seahawks playoff game and, from previous experience, things like this are usually a heavy damper on other activities in the area. This is also Marblemount’s turn for the Eagle Festival this year and there will be some very good presentations at the Marblemount Community Hall which I will hate to miss and hate even more to compete with for the attention of a crowd which will likely be smaller than usual.

I think that, for small places like eastern Skagit County, you kind of need to concentrate your venues, do a few good ones rather than have a lot of different ones with conflicting, competing schedules. Of course, this isn't always possible. A wide range of choices might work well and even attract people in in and around large population centers but it seems to me that in areas where the population and potential crowd is perennially small, this type of thing tends to disperse audiences or customers to the point that there isn’t enough for anyone. I have noticed that this seems to be a trend with restaurants here. It also seems to me that a lot of the economic ideas floating around are based on areas in or near large population centers.

In this case, the slide show I am giving is free as are the presentations at the Community Hall but many of the concessions and other activities there are to help fund the hall. So the bigger the crowd there, the better. I hope my presentation doesn’t cut too much into that. I do a presentation every year as a community service to help support the Bald Eagle Interpretive Center. Unfortunately, this was one of the few dates available to me this year. To add insult to injury, I had promised to bake some pies for a fundraiser bake sale for the hall but I didn't have time to do this.