What we're learning along the way: many doctor visits

Our baby spent several days of his first days in the NICU. Intense and challenging. Not how anyone wants to spend their first days as a parent. It opened our eyes to a whole different world of little babes struggling in the world. So sad. Because of this we have a lot of follow up appointments. My husband and I celebrate when we have a week where we don't have to see a doctor or a nurse. But on the flip side, we learn a lot about baby development from a lot of experts.

Some lessons:
-Smiling: the neurologist told us our baby was not socially smiling in the first 2 weeks of life although he smiled all of the time. He said it was gas. However, we quickly learned that around week 3 or 4, those cute little grins are indeed social and they're smiling at you. We caught one of our babes very first smiles around week 5 when we were taking his passport photo.
-Sleeping: the NICU nurses and occupational therapists created a little cocoon for our baby with rolled up blankets on four sides and one fitted over it. This helps them feels secure and also keeps their shoulders and hips from falling too far back and straining. Our baby slept like this for at least 3 months. It helped him feel cozy.
-Babies develop from the head down. Work with your baby's head control first. Holding him, burping him, playing with him. Until he is confident and steady. Then work on tummy time which is also majorly about head control. Next, is sitting up--working on his trunk.  Combine head and trunk with learning to roll over. Then you work his legs and standing. All babies develop differently and like different things but this is the general order we've been working with our kid. We havent skipped to standing/jolly jumper before he can sit well.
-Tummy time. When you put your child on his tummy, it's good to place his arms underneath him/place him on his elbows to improve confidence and strength on his tummy. We've done this with our baby from the start and he loves tummy time. Later, when you work on rolling with him, he can then experiment with getting his arms out from underneath him.
-We learned a lot of lessons about breastfeeding, as you may have read, I saw 3 lactation consultants. I think I'll write a whole blog post just on that.


I am sure I'll think of more....