Benjamin Henry Moehring
Neat Facts:
Birth Day: Nov 16th Weight: 18 lbs 9 oz Length: 26 inches To view (lots and lots of) other Benjamin pictures, Click here.
5/26/2010:
Benjamin is a solid 85th percentile 6 month old weighing in at 20 lbs. That means he is wearing some 9 month clothes and some 12 month clothes. He loves to sit up and play with his blocks and he babbles a lot. He is just starting to push his butt into the air when we put him on his tummy, so we anticipate crawling in the near future. He eats anything we give to him and recently he was introduced to CiCi’s pizza crust!
Hannah is a great big sister. She recently conquered the Chick-fil-A playground, is starting to get her feet off the ground when she jumps, and loves to paint and color. Her new game to play with brother is to roll him all around on the carpet while he giggles, but sometimes she gets too close and he grabs her hair.
3/18/2010:
Benjamin just turned 4 months old and had his well visit today. He is 18.5 lbs (97%), 26 in (90%), and 42.8 cm head (50%). The doctor says he is the size of an average 9 mo old! He’s been wearing 6-9 mo clothes for a few weeks already. I started feeding him some baby cereal last week because I’m not keeping up with him anymore. The doctor gave me official permission to start him on solids today. Hopefully, that will keep his little tummy full at night and he’ll start sleeping through (wishful thinking, I know). He adores his older sister and focuses on watching her whenever they are in the same room. He is really a great baby, very happy, gurgles and coos and giggles a lot.
1/22/2010:
Benjamin is 2 months old! He had his well visit today which included 4 shots. :( He weighs 15 lbs 11 oz, is 23 ½ in tall, and has a head circumference of almost 16 in. Height and head values are over 75th percentile, and weight is off the chart. The doctor said he weighs more like what you would expect for a four month old! I was having a difficult time keeping his tummy full at first, but recently we have adjusted into a fairly regular 2 hour day time routine. He also sleeps very well at night which we are very thankful for.
I recently went looking for a birth picture to place next to Hannah’s on my desk and ended up doing a little comparison activity. I was actually very amazed at how similar the two of them look as I really felt that Benjamin has a different look than Hannah. The pictures prove me wrong. Here’s the link, see if you can tell them apart! Click here
Benjamin is 1 month old. We've decided that November is not the best time to have a baby. With the holidays and flu season, its a little bit more stressful than other times of the year. We enjoyed the visits from family for Thanksgiving. Benjamin (and mom mostly since she had to feed him) spent 2 nights and 3 days in the hospital due to "respiratory distress". He was tested for RSV and pneumonia but it must have just been a bad cold. He did do some breathing treatments and was on oxygen for part of the time, but mostly they just monitored him. It was pretty nice to stay in the brand new children's hospital and test out all the new features (movies on demand and internet access from the room).
Other than that, he is very healthy and eating a lot. He is close to 12 lbs. Hannah weighed 12.6 lbs at two months! We are starting to get into a night-time routine. He will sometimes go 4 hours between feedings, but he still eats hourly when he is awake. As always, pics in our photo album.
11/29/2009:
Benjamin's jaundice has cleared up and he has mostly recovered from his circumcision. He is almost 2 weeks old. He has regained his birthweight plus (was 9 lb 2 oz on Wed). Our family has all headed back home, so Nate and I have survived our first day with two kiddos by ourselves. Our nanny will be here in the mornings this week and Nate will probably be coming home to check on my in the afternoons for awhile. We feel very blessed to have very good children so hopefully we'll get into a good rhythm quickly.
I know we aren't supposed to 'compare' our children, but it is amazing how different they are. Nate has been compiling a list of "different from Hannah" and here they are:
- Benjamin doesn't burp very much. Hannah burped like clockwork, but it doesn't seem to matter what position or how long you try to burp him, he doesn't burp. Unfortunately he does still spit up some (not bad) after feedings, especially bottles, but it's not enough to warrant harder burp attempts.
- Benjamin got into a normal sleeping pattern faster than Hannah. Hannah's schedule was completely backwards the first 2 days and it took a couple of weeks before we were getting solid blocks of sleep. Benjamin slept better beginning with day one, or at least we were better prepared for what to expect, but we were getting good blocks of sleep within days.
- Benjamin oesn't like to have his arms swaddled. From the very beginning, if he couldn't move his arms, he wasn't happy. Wasn't long after that I don't think he likes his legs tightly wrapped either. Just cover him with a blanket and he's good. Hannah was really comforted by a full body swaddle.
- Benjamin sleeps without a pacifier most of the time. Really only wants a pacifier to calm him down on occassion, then he's done with it. Hannah wanted the pacifier all the time, frequent trips to the bassinet/crib to put the pacifier back in her mouth in the middle of the night.
- Benjamin has been having more difficulty breathing, particularly at night when lying on his back. Prefers to sleep on his side. Hannah liked to sleeping face down with her butt in the air as soon as we would let her.
- Benjamin cries much less than Hannah, and that's hard to do because Hannah was a good baby too.
11/20/2009:
Yesterday was Benjamin's first doctor's visit. He weighed in at 8 lbs 7 oz, 20 inches long, and 36.2 cm head circumference. Before we left the hospital we had been told that his biliruben counts were high (meaning he was jaundiced). The doctor ordered some blood work and the counts were still high so we are having to keep him on what is called a "bili-blanket" which is a home photo therapy machine as much as possible. We had more blood drawn this morning and we'll find out if he needs a higher intensity treatment. Will update later. . .
Ben's next appointment will be on Wednesday for his two week shots and to be circumcised.
Some good news is that momma's milk is coming in which is helping him take longer naps which is helping us maintain our sanity (especially in those early morning hours). Gram and PawPaw have been a tremendous blessing helping out with meals and keeping Hannah busy!
11/18/2009:
Benjamin Henry Moehring arrived at 1:35 PM on Monday November 16, 2009. He weighed 8 lbs 13 oz, was 20 ¾ in long, with 14 ½ in head circumference. Benjamin has biblical origins meaning “son of the right hand” and he was the favored son of Jacob and Rachel. Its also about the same popularity as Hannah as a baby name. We’re not sure exactly how we picked it other than we already had Henry as the middle name and it seemed to go best. Henry is significant since Becca’s maternal grandfather has 17 grandchildren (and now 3 great grandchildren) and no boy namesakes!
We were saddened to discover that Hannah was not allowed to come to the hospital since it is flu season. We were discharged last night and Hannah finally got to meet her baby brother.
Thankfully we have grandparents here through Thanksgiving to help celebrate and support.
Pregnancy/Announcement Emails Birth Weight: 8 lbs 13 oz Birth Length: 20 3/4 inches