All about Derrick

I have a huge backlog of blogs to write so that is why I'm sitting at the computer, and not sleeping in with Brandon on this beautiful 24th of July.  And Derrick is awake which is the other reason I'm up.

I thought I'd take a minute and tell you all about my little Derrick-boy (that's the closest thing he has to a nickname right now.) Derrick is the happiest baby.  He loves to smile at people.  All you have do is smile at him and he will start grinning and not stop. He's also started to laugh.

 I realized I don't have a lot of pictures of Derrick.  Mostly he just lays or sits around and that's not as interesting as what the girls are doing.  So I forget to take his picture.  I'll try to do better.  In the meantime, here is a video of Derrick that sort of got hijacked by Charlotte.  

Derrick LOVES to get his diaper changed.  As soon as I lay him on the dryer he starts smiling, cooing, and blowing bubbles.  I think he likes it because it's the only truly one on one thing we do.  Even bath time usually has an audience.  


He hates to have his face washed.  Bath time always goes really well until I have to wash his face.  


We often refer to Derrick as "our late triplet." Sometimes I wonder if he may have started out with the girls and then he was what I miscarried when I thought I lost the girls. I'll probably never know.  But what I do know for sure is that these three kids are all great friends with each other.  Lydia tries to share everything with Derrick.  And the other day I overheard Charlotte doing "This little piggy" to Derrick's toes.  It sounded something like this.  "Garble Garble Garble Weee Weee Weee Garble Garble Garble Weee Weee Weee"  

Derrick loves to be swaddled.  He usually falls right asleep after being swaddled.  He likes his binkie when he is starting to fall asleep, but he usually spits it out and forgets all about it.  (This is such a nice change from the two binkie addict girls.)

Derrick is the most considerate baby.  I suspected this about him even before he was born.  He waited to be born until after Brandon was done with the pinewood derby track.  Once he got here he continues to be very considerate.  What do I mean by that?  Well he seems to know when I'm busy with the girls and he will wait to cry until I'm done with them.  The other day we all came home from the park hungry and thirsty. I wanted to get the girls situated in their high chairs with food before I would start feeding Derrick.  He started to cry and I told him to wait just 5 minutes - and he did!  He's also really good in church, especially on weeks that I have to teach.

Of course he still cries and fusses and does other normal baby things too.  He's still not sleeping through the night, but he's getting closer.  And really I don't mind getting up with him because there is just one of him.  I don't have to sit there and worry that the other baby will wake up before he's done eating.

Derrick has shown me why so many people breast feed.  You may remember that I hated breastfeeding the twins.  When Derrick was born I told myself I would nurse him for 6 weeks and then I'd see if I wanted to keep doing it.  And much to my surprise I liked it.  At six weeks it was a no brainer to decide to keep nursing.

At the end of May Derrick started to have blood in his stool.  At first it was only a little and the nurse said not to worry, it was probably just a fissure in his colon.  But then he had a bowel movement with lots of bright red blood in it and so I called the doctor again.  He had me bring Derrick in.  The doctor took a look and told me it was probably caused from Cows Milk Colitis.  I was occasionally giving Derrick bottles of formula so I thought he was going to tell me to stop doing that.  Instead he told me to stop nursing because it was the cow's milk that I was drinking that was upsetting Derrick's digestive track.  He told me to start feeding Derrick soy formula.

That advise didn't sit right with me.  I realized that I actually liked nursing this time around.  I liked that I didn't have to worry about bottles.  That I could just sit and nurse my baby.  With the twins I would have been overjoyed to have an excuse to stop nursing.  But nursing one baby was pretty nice.

The doctor told me that WIC would help my buy the expensive soy formula.  There was only one problem, it was Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend.  There was no way I could get a hold of WIC until Tuesday at the earliest.  So I decided to do my own little experiment.  I didn't feed Derrick any formula that entire weekend.  And surprise surprise, he stopped bleeding.

So after that I just started breastfeeding him exclusively.  Sometimes, in a pinch, I'd give him formula and he would start bleeding again.  He had one or two "mystery outbreaks" but then I discovered Lydia sharing her bottle of whole milk with him and that answered the question.

I was a little worried about what I was going to do when I left Derrick for 3 days while I went river rafting.  I didn't really have time or the milk supply to pump enough milk.  But then my friend Michelle offered me a lot extra milk she'd pumped and frozen.  We'd shared a dorm room in college and so sharing milk really wasn't that weird for me.  She gave me a whole bunch of milk and I felt so much better about leaving Derrick.

I also covered my bases and left formula too.  It's a good thing I did that.  My Mom's response to a crying baby is to immediately feed them. (It must be a Grandma thing) so Derrick went through all Michelle's milk in one day.  Here is an actual conversation with my mom when I called home to check on the kids.

: Derrick's already had 6 oz and he's still crying.  I guess he wants more,
Me (in my head): Have you tried burping him!
Me (for real): Thanks for watching the kids and letting me have a break.  I'm going to go now.


Anyway, I was worried about how much blood I would find in his diaper after that weekend.  But miraculously there wasn't any.  I guess he outgrew whatever was bothering him.        

Well, Derrick's asleep now, but the girls are awake.  So I better finish.  Basically I love Derrick and I can't imagine my life without this little baby in it.  Oh and here is one more video: