On the Mend

I guess we never really told anyone outside of family and a couple friends that Eleanor broke her collarbone in delivery. The diagnosis came about a week after she was born. When she was born, the pediatricians that were in the room noticed that she didn't have much movement in her right arm and contributed it to possibly her nerves being stressed. The next few days we noticed that she didn't use her arm all that much, and that her grip in her right hand was definitely not as strong as her left.

At our next Dr.'s appointment, he asked if she had gotten an x-ray at the hospital and said that he believed her collarbone was broken. He said that if it was broken it would heal on it's own and there would be a lump on her bone in the next few days. Sure enough at our next appointment her bone had developed the hard lump. After a couple days of pinning her arm sleeve to her shirt and being careful when we picked her up making sure to not hold her under her arm pits, her arm seems to be getting better. We still have an appointment with a neurologist on Monday, though we don't think it's completely necessary at this point.

Also, Eleanor had broken lots of blood vessels in both eyes when she was born. I guess being a 9 lbs. baby isn't all it's cracked up to be. At almost 3 weeks old she still has a couple broken blood vessels in both eyes, but they're looking a whole lot more clear than the day she was born.



And lastly because her umbilical cord fell off we were able to give her a real bath. These days they suggest that you don't clean the umbilical cord with rubbing alcohol since they say it prolongs the process of it falling off. To me it seemed like the umbilical cord was more grungy and disgusting and smelled funky. It came off in pieces too rather than one solid shriveled up piece. Every day it's looking better and less funky.

Unlike her brother, she hated her first real bath.

This is Ethan in one of his first baths.

She was much more content in the towels, but maybe that's because she pooped through both of them and onto our duvet cover when I took this picture.

And lastly, Ethan's disinterest in Eleanor has been slowly deteriorating. He now will give her a kiss at bedtime, will sit by her without crying out, "I don't want baby Eleanor!", and is still sensitive to her when he hears her crying. For some reason if he hears her crying in her swing, he'll go over to her and apologize saying it's his fault. Not sure why he does that and we try to tell him it's ok for her to cry and it's not his fault, but he insists it is. Sweet boy.

Don't mind the boy pj's on Eleanor. She typically wears girly ones, but man she spits up a lot. She brought it upon herself.

Successfully giving Eleanor her pacifier.