Articles by Travis Hamill

the fastest month

Today our darling Madison crossed the 1 month mark. It’s been such an amazing and wonderful time in life. It started out with mom and dad falling in love at first sight and quickly transitioned to thinking that they’d never be able to sleep at the same time again. Madison’s become a professional at soiling diapers, coating clothes in spit-up, melting hearts, speed-feeding, staring at light bulbs (on or off), modeling for pictures, etc,… We’ve become professionals at changing diapers, washing clothes, staring at babies (just the one baby though), and sleeping in 3 hour chunks. Madison went from 6 lbs 9oz, to 5 lbs 14oz, and back up to 8 lbs 4oz. She’s nearly outgrown the newborn clothes (Carter’s sizes). Most importantly though, she’s captured the hearts of everyone she meets.

Speaking of capturing hearts; Madison’s met lots and lots of people:
– Mom & Dad
– Grandpa & Grandma Newstrum
– Grandma & Grandpa Hamill
– Melanie Lee
– Heid Tobaben & Joe Devera
– Geoff, Freddy, and Joy Gariando / Liu
– Amanda & Quinn Higley
– Matt, Stephanie, Sage, & Solvay Baker
– Lots and lots of neighbors at the Weiting / Venn BBQ
– Many more friends at Amanda’s 4th of July party
– Dr’s, nurses, and phlebotomists galore

How we celebrated
With our closest friends at Overlake Hospital. Turns out that Fledra had a slight complication that resulted in the day being spent back at Overlake for a small surgical procedure. Once again, we managed to land at the hospital when our actual Dr., Dr. Brown, was on call which lead to a fun 1 month reunion of the first person Madison ever touched on the outside. I’ve been forbidden from sharing a picture of that first moment, but here’s a quick capture of the reunion. More 1 month pictures to follow!

tongue tied

Our poor Madison has a tongue tie. For anyone out there that doesn’t know what that means (like Fledra and I when we found out); a tongue tie is when the frenulum under the tongue attaches too far forward on the tongue preventing movement. In our case it was also causing Fledra discomfort during feedings. It can also lead to trouble with solid foods and speech impediments.

We discovered this during our follow-up appointment at the birthing center where the lactation specialist pointed it out. Following up on that, we had an oral surgeon who specializes in children and babies evaluate the scene and also discovered that she has a lip tie. This one is less of an immediate issue, but could cause her adult teeth to come in with a significant gap.

Given that there’s a whole host of potential issues associated with these conditions… and that it’s nearly impossible to discover that they’re an issue until it’s too late, we decided to have both the tongue and lip tie “released”. The Dr. used a laser to remove both… total time away from mom and dad was just about 8 minutes. Unfortunately for Madison, she’s too young to have any local anesthetic, so she had to go through it with just a bit of baby Tylenol and a cold cotton ball. Since the procedure we’ve seen almost no evidence that Madison was in any discomfort though.

We (Fledra) do have to massage both areas every 4 hours for 4 weeks to ensure that the frenulums don’t reattach. Again, all evidence suggests that this is more challenging on us than it is Madison. Here’s to perfect speech and healthy teeth going forward… and that this post is the only memory Madison has of the entire ordeal.

happy birthday mommy

Today we celebrate Fledra’s first birthday as a mommy. Happy 38th my darling!

I worked from home today so that Fledra could get a few extra minutes of sleep in the morning; but as you can probably guess, I wasn’t able to keep Madison distracted for too much of the day. Mom got to open a few gifts, including some of her favorite & long-lost alcoholic beverages followed by a brief amateur photoshoot in the back yard.

For dinner, we went to the Woodman Lodge so Fledra could have a perfectly cooked steak dinner. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be… her medium-rare steak came out well done and we didn’t have time to get a new one cooked before Madison would have had to be home for her dinner. At least we had great company, a chance to get out of the house, and a free dessert.

gaining weight

Our darling Madison’s one good eater. During her two week checkup with the pediatrician, she was up to 7 lbs 4 oz, which is already an increase over her birth weight, and amounts to 41 grams of weight gain per day since her first appointment. Since the Dr. looks for at least 30 grams, everyone’s in great shape!

Update: Madison’s now up to 8 lbs 6oz as of 7-2-2019. I guess all that spit-up isn’t affecting the calories.

back to work

I realize that this post is actually being written several weeks late. Those of you whom are already parents knew this already, but I have only recently come to understand that balancing work, sleep, giving your wife a break from the baby, eating, and 2-hour bed time routines doesn’t provide for a lot of spare time in the day.

Aside from missing Madison greatly, and always being concerned that I’ll be absent for one/some/many of the great developmental firsts, things have gone pretty smoothly. Fledra’s tackling the SAHM (stay at home mom) thing like a pro and for the most part Madison’s cooperating.

day 10 is for play

Madison had quite the exciting day today. She spent some time on her play mat, although that turned into a colorful comfy place to sleep. Her arms will have to get a bit longer before she can interact with any of the hanging items or realize how exciting everything is. This is also going to be great for tummy time once we find a dog-hair-free place for her to spend time on the floor. She also met some neighbors at the block party… she takes the cake as the youngest member of the community for now, even with a new baby moving in down the street. To cap everything off, Fledra’s friend Amanda came over with her daughter Quinn (6 weeks) for some socializing, cookies, chips, and wine.

we have a belly button

Madison lost her umbilical cord the other day (6/14). I think it was slightly assisted by her arms flailing during diaper changes, but the oozy, icky, innie that’s left makes her look even more human! Now we can start to give Madison some actual baths instead of just towel baths. Don’t read too far into this, we only gave her 1 towel bath since she got home from the hospital. Here’s what the remaining umbilical cord looks like. Incredibly hard to believe that this thing nurtured and sustained her for 9 months on the inside.

those first few days

Fledra coined the title on this post very early on while recognizing that no one or book prepares you for those first few days. No where do they warn you that you won’t be able to sleep because you need to make sure someone has eyes on your precious daughter 24×7. No where do they tell you that the anxiety of driving home from hospital will be nearly debilitating. Maybe that’s because you just need to experience it yourself.

Fledra and I did in fact take turns staying up all night after being discharged from the hospital. We weren’t sure if we’d wake up to sounds of distress, or if Madison would need to eat, or was too cold, or too warm, or too… I took the first shift and spent hours holding her in the glider in the nursery (thank you Mom & Dad). Then it was Fledra’s turn and I now realize that I was either too tired to ask her what she did, or too tired to remember what she said. Ultimately, that first night was really rough.

Close on the heels of not sleeping came a few disagreements over whether it was okay to sleep, or who had more sleep, etc. Clearly, this wasn’t a sustainable way to live but I didn’t call this post ‘every day for the rest of our lives’. We did end up settling in, realizing that we would wake up, understanding that Madison would be able to let us know if she was too hot/cold/hungry/covered in poo. We still had to figure out which of those it was, but it was a starting place.