A Besetting Vice: Damian the Wonderboy

2 Months old
3/25/06

Damian turned a whopping two months old on 3/25 and celebrated by lying on his back and flailing his arms and legs. In fact, he was SO excited about this big day that the butterflies in his ever-expanding belly got the best of him and he spit up! A whole bunch of times, all throughout the day! That's my boy.

He seems to be hitting his developmental milestones pretty well as far as holding his head up and grabbing things and following us or our voices with his eyes. In fact, I even saw him roll all the way from his right side to his left side. And when propped up, he can sit up for a decent length of time - even "correcting" himself from time to time. The one thing he is quite stingy with is his smiles - this doesn't come as a surprise to either of us, seeing as though I am his father after all. The irony in that there has been nothing in my life up to this point which has made me smile as much as Damian does. The smiles will come - especially when he realizes that his parents are the two funniest people, ever.

His innards were not fully developed yet either, as his gastric reflux problem didn't seem to be improving much. There were times, usually after night feedings, when our poor child looked to be in a great deal of pain. This prompted us to bump up his two month pediatrician visit a week in an effort to get him diagnosed and hopefully cured. Hoang adjusted her diet somewhat dramatically (no more dairy products, chocolate, spicy foods, caffeine, carbonation, fried/greasy foods... Pretty much all the staples of her diet.) I pretended for a day or so that I'd join her on this visionquest, but promptly ended the charade soon after.

At his two-month check-up, Damian checked out fine again. He was still a little small, but he was also only 7 weeks old and he was still growing properly. I showed the doc some video footage of one of his worst nights and she immediately diagnosed Damian with reflux and offered up several possible solutions - including a Zantac prescription. Then it was time for his immunization shots, which the office staff had been building up as some horrific event.

The doctor administered the 3 shots (5 vaccines) in about 5 seconds as I watched my son's face turn a deep shade of purple. "Holy crap," I said, as I'd never seen a person look like that before - let alone one I loved! With mouth agape and eyes locked shut, Damian just lay there in catatonic shock, turning into a blueberry. "Breathe!" I said to him! "Breathe!"

And he did - about a second later and regained his normal color as quickly as he lost it. In fact, he only cried for about 20 seconds and that was that - thankfully. We agreed to try the drug on Damian and would continue to monitor Hoang's diet.

Instead of dragging this story out, I'll just wrap it up now; his reflux has abated quite a bit and he no longer screams out in pain. We try to keep him upright for as long as possible after feedings and are sure to burp him a bit more than average. Hoang continues to avoid certain foods and the Zantac seems to be helping. He's eating a ton and growing well so we'll just keep doing what we're doing.

On the night of 3/24, Damian stayed up late with me to watch Uconn beat Washington in overtime, thanks to the last second heroics of Rashad Anderson. I don't think the sleeping Damian (or his sleeping mother) appreciated me yelling out as the clock neared 1 AM, but someday he'll understand.

Alas, it all came crashing down two days later when "we" lost to George Mason but that's something else Damian will come to understand; since he'll be indoctrinated into Philadelphia sports fandom, he needs to learn from the start to accept crushing defeats even when your team is superior. Poor kid... Welcome to the family!

In the end, not even the unexpected and disappointing loss of Uconn upset me for more than 5 minutes. When all I had to do was look at the boy in the photos below and the world was right again.