Jul
2nd
Nursing a grudge
Yesterday morning the lactation consultant came by our house to check on Harve's progress. This particular nursing consultant also attended our birth in the capacity of midwife #2, and I was excited to see her again and show her how far we've come since the first time Saturday evening when she laid Harvey against my chest and I said, "I don't know how to do it. Am I allowed to pet him?"
The good news is that Harvey has been nursing very well, amazingly well even, a champion eater. I had been concerned about his short nursing sessions, but the consultation revealed that he's just eating really fast, and his 7-day average of 12 diapers a day shows that he's getting plenty of food. And since his parents have the unique ability of polishing off a dinner date at a restaurant in 20 minutes (the bottle-neck is ordering and paying) I'm not surprised by Harvey's above-average rate of consumption.
During the consultation Harvey ate for 45 minutes straight, a new record for him. He must have been spurred on by the captive audience... either that or by the fact that he had slept the majority of Tuesday in preparation for a major milk binge. Either way, the morning's professional nursing session jump-started something, because for the rest of the day he took to nursing like a professional, sucking to beat world records and howling every moment he was removed from the breast. By the time our friends came over in the evening for dinner and bible study, I was nursing the baby non-stop, going from the right side to the left side and back again without any pause. I was white as a ghost, my eyes looked sunken halfway into my brain, and I presented Harvey to our visitors at arms length, as if to say YOU hold this demon vacuum pump. There go our plans for trying to convince the rest of our friends to have babies. We may need to find some new, less rational friends.
To put the day's events in statistical perspective, the average daily nursing time for newborns is 140 minutes per day. Since my milk came in, Harvey has been averaging just under this, at around 130. Yesterday he nursed for 304 minutes. 304 minutes! This is 2.3 times the average, or over a third of our waking hours... OUR waking hours, not HIS waking hours... when our waking hours go to 11pm.
After a difficult evening, Harvey is now sleeping comfortably. I took a turn with the little night-terror last night, and I'm now convinced that the movie Gremlins was 100% based on the experiences of new parenthood. (They're cute, but DON'T FEED THEM AT NIGHT! DON'T LET THEM GO IN THE WATER!)
Jun
30th
Fuss AND Muss
Like many babies, Harvey has decided that the dinnertime hour is daily fussy time. And since he's looking ahead to a future of international travel, his dinnertime hour stretches roughly from 5:30pm to well after 10pm. Hey, you want to make sure all your bases are covered when it comes to unabated boredom crying.
It's been a learning curve dealing with the fussing. The first night I had an emotional break-down from not being able to comfort my baby. Then we learned that some daily crying is normal, and I got over being sad and went straight to irritated. Yes, crying to communicate is perfectly normal, but that doesn't mask the fact that the sound of a baby crying is WICKED ANNOYING.
Dan is doing much better with the fussing than I am. He gets annoyed much less readily than I do, so you won't find HIM holding a pillow over her head to stifle the sound. Yesterday evening during a crying spell Dan took Harvey out to the hammock where he rocked him, sang to him, and read to him from The Economist. When they came back inside the baby had calmed a bit and was wimpering more quietly. I asked Dan how it went and he said, "I think Harvey is very confused about the situation in Iraq."
Compounding the good Daddy points, Dan also took the baby at bedtime so I that could get some sleep. This was after an hour of both of us singing to him, to no sleep-inducing avail. Whenever Dan offers to do take the baby away and let me sleep, I feel like I won some sort of husband jackpot. I try to make it up to him by watching the baby most of the day, implying an exchange rate of about 8-to-1 for fussy-to-cuteness parenting time.
I had more to say about this issue, but the baby's waking up now and I've got to feed him before he wakes the rest of the house.
Jun
29th
My body, my temple
Last night we went out on our first dinner date with baby, and it's a symbol of how far we've fallen on our hippy parenting ideals that we took him to Friendly's. (It wasn't my first choice for food, but we didn't want to drive farther than 5 minutes, and we didn't want to go somewhere where they'd mind if he cried.)
Anyway, the waitress comes up to ask if we want anything to drink, and all of a sudden my eyes light up and I'm like, "Can I have a DIET COKE???????!!!"
Okay, so it may be just the novelty factor of not being pregnant, but I ate a tuna-fish sandwich the other day and it was like the best orgasm of food that I had ever tasted. Other things that I am finding awesome about the sanctity of my own blood supply: Lying on my back... Lying on my STOMACH!!!!!.... having normal human reactions to food smells... regaining visual contact with my nether regions.
And in the next few days when I'm able to stand and walk again, I'm looking forward to experiencing more exciting beacons from the land of the living... oh to be able to run again! To get on a spin bike! To lift weights over my head and hold my breath!
Jun
28th
welcome to the neighborhood, kid!
The coolest thing we got for a babywarming present was this awesome card from the neighbor kids. (And even better for coming with a pie. That's berry pie juice I got on the card, not arterial blood.)
Jun
28th
Harvey's first church service!
We took little Harvey Douglas to Church of Our Redeemer this morning for his big debut! As his proud mother, I was electric with anticipation all day saturday. I took out a brand new skirt for myself and I ironed my whole outfit as well as Harvey's onesie and hat. I woke up at 6am to make sure I had enough time to shower, put on makeup, bath the baby, and pack the diaper bag. I had everything: Diapers, wipes, blankets, change of clothes for him, hand sanitizer, camera... I left the house feeling like a type-A mom!
Everybody ooohed and aahed when we brought in the little guy, peacefully asleep in his car-seat. Harvey slept through the first half of the service, but come sermon time he was starting to look restless, so I took him into the church library to do a feeding and changing. When nursing was accomplished, I took out all the changing things from my bag: changing pad, wet bag, diapers, wipes. I put the changing pad on the couch and laid him on top of it.
What a wonderful marvel of organization, that we can change the baby's diaper anywhere given a carefully packed messenger bag! I pulled up his onesie, pulled off his poopy diaper and put it into the wet bag, pulled out a wipe, Wham! Projectile pooping! Wet orange poop shot straight out of his butt, straignt past the changing pad, onto the couch, and all over my skirt! I had brought a change of clothes for Harvey, but I didn't think of bringing one for me! Frantic, I started going mad with the wipes, trying to mop poop off my skirt and the couch and Harvey's legs which were completely covered. At this point Dan walked in to see how we were doing.
"My goodness Harvey!" he exclaimed, "Is this what you think of church?"
In all fairness, since the spraying shit incident happened during the sermon time, you could at least say that Harvey picked the appropriate part.
We got as cleaned up as we could manage and headed back into the sanctuary, where the priest called us up to the front of the church for a blessing. So there was my parenthood lesson of the day: if spend 20 minutes ironing your skirt, and if it's a day you're going to stand in front of the whole church, your kid will likely poop on you. Welcome to parenthood!
But more importantly, the blessing was very nice, and it included some nice thoughts that we could really use this week: May God really grant us wisdom and devotion in the ordering of our common life, so that we can be for each other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy.
And the baby said, "Amen."