Matching Tracksuits

As a kid of ten, summer seemed endless, as did the school year. And that’s reasonable, for one year then represented ten percent of my life.

My folks are coming for a visit today — the first visit in two weeks. And today, of course, L is six weeks old.

Two weeks since they’ve last seen her. She’s fifty percent older. She’s probably close to a pound heavier and a couple of inches longer.

“Everyday something new” we read in all the baby books. And that’s not surprising, for even now, each day is more than one percent of L’s total life.

When I arrive home from work, K and L have usually just finished the four o’clock feeding/burping cycle. Occasionally, I get home in time to do the burping.

A couple of time, I’ve managed to get back just as L’s going to sleep.

“What a convenient time to be sleepy myself,” I thought last Friday, the last time I came home to find L’s eyes droopy.

And K crept in with the camera…

L has problems with reflux (or call it colic). That is to say, heartburn. That is to say, she can’t lie down for too long.

Which means we have to keep her upright most of the time.

Which is why a baby wrap is essential for us.

Basically, it’s a sling for your kid. It goes criss-cross (applesauce) across L’s back and between her legs, giving her whole body support. And freeing up both hands.

K uses it most of the time, since she’s still at home on maternity leave and, much as she loves our daughter, doesn’t want to spend all her time hovering over a reflux-y baby who requires constant soothing. This allows K to do all the wonderful things attached to having a newborn: laundry, laundry, and, from time to time, laundry.

When going out on a cool-ish day, it has the added benefit of keeping L close to a source of warmth.

Lastly, when you’re dealing with a newborn, you don’t want to have a lot of people touching her. Keeping the infant wrapped keeps her in your own personal space, and while strangers will willingly and gleefully (and with the absolute best intentions) invade an infant’s personal space, they’re not so willing to do so if the infant is close to the parent.

For those interested/curious, the kind we got (Hug a Bub) can be on the expensive side if you’re not careful. Looking back on it, we overpaid. Still, it was worth it even at that price.

We don’t know how long it took Sisyphus to roll the stone up the hill only to have it tumble back down, but we can only hope that the gods were merciful enough to give him enough time to make it back down the hill and look for a moment upon his accomplishment.

Gods can be fickle, though, so there’s no telling.

K and I, however, know exactly how long our little Sisyphus takes to complete one cycle: three to four hours.

L eats almost in a panic at first. She doesn’t give a sign she’s hungry until she’s starving. Then it’s crying hysterics. When she gets the breast, she goes wild, as if she hadn’t eaten for days.

That starts with feeding. L is a gulper. When she’s nursing, she’s literally audible in the next room — which means she’s getting a lot of air with her milk. This requires a couple of burping sessions during the feeding session, and one long one after.

Burping L is an activity in and of itself. It can take anywhere from fifteen to ninety minutes.

What follows can be either an extended awake period (which requires constant monitoring, as L likes to have a bit of pacifier when she’s squirming about, and falls into hysterics when it falls from her mouth) or a sleep session.

Sleeping is shortly interrupted by pooping — apparently, an excruciating process for a number of infants, our pediatrician says. Much of it is just gas, which gets the girl squirming, straining, and turning red as she tries to get it out. As with burping, there’s a simple method to help get the offending gas out: pump the girl’s legs against her belly.

Once the natural gas exploration and extraction are accomplished, L may or may not go back to sleep. If she does, it’ll be for a very short spell, because it’ll soon be feeding time…

Usually, when I rush out to work at 7:33 (and a minute later, else I’ll be late), the Girl and her mother are asleep. The early morning feeding is done and they’re both still pooped (and the girl probably still pooping), so I kiss them as the sleep and head out.

Saturday mornings are different. I take L while K sleeps for a while. We walk around the apartment, chatting about current events and what we might do that day. “Chatting” is still my monologue with her bright eyes looking at me; the day’s activities are still confined to whether or not to go for a walk. But it’s the principle: Saturdays are father/daughter time.

After the stroll through the apartment, L might start indicating that she’d be keen to suck on something. About the only thing I can offer her is my nose and a pacifier. The latter is much more hygienic, not to mention convenient. So I put her down for a bit of pacifier while I take a bit of coffee — at some point in the distant, perhaps we’ll share a Saturday morning coffee when she’s home for a visit, but for now, we don’t have much in common in the way of oral gratification.

If she’s in the mood for lying down with the pacifier (which is the most convenient position for a pacifier, given her apparent interest in the sport of distance pacifier spitting — if it were an Olympic sport…), I put her in the bassinet beside me at the computer and I read the latest headlines to her while she sucks contentedly.

Last night, I was chatting with K with what Saturday morning with L might be like in a few months — perhaps early morning walks (and sooner than later, walks with L actually walking), playing together in the floor with whatever she’s interested in, reading to her. But for now, it’s good just to have a little father/daughter burping, pacifier, crying, gazing time.

Not to mention giving K a chance to rest some.

And what about Sundays? Pretty much the same..

Newborns are completely covered for most of their first weeks, an L has been no exception. First, she was swaddled with a cap. Then we began dressing her in sleepers, but the cap remained, as did the mittens slipped over her dangerously sharp fingernails.

I got used to seeing only a round bit of olive skin, eyes closed, nostrils flaring, and the occasional gummy grimace as the crying begins. L was born with a head full of hair, but it was so rarely visible during her first couple of weeks that she might as well have been bald. But then the cap came off and we all got used to her beautiful dark hair, and how much it added to her features: her dark eyes seemed darker; her olive skin seemed more Mediterranean; her faint eyebrows were more visible. She looked less like the cheese-covered bundle of pink, wrinkled skin she’d been only weeks earlier and more like a little girl. It became possible to imagine what she might look like in a year, two years, five years.

Now, the mittens have finally come off, and the effects are equally dramatic. The eyes, some say, are a window to one’s inner thoughts. The fingers, it turns out, can do the same. What’s she touching? How’s she wiggling her fingers? How much control does she have over them? Mittened hands make mysteries of such questions.

Bare hands also highlight fragility. Fingers little larger than a matchstick could probably break with just as much ease.

It’s also now easier to see what she’s wrapping K and me around…

Call me bizarre, but I like changing L’s diaper. True, the contents don’t stink yet, so there’s no gag reflex to deal with. But I’ve a feeling that even when the Poopsmith does start incorporating fragrance into her artistic endeavors, I won’t mind it. I’ve come to realize that changing L’s diaper is the most loving, intimate thing I can do for her now.

I can’t feed her — that’s all K’s responsibility at this point — but I can clean up the mess.

Changing a diaper helps a father realize, I think, how completely dependent an infant is on on him and his, even for what in later life will be one of the most private of acts. Yes, that’s obvious, but hearing it and experiencing it are not the same.

For me, as I suppose for most men with the birth of their first child, changing a diaper was an entirely new activity, something requiring a bit of instruction, some patience, some practice, and a sense of humor when things go wrong.

Patience is key, for L poops in shifts. Hence, the first time I changed her, an almost scripted adventure: I get the new diaper on her only to hear the tell tale noises that say, “Time for a change.” I get that diaper on and it happens again. Lesson learned: give the little girl time to get it all out.

Patience is not enough, though. Practice combines with patience to create that mystery known as the quick diaper change, for it’s possible — in a rush, mind you — to put the diaper on wrong side out. This is not very effective, but fortunately the mistake makes itself readily manifest when you try to close up the diaper.

The need for a sense of humor is the most obvious — fountains of pee, squirts of poop, leaking diapers, heels planted firmly in dirty diapers all have their role in a diaper change.

Yet, changing a diaper is not for everyone, especially grandparents. When I asked my mother if she wanted to change L this weekend, she simply said, “No.” The great advantage of being a grandparent, I suppose: all the joy without the mess.

Burping L — a complicated process involving gymnastics, moan interpretation, patience, a sharp ear for slight gurgling, and a love of spit-up milk.

L has problems burping, which we’ve found we can solve by putting her horizontally for a few moments until all things gastrointestinal get good and worked up and enough pressure builds. By then, it’s no longer a bit of spit-up milk — it’s a fountain. Pick her up quickly, pat that back, and feel the warm ooze of undigested milk covering anything not covered with a burping cloth. (I think the milk gains sentience in the belly and then actively seeks any portion of the body not covered with the proper burping accessory.) Thump, thump, thump on the diaper (we’re using cloth diapers — they go halfway up her back at this point!) and then hold her still for a few minutes. Once she’s calm, repeat the process.

If we just hold her vertically and pat her belly, she’ll burp a time or two, fall asleep, and then squirm madly a few minutes later as the pressure builds up. Then L wakes with a start, crying, wiggling, and obviously in pain. And sometimes, to our terror, choking. So it’s best to do what works, even if the whole feeding process takes up to an hour and a half.

Yet these are the fun things about being a parent — finding out the little quirks of your child, the little combinations of this and that in order to calm, soothe, burp, bathe, etc. effectively and quickly. Such things also speak to the coming quirks and wonders we’ll be discovering about her as she begins to smile, to speak, to walk, to run.

She also has problems sending it out other end, but perhaps another time…