fun in threes, sometimes fours
the girl
A newborn holding up her head -- one of those milestones we all know about. When L was first born, her head bobbled back and forth, giving cause for alarm a couple of times: when you have an energetic baby who still doesn't have control over many of her body's muscles, you get some literally breathtakingly jerky motions.
L has been holding her head up for a moment here, a moment there, for a couple of weeks. The other night I got a couple of good shots when she was in a good belly mood.
K and I bundled L up Sunday afternoon and took her on her first outing: a walk through a local university's botanical gardens.
We made a couple of loops around the trail that runs literally over the river and through the woods. Toward the back, there is a historic log cabin.
L, though, was unimpressed: she slept through most all of it.
Being house-bound is perhaps the most annoying difficulty of having a six-week-old infant. To date, it is certainly more difficult on K, who has been home with L since her birth and can go an entire day without leaving the apartment. That explains why she's so eager sometimes to run to the store to pick up that forgotten ingredient for dinner -- to go anywhere is a treat.
It's something we're both anticipating with smiles.
K and I look at L and try to imagine what she'll look as a toddler. As a young child. A pre-teen. And so on. I can't get much beyond the young child.
There are, however, a few things K and I are sure of.
She'll have an inordinate number of bad hair days, thanks to that swirling cowlick just beside her right temple and another more toward the center of her forehead. In adolescence, they will likely drive her to angry tears at least once.
"That's all assuming she's the type to be terribly worried about her physical appearance," one might suggest.
No, they'll upset her no matter what -- they're that bad.
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...
When L was first born, she didn't open her eyes in the light for many days. When it was dark, slits would appear in her never-used eyes sometimes, and occasionally, she would open her eyes almost fully. (You can see a little of this in "Pink Thing.")
When she finally did open her eyes in lighted spaces, it was only for very short periods of time. And since the muscles in her eyes had not developed at all, she didn't really look at much of anything. Nor would she have really seen much then except blurs.
Now she opens her eyes and looks at things. When K or I is burping her, she often is looking here and there, fascinated by who knows what. Probably everything, since it's all literally new to her.
K or I can get down and put our face about six inches from hers, and when she's not already captivated by something in her field of vision, she'll look directly at us as we talk to her. We move my head a few inches to the left -- her eyes follow. We smile -- she does nothing. Yet.
Step by step. Stimulus by stimulus.
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..