Disconnected thoughts.

[rivka]

I've got to say: it's been ten days, and there's still a pervasive sense of unreality about this whole "we've got two kids now" thing. I keep looking at Colin and thinking, Really? We're really going to have this baby from now on? ...But no one else has come looking for him, so clearly he must be ours.

It's way too early for a social smile, of course, but Colin has these milk smiles that can't be beat. They come just as he's falling asleep. The eyes roll back in the head, eyelids flutter down... up... down... and then he gets a big, goofy, crooked milk smile. It is awesome.

I don't know how generations of people apparently got conned into thinking those early smiles are "gas." Babies with gas look uncomfortable, not happy. It's clear that it's not a social response, yeah, but it's also so transparently clear that he's feeling contentment, not abdominal pain.

Colin is still not very fussy. He's started to have a few more calm-alert periods where he is awake but not nursing, but we haven't hit any real awake-and-unhappy periods. Sure, if he had the motor coordination he'd be speed-dialing Child Protective Services every time we change his diaper or clothes, but when we're not messing with his clothing he is a pretty content little boy. i think 3-6 weeks is supposed to be the peak of the purposeless fussiness, though, and we're only at a week and a half.

Also: there is no reason on earth why a newborn baby should smell this good, and quite a few reasons why he shouldn't. But wow do I love that new-baby smell.

Comments

[ailbhe]

Smiling, not gas: My mother and I have decided it was a Ploy to drive a wedge between mothers and their babies, so that you could hand them over to a nanny. Or possibly because infant mortality was so high, de-personing the baby was important. But yeah, babies smile because they are happy. (And one of the things that makes them happy is passing wind, I suppose, but not harbouring it).

And nothing but nothing smells as nice as a new baby.