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OMG the three-week growth spurt. It's killing me.
It's not just that he wants to nurse every waking moment. It's that the waking moments have also gotten a lot closer together, because he isn't able to sleep for very long before he wakes up hungry. I did absolutely nothing today except feed him, change diapers, and try to steal a few minutes of sleep.
On the plus side: he is noticeably fat, so much so that even I have stopped being neurotic over whether he's getting enough milk. He used to - used to! he's only three weeks old - have these frail twiglike fingers that I worried would snap when I tried to guide them through a sleeve cuff. His hands were so skinny that the skin was wrinkly. Now he has plump juicy sausagelike fingers, and his cheeks look like he's storing up nuts for the winter, and his clothes look less like he borrowed them from a second grader and more like they are his actual size.
He has started to make a slightly greater variety of sounds, which is fun. And he's started really looking around and focusing on things in his environment. Mostly, as far as I can tell, straight lines and areas of high contrast. Michael's birthmother sent a quilt made of big bold black-and-white patterns when Alex was a baby, and Colin really seems to enjoy it. He is surprisingly willing to have floor time and even tummy time on that quilt, when he isn't, you know, trying to nurse the chrome off a trailer hitch.
Six more days until the earliest experts say it's okay to introduce a pacifier. (Don't worry - or lecture - we intend to use it sparingly.)
It's not just that he wants to nurse every waking moment. It's that the waking moments have also gotten a lot closer together, because he isn't able to sleep for very long before he wakes up hungry. I did absolutely nothing today except feed him, change diapers, and try to steal a few minutes of sleep.
On the plus side: he is noticeably fat, so much so that even I have stopped being neurotic over whether he's getting enough milk. He used to - used to! he's only three weeks old - have these frail twiglike fingers that I worried would snap when I tried to guide them through a sleeve cuff. His hands were so skinny that the skin was wrinkly. Now he has plump juicy sausagelike fingers, and his cheeks look like he's storing up nuts for the winter, and his clothes look less like he borrowed them from a second grader and more like they are his actual size.
He has started to make a slightly greater variety of sounds, which is fun. And he's started really looking around and focusing on things in his environment. Mostly, as far as I can tell, straight lines and areas of high contrast. Michael's birthmother sent a quilt made of big bold black-and-white patterns when Alex was a baby, and Colin really seems to enjoy it. He is surprisingly willing to have floor time and even tummy time on that quilt, when he isn't, you know, trying to nurse the chrome off a trailer hitch.
Six more days until the earliest experts say it's okay to introduce a pacifier. (Don't worry - or lecture - we intend to use it sparingly.)
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(And, gosh, no-one told us we weren't supposed to introduce a pacifier before four weeks. Though it may have been close to that long before we found one she liked. Until then she just sucked really hard on Chad's little finger, as in, he was getting a callus.)
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Although I can see where if we were using a paci there would be a strong temptation, right now, to say "he can't possibly really be that hungry, he just wants to suck." Except that he really does seem to be that hungry.
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Oh, and totally understood on the extra extra careful. Glad things are going so well now.
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[spurtgiggle!] BWAHahahahahah!!
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[falls out of her chair in hysterical giggles and can barely breathe. tries desperately to crawl away before she gets hit by the IdiotBat]
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trying not to lecture
(Anonymous) 2009-03-06 03:54 am (UTC)(link)So glad he's feeding well and putting on weight. Breastfeeding can be so much fun when the relationship works, and I'm happy you are getting to experience it this time.
Emma
Re: trying not to lecture
So I know that Colin may wind up using the paci more than we initially intend. My comment was more in defensive reaction to my nursing advice book, which explains that parents who use a pacifier stop trying to figure out what their kid really needs, instead just shutting them up with a plastic plug. (Why am I using a judgmental nursing advice book? Because there doesn't seem to be any other kind.)
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It's so cute when they change from newborns to babies, and so heartbreaking. Every change, every single change, from here on out (that's from birth until death, roughly) creates another opportunity to rejoice in the new child and mourn the loss of that previous child, even while noticing that, yes, yes, they are the same person, the very same person they've been since that moment they were born.
My oldest granddaughter turns 17 tomorrow. I can't wait. I can't believe it. She was tiny, and now she's much taller than me.
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We intended to use the dummy (English for pacifier) sparingly with our Alex but he actively asks for it, and it was pretty much the first thing he learned to grasp. If he loses it, he'll look for it and try to get it back in - and now succeeds most of the time.
The advice here is that if we do use one for going to sleep, then to reduce the risk of cot death we need to consistently use one for every sleep. (Okay, misleadingly people interpret that as dummies are good against cot death, whereas I seem to remember the research I read actually said that /for dummy users/ the rates are lower where the dummy was /offered/ for the previous sleep than if not. But I haven't read the research recently. FSID page with references on. (http://www.fsid.org.uk/dummies-q&a.html))
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Every Baby Is Different. Who'd have guessed?
(Deos Colin had widdle scwoo-on handies? ie folds of fat at the wrist like threads on a screw?)
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If Colin is nursing well, I wouldn't worry. Honestly, I suspect that the biggest pulse of need for a pacifier has passed after the first four weeks.
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