Two Weeks!

We have survived two weeks as parents and Cora has survived two weeks in our care. We are all learning quickly. Geoff now knows that the tabs always go in the front of the diaper (and if you discover halfway though diapering that you have it backwards, go ahead and turn it around):

The first week was the hardest. I discovered that even if you've spent time around babies before, until you're a parent you probably haven't spent much time around a baby less than a week old, and they are strange and alien creatures.

For the first few days she kept spitting up this thick mucous (mixed with colostrum). At first she was terrible at clearing it and would just have this frightened look on her innocent little face while she made alarming gurgling noises and threatened to aspirate it. Someone would have to quickly turn her on her side to dump it out and then suction her mouth with the squeezy rubber suction bulb (note its appearance in the corner of many of her early pictures). When you did get it out of her and onto the burp cloth, it would stand in a quivering little yellow pile.

I was afraid to close my eyes around her, lest she choke to death. Being afraid to sleep is not good for your mental health. I fretted about it to anyone who would listen, and was assured repeatedly that it was normal newborn behavior--they swallow a bunch of amniotic junk on their way out, and it takes a few days for them to puke it all out of their system. They should put that in bold print at the front of the baby book: "Acting like they're about to choke to death is normal newborn behavior." By the time we got her home she was already learning to clear it herself--she would turn her head to the side and deposit it neatly and fearlessly on the bedding beside her head, no big deal.

The other first-week challenge we had with her was that she lost more than 10% of her body weight before we even left the hospital. That's a red flag, and for a little while I wondered if they weren't going to let us go home on time.

They talked about having us supplement her with formula (which would be fine with me) but after a call to the pediatrician they sent us home with instructions to just feed her every two hours until our first pediatrician appointment two days later. That's a pretty rough schedule, since she would take an hour to eat--basically one hour feeding, one hour "off" for forty-eight hours. She was very uninterested in eating, and would have to be fully undressed and tickled each time to wake her up enough to do her part. She seemed content, but she was underweight and also not making enough wet diapers, so I was a bit stressed out. I thought that caring for a newborn was all about responding to their constant needs, but really it was kind of the opposite of that--it was all about harassing her into having needs.

I was not able to feed her every two hours exactly (sometimes she would just refuse) but she still managed to gain an ounce a day in the first two days, and a little over an ounce a day in the next seven days after that, so she's pretty much back on track. Somewhere around day five of life she just started acting hungry and feeding when it was offered. Plus my milk came in. At that point it all started making sense--the baby acts hungry, I feed her, she makes a ton of wet diapers, everybody's happy. This was less alien and more like I thought babies acted.

When you look at just the challenges like that it probably makes the first week seem less fun than it was--in between the fretting we were still just enchanted with her. She's fun to hold and oh-so-adorable and we just want to do everything we can for her. I'm thrilled that we never have to hand her back to her mom and dad--we are the mom and dad. Part of what makes it stressful is that she's so sweet you can just see that she deserves top-notch parenting, and we really want to deliver!

Week two has been a lot better and offered a lot of opportunity for us all to gain confidence. I feel that we've turned the corner on breastfeeding--new problems may arise, but I feel we're beyond the starting gate and on our way. We're learning how to handle her at home, and also how to get out with her. So far she's been to the grocery store, the pediatrician twice, out to dinner for my brother's birthday (where she slept quietly in her car seat for three hours, there at the far end of the table), and to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving dinner.
The hard part about week two is that as she's become more alert she started not sleeping so well, and all that loss of sleep takes a cumulative toll on Geoff and I. But I think someone must've had a talk with her at Thanksgiving yesterday or something, because last night she slept like a champ--regular three-hour stints punctuated by voracious and efficient feeding sessions. Or maybe all that being passed around and getting good snuggles wore her out. Either way, it's amazing what a little sleep will do for you. (I can think in sentences longer than one word, for instance.)

For the rest of the holiday weekend we're going to relax, take naps, and continue snuggling the baby.