A Little Foppish Idiot?

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I love how everyone wants to see baby pictures. It's all a bit silly given that all newborn babies look pretty much exactly the same, especially as they are often wrapped up head to toe in a blanket.

In six months when the kid is far more interesting, nobody will be interested in his photos at all.

 

Well, we've had him for a week now, and we are getting close to redefining what "normal" is in our life. I got a workout in last night - the first since Jack was born. The visitors have slowed to a trickle at this point, although there will be an occassional aunt or uncle popping in for the remainder of the week, and the grandparents are visiting on the weekend.

Mini-Fop is doing just fine. His weight at his first doctor's appointment was 5 pounds, 12 ounces, meaning the little guy lost nearly a half a pound since birth. They say that is normal - that all babies lose weight after birth, and that it usually takes about two weeks to recover the weight. Mrs. Idiot has resorted to pumping milk so that I can give him a bottle from time to time. So he usually gets the boob, but sometimes gets the bottle. I know that they say that it's not good to introduce the bottle while you're training the kid to breast feed, but I can't expect my wife to be awake every two hours to feed the kid either.

Mini-Fop has also increased how much he eats by about a factor of four. He went from only being able to consume about half an ounce of milk up to two ounces of milk. The Mrs. can produce about 4 ounces of milk in a 15 minute pumping session so that's good for two feedings, which allows her to sleep for a while.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm a bit more comfortable using the bottle, as I know how much milk Mini-Fop is getting, and it is impossible to tell how much milk he gets while breast feeding. We know he isn't latching on very well during breast feeding, and I think it is because he is so tiny. He opens up as much as he can, but he just can't open wide enough to get much more than the nipple in his mouth, which isn't a problem with the bottle, as he only needs to get the nipple in his mouth.

We introduced the bottle on Sunday, and he appears much calmer now. I think the little guy wasn't getting full with the boob, but is getting his fill with the bottle. So while I would like him to breast feed as much as possible, breast feeding is the secondary goal to making sure he's getting enough to eat.

 

A belated mazel tov, AFI!

 

I can never understand how any babies ever managed to survive centuries ago before there were things like bottles and breast pumps and formula. So many babies seem to have trouble with breastfeeding. Surely nature would have made this the easiest process in the world?

 

Congrats Aldeth! This reminds me my first days as a daddy
Be prepared for many sleepless nights and lot's stress

 

Whee! Congrats Aldeth! (although I'm late, as usual...) News like these make me all giddy!

 

Congrats, Aldeth!

 

You would think so. In fact, moms who didn't produce enough milk wouldn't have had their children survive, thus eliminating insufficient milk producers from the gene pool. Further, babies that didn't learn to nurse would also be eliminated from the gene pool.

I think the problem is that it's now on the job training. With the taboo on a woman with bare breasts (especially in the US) the typical woman never learns how to breast feed. I think in the past, and even in the present in some countries, breast feeding is so commonplace that you actually could get a pretty good idea how to do it before you have your own children. Even if you didn't know ahead of time, since so many people breast fed, there would also be no shortage of teachers. And I definitely think it's a learned action. While you can go it alone, I can't help but think that it would be a heck of a lot easier to learn from someone experienced than trying to teach yourself as you go along.

But ah, the joys of parenthood. Jack was so nice on Sunday night - he went to bed at 11:00, and only woke up once all night. Then last night, just to make sure we weren't getting used to it, he woke up at 2 in the morning. And 3. And 4. And 5.

While you probably can't appreciate this unless you are a parent yourself, there aren't too many more depressing feelings than when you finish giving your baby a bottle at 3 AM, and instead of going back to sleep, he looks up at you with eyes wide-open and an expectant "What do you want to do now?" look on his face ... and it is then you realize that you won't be getting to sleep any time soon.

 

And you're loving it all the time, arent' you?

 

Congratulations, Aldeth! I wish you and Mrs. Fop all the best with Baby Fop, Mini-Fop and Fop Jr, in chronological order, and possibly other Fops and Foppettes as you decide (or as it just happens). I hope your little bundle of joy, worry, and frustration grows to be a fine man to do his parents proud. Good luck and, if possible, have fun

Speaking of fun, I've wondered... as you're probably not getting a lot of sleep anyway, do you use Civ IV to pass (some of) the time between one awakening and the next? Or are you and Mrs. Fop doing shifts?

[ August 29, 2007, 11:24: Message edited by: The Shaman ]

 

While I certainly still play Civ IV (the expansion now) all of my gaming occurs during normal waking hours. Late at night, the only goal to accomplish when being woke up is to get the baby fed and back to sleep in the shortest amount of time possible. (Of course, the shortest amount of time possible could be anywhere between 10 minutes and nearly an hour - so it's a very flexible term.)

As for how we do it, Mrs. Fop breastfeeds, but also pumps milk so that I can give Jack a bottle from time to time. Our schedule is much different at night depending on whether the following day is a weekday or weekend. On weekdays, I go to work early in the morning, and so Mrs. Fop does most of the night time duties, as I have to be functional at work. She, of course, has to be functional as well, but at least she can grab a nap during the day whenever the baby takes a nap. On the weekends, provided there is enough pumped milk, I do most of the night time duties.

We haven't really done shifts since the first few days we brought him home, when I took the entire week off from work. Those were the nights where I just let the little guy fall asleep on my chest. Doing shifts isn't overly practical most days though. I get up at 6 in the morning for work, and the wife and baby are almost always still sleeping then, so it's only fair that the person who gets to sleep later does most of the work at night.

 

Yup, that's it exactly. I'm not a parent myself, but the women in my family who had the easiest time breastfeeding had mothers, friends, cousins, etc. who had already breast fed their babies and had observed breast feeding. Most hospitals now have a "lactation nurse" who can help, but it's sure easier if you've become accustomed to seeing other women doing this very natural thing.

As for the up and down hours, I am assured by those who have children that every lost minute of sleep is worth it, in the joy of having a child. Blessings on all three of you!

 

Spend some time away and look what happens...

Congrats Aldeth!

 

Has anybody noticed Aldeth has not posted recently.

I wonder what happened?

Aldeth, I hope you're enjoying your time with mini-fop!

 

Congrats Aldeth!

There should soon enough be plenty time for you to be here (or otherwhere)

 

I, Mrs. Fop, and Mini-Fop are all doing fine. I haven't posted in this particular thread - or really any thread much in the past few days because I've been busy both at work and at home. I check in on SP daily, but unless I see something that I really want to respond to, I usually just read through and log off.

 

Mini-Fop is doing fine - up to 9 pounds now, and will be seven weeks old as of tomorrow evening. I really, really, really want a sleep schedule. This past weekend the grandparents visited, got him all riled up, and then left. The result was that Mini-Fop didn't take a nap yesterday. He was up from 8:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night. There are not many things in the world that are more unpleasant than a 1.5 month old baby not sleeping for 13 straight hours. By the time he hit the 6 or 7 hour mark, he was already into "there's nothing you can do to make me happy at this point" mode. He finally fell asleep, and was still sleeping when I left for work in the morning (although he did wake up twice at night for food - at least he went right back to sleep when he was done).

 

I HIGHLY recommend this book as guidance towards establishing Mini-Fop on a sleep schedule. It's worked like a charm for both of my boys, and for all the folks we've recommended it to over the years.

 

I believe the magic moment is 12 pounds. T3 started sleeping through the night when he hit 12 pounds -- just like all the books and web sites said he would.

...but until then it was painful.

 

Hmmm... If it's 12 pounds we probably have about another month to go. But that's OK - I'm certainly in no hurry to see him get bigger! They only stay so small for such a short period of time, that I don't want to rush through any of it. And he's already a lot bigger than he was when we first brought him home.

Mini-Fop was only 6 pounds at birth. At one month he was 7.5 pounds. We have a doctor's appointment on Friday for his two month checkup and his first round of immunizations. I didn't want to wait for the doctor visit to see how much he weighed, so the Mrs. and I did a quick test on our home scale. I stood on the scale, checked the weight, and then she handed Mini-Fop to me, and the scale went up 10 pounds. So while that's not a precise measurement, he's around 10 pounds, +/- about 0.5 pounds. So we're probably looking sometime around Thanksgiving for the 12 pound target weight.