Emerson is now nearly two weeks old. And, life has been running very smoothly in Fatherland.
At the heart of it all, E is simply a great baby!
She eats well. After much research and discussion with our (awesome, I might add) pediatrician, Dr. Lipschutz, and experienced moms, we’re opted to bottle feed – without hesitation, guilt, or apology. She on Enfamil’s Lipil Premium (according to Dr. L — ‘premium’ is very important)… and has taken to it like a duck to water.
She sleeps well. Basically, she’s been sleeping for 5-6 hours at night since birth (usually from 10/11ish-3/4ish – when I get up to change her diaper, give her a bottle, and put her back down for another 3-4 hours). Otherwise, she has normal periods of sleep and wakefulness during the day.
She’s not fussy and doesn’t cry excessively. Indeed, she basically just cries when she wants/needs something. Once her need is addressed, she settles down immediately. I think I read that a ‘typical’ two week old infant cries on average 2 hours per day. I doubt if E cries more than 20 minutes.
She seems to be in good health and developmentally advanced. For example, she’s had excellent head control since birth. When I have ‘tummy time’ with her every night, she spends a fair amount of time lifting her head up off of my chest and turning it from side to side.
The only downside to her motor skills is that she’s also been able to rollover onto her side since the first week, if she’s just in footed pajamas or swaddled with a blanket. This made L and me a bit crazy due to the “back is best” thing. For this reason, we make sure that she’s tightly wrapped in a 2-in-1 Swaddle Sleep Sack at night. Of course, this makes her look a bit like she’s a member of the Heaven’s Gate Cult awaiting the Hale-Bopp Comet. But, at least she’s safe.
Update on Libby, too…
L’s bounced back from her Cesarian section really well. She’s now at a point where she’s able to comfortably care for E during the day while I’m “at work” in my office upstairs. Overall, she had minimal pain and discomfort in the post-operative period.
She’s also managed to avoid the “baby blues” or anything more serious. Doubtless, this has to do with the aforementioned “easy baby” observations, the fact that’s she’s well rested (since I take the night shift, she sleeps soundly from 10pm to 7am most nights), and because she had plenty of help early on as she got her “new mommy” sea legs under her.
The only glitch was earlier this week when she suffered from severe headaches for nearly 36-48 hours. Since L was feeling so good, she quite her pain medication cold turkey. Fine… still no pain from the surgery. Unfortunately, her body didn’t like the sudden cutoff from the analgesics and gave her what we’ve learned are called “rebound” headaches. I suppose this should have been anticipated, but neither of us have a lot of experience with pain meds (indeed, even when a broke my leg last winter, I took all of single Percocet and then a few Tylenol).
In the end, this resulted in L taking different pain medication directed at the headaches. But, within 48 hours all of this had passed and life became good again. She’s now happy, totally free from both pain and medication.
Tags: Infant