6 Weeks Old

Generally speaking, children get easier to care for the older they get. However, newborns are the exception - they eat and sleep for a couple weeks while you are recovering from the birth and trying to figure it all out. Then they get to be a little more work.

At Wednesday's appointment with our midwife, Andrew weighed in at a good sized 12 lbs. 1 oz. The even bigger news is that mommy weighed in at 125 lbs. - 20 pounds less than my maximum pregnancy weight. Yeah haw! Only challenge now is to keep it off, a feat I have not been able to accomplish in the past. Now, I am far from svelte - my hips are huge and I still look several months pregnant. But there is hope for my wardrobe. Enough about me, back to the baby.

Details... Andrew's acne is clearing up, but he's sprouted a bit of cradle cap. My husband bought Size 2 diapers tonight, though he is at the bottom of the weight range. He is smiling, not a whole lot but occasionally when you smile or make a funny face at him. He smiled at his big brother Christopher yesterday, which just about made C's day.

While he does fuss occasionally, we haven't had more than one or two instances of really colicky behavior. He falls asleep about the same time every night and wakes up about the same time every morning, though his daytime nap schedule is amazingly inconsistent. We suspect he is having a growth spurt, too.

The block nursing technique seems to have helped a lot with my forceful let-down problem. One piece of advice to anyone trying this: ease into it slowly so as to avoid engorgement and the perils that sometimes follow (plugged ducts, mastitis, etc.). From your breast's perspective, it is like suddenly skipping every other feeding. Not good.

Last weekend's night out went fine. He took a couple ounces from the bottle without much problem. I showed my mom our "secret" for getting him calmed down and asleep: turn on the kitchen exhaust fan and hold him, bouncing up and down a little bit. Before we left the house to go to the event, my mom was cooking dinner, I had just painted my nails, and Andrew was fussing in his basinette, so I asked my step-dad to pick him up. He turns out to be a super baby calmer; when we returned home Paw Paw was sitting on the couch holding a sleeping baby.