newborn | Beyond The Fever

Things I never expected:

August 26, 2009 at 3:01 pm (post-production)
Tags: baby, infant, lila, newborn

That I could find crying cute.
The sheer magnitude of toe jam an infant can produce.
That puke running down my cleavage wouldn’t gross me out.
That babies can apparently pee 37 different times in one hour.
That I’d be lucky (and happy) to sleep for four hours at a time.
That I’d be lucky (and happy) to eat one real meal per day.
That that meal might not occur until 10 at night, and I’d be okay with that.
That doing laundry at 3 am would become a normal occurrence.
That I could learn to feed a baby, check my email and eat all at the same time.

(Lila is 6 weeks old!)

Three Whole Weeks?!

August 5, 2009 at 3:25 pm (post-production)
Tags: baby pics, infant, lila, newborn

How did that even happen? Never in my life has the strange dichotomy of time been more pronounced. I simultaneously feel like can’t have possibly been three weeks already and that it’s been so, so much longer than that. Such a strange phenomenon.

Nothing much to report, since we mostly spend our days just hanging out around the house sleeping, eating and pooping. (Well, urinating mostly. I swear this kid must be hitting the bottle on the sly because the amount of pee is unfathomable. She’s like a hose.) We have made quite a few trips out of the house – to Target, Babies R Us, my parent’s house and our bar (which is under severe construction at the moment). And we’ve had many visitors, which I truly appreciate as it does break up the monotony of a day spent waiting for more sleeping, eating and pooping.

We did take the little one to her very first dinner party, however. In honor of Lila’s arrival, my brother being in town and to celebrate dear friends and family, my parents hosted a Tuscan style dinner garden party on August 1st, with several of their closest friends in attendance. Lila was quite the hit, of course. Even though she slept through the entire event.

07.31.09

07.31.09

08.01.09 - with her Weird Uncle

08.01.09

08.04.09 - Lila's first "real" bath

08.04.09

(Lila is 3 weeks old)

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Lila’s First Week

July 27, 2009 at 9:11 am (post-production)
Tags: first week, lila, newborn, white noise machine

It’s official. We’ve won the baby lottery. Our little Lila is such a good baby. She eats like a champ, sleeps in her bassinet for 2 or 3 hour stretches at a time (a feat for newborns, as I understand it) and only cries if she actually means it – like, I’m hungry or I’m cold or hey, dipshits, change my sopping wet diaper.

Our first night home from the hospital was a little rough because we couldn’t get the little miss to sleep without one of us holding her. So we took shifts all night long. Fortunately, after a bleary-eyed viewing of Happiest Baby on the Block the next evening, we figured some things out. Change her, swaddle her tight, feed her and put her down (already asleep… for now) next to a white noise machine, and she’ll sleep happily for a couple hours. Not too shabby. Of course, this unseasonably hot Seattle summer is making the swaddling thing a little harder, but we’re making do. Fortunately it seems as though she doesn’t even really need to be swaddled to sleep for a while. But the white noise machine… well… that thing is magic.

Thus far we’ve found that there are a few things we can’t live without. In case anyone out there is wondering what go-to items they should really invest in, let me (clearly the seasoned pro after a week) divulge:

Boppy pillow for breastfeeding
Big exercise ball to sit on and bounce with baby. She LOVES it. The bouncing shuts her right up. 🙂
White noise machine. You could plug in and turn on any number of appliances – hair dryer, vacuum, etc – but who wants to leave those things running all night long?
Hospital baby blankets. They’re perfect for swaddling because not only are they big enough, but they’re rectangular, so that last bit that you need to wrap around and tuck in is actually long enough.

We still have quite a lot to learn, but the three of us are really starting to get into a rhythm.