Scheduled feeding…

Putting e on a schedule seemed to help. Yesterday she slept most of the day, but we woke her up every 2.5 to 3 hours and did the EASY routine. She fussed after the 1:30am feeding, and took awhile to settle down. The Baby Whisperer book had a section on how to interpret what your baby is trying to tell you. I’m paraphrasing a lot, but some parents automatically interpret their baby’s cry to be hunger, but the book talks about stepping back to look at the situation, and look for specific clues as to what the baby is trying to tell you. They use the SLOW acronym- Stop, Listen, Observe, What’s up.

There’s a table that describes what the problem may be depending on the type of cry and body language. It’s kinda funny to look at the list of problems- hungry, gas, cold/hot, overstimulated, tired, poopy diaper, or need cuddle. I find it funny to compare it to how different the list would be for an Adult- taxes, long commute, crappy job, broken computer, loud neighbors, etc.

So we determined that e’s problem was overtired based on her cry and when she last fed. So as the book recommended, we put her in the bassinet and closed the door. This was about 1:50am. We thought: “we’re just going to sit her and let her cry it out. We checked everything else and she’s just tired. We’ll give her 10 min.” 20 min later, she’s still crying. I’m also surprised to be the first one upstairs to see what’s happening. As soon as I picked her up, she stopped crying- we felt like bad parents.

Actually, we think that the crying tired her out, and cuddling settled her down. One more quick feed, and she was out like a light by 3:30am… and stayed that way until 8:30am! 5 hours of sleep. I think E woke me up at 5:30am to ask if we should wake the baby for a feeding. :-

So we’ll see if the schedule holds for today as well. We’re just starting it a bit earlier so that we’re getting to bed earlier.

Seeing the doctor…

e had her first visit to the doctor today. We bundled her up and strapped her into the carseat. I’ve been driving for 20 years (shudder), but I found myself on the road driving like I’m doing my road test. Drive close to the limit, extra mirror checks, extra shoulder checks, drive slowly over speedbumps. It’s a good thing I suppose, but I gotta give my head a shake.

So the jaundice is not serious, and she hasn’t lost weight feeding only Colostrum. Doc Barton recommended that we supplement with formula. We got home and spent way too much time discussing how to and sterilizing baby bottles and making formula. We had myself, Mom and Dad working on the project… way too many cooks in the kitchen!

After her regular 7pm feeding, e had a visit from her Auntie Jen and Uncle Alex! We put 2 oz into a bottle and decided we’ll just see how much she’ll take. Keep in mind her stomach is the size of a cherry right now.

e took a bit to get used to the bottle and formula at first. She had as much on her chin as she managed to swallow. Second top-up, the little piglet finished up the bottle in less than 5 min.!

When her next feeding came around, E could not wake her up. Damp face cloth, talking, undressing… nothing. Ah, we’ll bathe her! We have a picture of her lying in the tub fast asleep.

:-

She finally woke when we took her out to dry, and she spent all of 13 min (normally it’s like 40 min) feeding before falling back asleep.

New blog planned…

ok, I’m sorry to do this, but I got the www.derekandevonne.com domain name, and will be moving blog and pictures over there. It’s not up yet, and I have to co-ordinate with Lester to get it setup. Thanks to Lester for offering to be e’s personal webmaster. 🙂

I like blogspot, but I wanted something where all pics and text would be centralized. With a baby, I’ll naturally get back into photography, and naturally will be posting a lot more stuff. Flickr is just a bit on the restrictive side for me, it’s free, but you get what you pay for.

Photography… E asked me to photograph all the flowers we got for e. That’s the thing with cut flowers, they are so beautiful, but they only last awhile, so we wanted to take photos.

Before I knew it, I had the tripod, Vivitar105mm 1:1 Macro, Minolta XD-11 out shooting the flowers. I shot under natural light using 100 ISO Fuji print film, and I had a lot of fun shooting macro. Flowers are nice to look at, but they take on a different aspect when you’re looking at them through magnified lens. Anyways, it’s nice getting back into that hobby, and thinking about exposure, composition and DOF.

In talking to friends who are photography buffs, it’s a matter of time before I get a DSLR. I love working with manual SLRs, but I also like seeing the results of the work immediately. Oh well, the film’s ready tomorrow. 🙂

Enjoy the new pics!