cliff divers

Well, we have gotten through the first week. I feel like one of those cliff divers just coming up for air after the dive of a lifetime. I think Jaime feels like she is the cliff diver that hit her head on a rock in the water and is never seen again. David doesn't know how he feels and could care less about our feelings as long as we keep the milk coming.

The first couple of nights were, naturally, the most difficult. David would spend an hour or so crying and we couldn't figure out why. We had just fed him, he was changed (not that he cares about dirty diapers) and his cries were not the gassy-tummy cries that we had at the hospital. Finally, with the help of a nurse at the Breast Feeding Clinic, we learned that while he might average a feeding every two hours, he will cluster feed several times about 45 (or fewer) minutes apart. That is usually around midnight to 2:00 am. Then, in the afternoon, he is content to sleep for three hours or so. So now we are working on turning that pattern around so that we get larger windows of sleep.

Highlights of the week: On Saturday and again today, he was weighed and looked over by nurses. He is very healthy and gaining weight like champ. He will be a little Sumo wrestler soon. He learns an adorable new look every day. Occasionally he smiles. When he is hungry, one of the signals that he gives us to to open his eyes wide and form a perfect circle with his mouth. He looks like a little choir boy. He also has an amazing repertoire of noises--each of them more adorable than the next. One of his noises sounds exactly like a perfectly articulated "ouch." I assume he will bring that out for the social worker. He has a little piggy noise, a wheezy duck noise and a couple of cute cries. One sounds like the squeaky penguin in "Toy Story II" ("I think I swallowed my squeaker"), and the other is a quick uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

It's not all perfect of course. Yesterday, I asked him what school of philosophy Wittgenstein represents. He answered "nihilism." I replied, "no, the correct answer is 'pragmatism,'" and he spit up on me. He spits up a lot. We have stopped even dressing him during the day since it is easier to change him out of a milk-soaked blanket than a milk-soaked onesy. On his changing table, he spit up with such force that milk hit the wall. Once he sent an arc of milk clean over the length of his body, past his toes, and on to the floor. He has spit up on my side of the bed twice. Even while Jaime is healing, I get to sleep in a wet spot. The nurse said that as as long as he is gaining weight, spit-up is mainly a laundry problem. Boy howdy.

He is one hairy little dude. Just like grandpa Barnhart. I recall reading somewhere that this will fall off soon. I hope so or he is going to be a serious little gorilla by middle school.

More later.