the clueless american

Well, we're in the second night without e's family in town, and it's the second night that I'm up late in the office instead of sleeping. We had this great plan before MJ came along: she'd pump so that one feeding a day I could give her a break and bond with The Boy a little. So far that plan isn't working out well. He's just had 3 days of two bottle feedings a night with Gran and Aunt J, so I know he can handle it. Must be my fault when things don't go well, at least that's what I conclude at 0254 when I really should be asleep.

Everything starts with the fact that he refuses to have anything close to a normal schedule. During the day he'll sleep like a log and go up to 7 hours between feedings. (Before you start writing nasty comments about starving our baby, remember that The Boy gained back his birth weight plus 5 ounces in 4 days.) At night, we're lucky if he goes 4 hours between feedings.

Tonight I misjudged when he'd wake up again, so the bottle had barely been out of the fridge an hour when he started crying. I was trying to calm him, heat up the bottle in the bathroom sink, and keep things quiet enough so that e actually felt like she was getting a break.

I've never fed a newborn, but in my previous experience with babies, feeding them was generally pretty easy and fun. Not so with my boy. I have to pin his arms down just to get the bottle in his mouth because he wants to knock the bottle out of the way so that the path is open for the bottle to get to his mouth. Once I make it in, he's prone to shake his head to get the nipple out and then cry because there's no nipple in his mouth. When I finally get him drinking the bottle, he stays on for about 5 minutes before either spitting it out or just stopping sucking and letting milk spill all over the both of us. It takes about 60-90 minutes to get him to drink 5 ounces of milk. It seems like most of that time is spent listening to him cry about not having milk in his mouth or crying because I've stuck the milk in his mouth. I can't seem to win here.

As I write this I realize that I'll most likely erase this whole post from existence once I'm a little more rested and rational, hopefully before any of our family reads it and calls child services on me. I know I sound angry and frustrated--I admit those emotions freely. I thought I'd be real cool about The Boy and his troubles when he came along, but it seems that I get hit real low when I'm not capable of providing him with nourishment nor giving my wife a break for one feeding a night. I forgot to mention that I screwed that last part up, too, for three reasons:

1. I asked her where she wanted me to feed (ie, in or out of our room) and listened when she said stay in our room.
2. I griped about MJ not taking the bottle and leaking milk all over my clothes and part of the bed where I sleep for about the entire 90 minutes.
3. I got into a fight with e about the stupid bottle because last night she made it clear that I was to feed him with only 5 ounces in the bottle. Tonight when I said "you want me to pour the extra into another bottle?" she said, "nah, let's see if he'll eat 7 ounces" and I was dumb enough to take that to mean don't pour the extra 2 ounces into another bottle. So, I get about halfway through the feeding when she laments the fact that I'm going to wind up wasting the extra 2 ounces again if they aren't eaten.

1. in another room;
2. with only 5.00000000000000000 ounces in the bottle;
3. hopefully without complaining about it the whole time.

So how about a picture?

After last night's fiasco I could hardly skip writing tonight. I'm typing one-handed while the other arm cradles a mostly content little burrito. I have to say that sleep seems to be the primary ingredient for a successful feeding. I went to bed at 2130 and woke up to the boy at 0040. He was drinking by 0047 and done by 0120. Overall it went pretty well. The biggest problem was that I chose to feed him his bottle while I sat on the floor cross-legged. My lower back is now killing me. Tomorrow night I'll sit in a chair. Otherwise there were no major hangups. He drank almost 100% of the bottle and then stopped all on his own. I gave him some time to enjoy the full feeling, changed his diaper, then wrapped him up. He's now pretty happy but still wide-awake. I'm spending a few more minutes here in the warm office, then I'll load him up in his carseat (favorite sleeping place lately) and set him next to mama. Hear that music in the background? While the credits are rolling on the end to a much-improved night, MJ & TJ are listening to Maná - El muelle de San Blas. Goodnight.

Poor old MJ...mama's cutting off his little package. Not literally, of course, just Photoshopping his little b-a-l-l-s so that he doesn't look like some kind of baboon when people see his pictures. We wanted some pics of a little naked boy, because that's perfectly ok to do when they're only 2 weeks old, but he still looks a little like he's sitting on a balloon.

I wound up not being able to go back to sleep yesterday until 5:30 in the morning, but the feeding was still about 1000% better than the day prior. This was our last day of totally lounging around. Tomorrow we take MJ to his cardiology follow-up and then go straight to the airport to pick up Grandmom. She'll be in town until Monday and then I head back to work after 20 days of vacation.

Here's what a little naked boy looks like after he's been snipped by mama:

So, someone reading this in the Internet Way(way-way-)back machine in 2043 please tell me if it was right.

From the FOX website:

FOX deeply regrets this year's incident during the halftime show in Kennesaw, GA. During the final seconds of Paul McCartney's performance, Mr. MJ experienced an unexpected wardrobe malfunction which exposed his chest to viewers for approximately 22 seconds. The malfunctioning garment will be studied to prevent similar mishaps in the future.

Poor little guy did a great job putting himself to sleep at 2108...I told e I'd go get him at 2113 if he didn't stop crying, but he was conked out within 2 minutes. Mama went to bed at about 2230 thinking that MJ would sleep until at least 0045, but at 2330 he was up and screaming. Her eyes were so red I knew she didn't need to be feeding him yet, so I took him and started trying to calm him down. I could hear his little belly gurgling all the while, but none of my burping seemed to calm him down the way it usually does. I finally put him over my shoulder to burp, which got him calmed down enough to suck on the great green pacifier (he does better with it than all the others). Then when he'd sucked a little while and seemed calmer, I put him in the sling. He bucked and screamed a bit longer, but he's now asleep. Hopefully I can keep him calm at least another hour so that e is able to wake up and feed him.

I thought this picture definitely needed to be shared. It's the one I have propped up between my keyboard and monitor. I laugh every time I sit down at my desk because he looks so darn cute when he yawns. The only problem is that when I'm sleepy (and when am I not?) he makes me want to yawn along with him.

I use Evolution on my Linux box, but I just recently upgraded e's computer to Office 2003. She had been previously using SpamBayes and ran into the apparently common problem where Outlook wants to create an unchangeable folder named "Junk Email." If one already exists, it will happily call itself "Junk Email1" and refuse to let you change its name. Unless, that is, you look at this article written by someone who upgraded last year:

Want to rename the Junk E-mail folder in Outlook 2003?