One Month

It's hard to believe Luke is already a month old. It seems like he's already been around a long time, but the time has also gone very quickly. He's already grown so much he won't fit most newborn diapers anymore.

Speaking of diapers, we're having trouble getting diapers that are effective. You'd think that diaper manufacturers would understand that consumers won't be satisfied if they end up brown and yellow. It's not like we're making mistakes putting the diapers on. It's quite simple, just cover the danger zones. Yet somehow these diapers aren't doing the job. Not just some of them, I mean 4 out of 5 of the brands we try fail. I'm no diaper genius, but what are these people testing their diapers on?

I'd like to thank everyone who's brought us food, watched Luke, etc. Sometimes it's difficult to recharge our batteries, so the occasional meal or babysitting really helps.

Luke has been a menace the last couple of days. There's a vicious cycle where if Luke starts getting really tired, he gets cranky, and crankiness keeps him awake. So, for example, two nights ago he didn't sleep much. Then he didn't sleep at all during the day yesterday because he was so cranky. What's making it more difficult is Melissa is trying to get him to put himself to sleep in his crib. When he's cranky, he just lays there for hours on end, fussing and fidgeting. It's a good thing my wife has patience; I'd have given up a long time ago.

Luke get closer to smiling daily. We've caught a couple on camera, but I still think most of the smiles are accidental. He has a lot of strength in his legs. I can keep him steady and he'll stand on his own power. He probably could roll over, but I don't think he has any idea what he's doing when he moves around. He also laughs occasionally, usually during our most stressful times, like when he's been up for 24 hours. There's no way it's a coincidence.

Our garbage generation, laundry, and dish use is up 500%. Our appliances keep breaking. If Melissa breaks, we're in serious trouble.

Did you know that Melissa's original plan was to have a boy and then twin girls? If we were to get so lucky, we'd be taking care of two babies and an infant. I researched people in similar situations:

Definitions of horror on the Web:
the feeling of dread and anticipation that occurs before something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced.

Our little insomniac

Nine hours is all he slept yesterday. Babies are supposed to sleep at LEAST 11 hours, sometimes pushing 15. The good news is he sleeps most of that time during the night. The bad news is Missy is being asked for tips by people who want to be zombies for Halloween. The annoying part of it is Luke wont go to bed later in the evening. Missy and I basically have no time for ourselves because by the time he goes to sleep, we need it too.

Luke grows in size and intellect daily. He carefully observes Melissa and I for hours when I get home for work. He enjoys our weird faces and sounds. I pray to God that Melissa hasn't set up a hidden camera somewhere, otherwise she'd have unlimited bribe potential. Is that part of fatherhood? Acting like a monkey?

Luke is sitting here with me as I type. I must state that there is nothing quite like the experience of a child passing gas when in your lap. It's sort of like getting hit in the stomach with a bowling ball. *Sniff sniff* Be right back...

We still haven't quite snuck a smile out of him yet. He's close, but not quite there. He's got a heck of a grip now. I'm surprised he hasn't bruised me yet with one of his merciless pinches. I'm hoping to train him to continue doing it, especially to strangers.

He is nursing better. We have only had to give him one bottle yesterday, and he hasn't had any today. I'll probably end up giving him one so Melissa can sleep a few hours undisturbed.

*Sniff sniff*. Yep, seriously. Two diapers since I've started this post. Catch you later!

Hungry Butt

At first, you might think Keri was decribing Luke when she used the term "hungry butt". After all, the term describes my son fairly well. I think she was referring to a wedgie or something. It was quite funny.

Luke is three weeks old. It's hard to believe he's already that old, but he's already gained a lot of weight and grown over an inch. He's going to grow fast. At three weeks, babies are getting ready for a growth spurt. Luke has been drinking greedily from his bottles in preparation. Missy is starting to get worried that he's becoming less interested in nursing from her.

I hate the internet. People have posted all their nursing baby problems, and Melissa reads each and every one of them and tries to find a way that Luke has a similar problem. Recently, she found a story about a baby that needed his tongue needs surgically cut to allow him to nurse correctly. I'm almost certain that one of these days she'll find a story about a baby boy that had to have his penis removed to nurse properly.

Nursing correctly or not, Luke's getting plenty of food. Our latest crude weighings have him at almost 11 pounds, which is amazingly fast weight gain. He still ends most bottle feedings with that "why did I eat so much?" dazed look on his face.

Luke has been attempting to smiling at us. He makes a noise sometimes that we perceive as a laugh, but we're usually doing something like changing a diaper, which he doesn't really like. So either it's evil laughter while he's thinking, "I'm going to fill this new clean diaper with corrosive foulness within seconds", or he's just experimenting with sounds. Or maybe he's just in his own little world.

He's growing!

Luke has already grown 3/4 of an inch. He's also still gaining weight twice as fast as an average baby. Although we thought he'd slow down, he still is extremely fussy until he's had a LOT of food, then he finally calms down.

We finally caved in and gave him a bottle. We were worried, because several sources claim that the babies will prefer the bottle to any other nursing, and you pretty much have to give them one every time. So far, Luke has not had this problem. In fact, he seems to be nursing a bit better without bottles. Bottles are a great thing. I can finally let Melissa sleep more than three hours at a time. She's already looking a bit more rested.

Missy and I both become demons when awoken in the early morning. For example, we have this spring-based clamp light attached to our bed. The other morning Missy tried to adjust it to not blind Luke, and it fell off, crashed loudly, and went out. I bolted up, screamed, ran over and unplugged it. It wasn't THAT scary, I just become a little psychotic when I'm sleep deprived. I was so tired that the memories feel more like a dream than real. When I'm tired, I tend to say stupid things too, like "maybe you should feed him".

Missy doesn't say or act nearly as stupid as I do, but it's a noticable difference between night and day when she feeds. During the day she's got a smile and is chatty and having a good time. At night she looks stressed, and I feel there's a reasonable chance she'd slay me if I breathe too loudly.

Luke's been sleeping mostly through the night though, other than feeding times. He's had some longer stretches of sleep, too, which is great. He's rarely fussy when he's well fed, even when he's awake. I've almost had him smile at me a couple times, but I'm guessing it was an accident.

He's still dark blonde and his eyes are in the dead zone between blue and brown (we're still pretty sure he'll be brown-eyed). He's got a nice double-chin now thanks to his double feeding rate. His skin is in between Melissa (pale) and mine (tan), but closer to Melissa's than mine.

This is the usual conversation guests have with Melissa: "He looks like Matt!" followed by, "I'm so sorry".

I'm Hungry I'm Sleepy I'm Hungry I'm Sleepy I'm...

We really wish he's make up his mind. I've already mentioned Melissa's uncanny sedative-rich milk. Well, Luke's starting to take it to the extreme. He'll feed for about 10 minutes, then fall asleep for 10 minutes. Then he'll wake himself up, eat for 10 minutes, fall asleep. The end result of this pattern is Melissa sprawled out in bed, daydreaming of that enjoyable thing she used to do called sleeping.

He's been very active during the evenings. Most days he stays awake from the time I get home until I go to bed, a period of about 5 hours. Unfortunately, Melissa usually is exhausted by the time I get home, so it's tough to get much time to spend with her.

Luke has been very interested in television. I read an article the other day about how babies who watch a lot of television have a harder time developing speech and have a shorter attention span. Apparently babies can be overstimulated. So I find myself trying to keep his attention from the TV, but the TV usually wins. Come on, Friends reruns aren't THAT great.

We're really close to trying a bottle on him. With his virtual non-stop feeding routine, it's almost going to become necessary to keep Melissa well. I can't tell you how strong my desire is to just take him and let her sleep for 8 hours. She needs it.

It's scary how fast the house falls apart now, though. I've been trying to stay on top of some of it, but my list is growing faster than it used to. Baby socks are the bane of a washing machine. Those little things are getting crammed in spots I didn't think possible.

Luke lost his umbilical cord. He still has what looks like an old wound on his belly button, but it's healing rapidly. He had a circumcision cover, too, and it's finally fallen off. His hair is also growing rapidly. I'm hoping for a full-blown mullet before it falls out. Everyone keeps saying he looks like me, but he's still got dark blue eyes and golden hair...

Back to Birth Weight

Luke has finally reached his birth weight. He continues to gain about two ounces a day, which is twice as much as a normal baby. We're not sure if this trend will continue now that he's caught up. Yesterday, he ate virtually the entire time I was home before bed. He didn't sleep at all. He would just stare around for about half an hour, then start his hunger dance.

Melissa has had basically no sleep the last couple nights because of his feeding frenzy. Luke has stopped his usual five hour naps, instead he wakes up every 2-3 hours on his own to be fed again. Since it takes an hour to feed him, and Melissa takes about 30 minutes to fall asleep, it's obvious why she's so tired. Somehow, yesterday she managed to make two trips out to her school to get stuff ready for her sub. What a warrior. I think her only goal today is to sleep. That's my goal too, and I'm going to work.

Yum! A Finger!

Luke was great today. He was active and awake for several hours during the daytime, which gives us hope that he'll sleep tonight. This is good since I have to head back to work tomorrow.

He will usually focus on us for a little while when he's active, but then he'll start to stare at random blank spots on the wall and seem to be really concentrating on them. I think he's playing a game of "made you look!" with me.

We've started backing off on the amount of syringe feeding Luke has been getting. So now, he spends a lot more time nursing. While he's getting plenty of food, he takes FOREVER to get it. Melissa is typically nursing for an hour at a time just with him now. He's eating every 2-3 hours. That's 8 hours a day nursing. I wish I could spend 8 hours a day eating.

We've been watching "Friends" basically nonstop. The theme song is getting ingrained into my head (sorta like the baby crying thing). I swear, if Luke's first words are "I'll be there for you", I'm throwing away all our TVs.

Luke has also decided he's anti-environment. Our combined total yesterday was around 13 diapers. There were two seperate times I changed three of them between feedings. Seriously, kid.

Tomorrow Melissa gets to spend most of the day handling Luke by herself. I expect about 50 calls at work. We'll see!

How Typical..

I had this conversation with Luke this morning:

Matt: Hey buddy!
Luke: Waaahhh!
Matt: Yeah, yeah, you're hungry, I know.
Luke: Waaahhh!
Matt: Yeah we're getting to it. Anything else I should know?
Luke: Aaa.
Matt: Say again?
Luke: *Liquidy discharge*

It wasn't the most satisfying little talk, but what did I expect?

Luke had a worse night than normal last night. We've started supplementing him less, so he's a little crankier since he's not being stuffed to the brim every feeding.

The real reason for his crankiness is probably his newly clogged tear duct. We think it started yesterday because we saw his eye leaking a lot of water. We thought it was just his tear ducts starting to work. Well, I guess if they leak a lot of water, they might be clogged. Well, by late last night, he started having some crusty pussy stuff on his eye. We'd clean him off, and it would be back in ten minutes.

We learned earlier at the doctor's to rub around his eye to attempt to unclog it. All that has succeeded in doing was upsetting him. Melissa thought his eye might be swelling, which the nurse said was something to worry about.

However, Erika read somewhere that breast milk could help clogged ducts. We've started applying that, and he seems to be a little better so far. We'll have to see how that progresses.

Melissa's having a great time feeding Luke. He's taking nearly an hour every feeding now, and it's starting to be a real burden on Melissa. If we could get him feeding correctly, we'd be done in 15-30 minutes. For some reason he still thinks nursing is the perfect time to catch a quick nap.

If you have a baby that cries a lot, you might experience the phenomenon that Melissa and I did. We both at various times have hallucinated that the baby is crying. You sort of hear the crying in your head, and you seriously have to concentrate to tell whether or not it's really happening. This tends to happen more often around 3 a.m.

All Systems, Go!

When Luke sleeps, he sleeps. When he's awake, it's like he tries to do everything else at once. He exhumes as much as we feed him, usually at the same time. He also tries to get his pushup and fidget routines in, which doesn't make feeding any easier.

We still can't get this nursing thing figured out. We tried this breast shield thing that makes it easier for him to latch on. The idea is to use it for awhile, then try the classic method again. Luke apparently thinks classic nursing is equivalent to sleep. He dozes off virtually everytime. With the shield, he's slightly better, but he's still not taking his fill. Then I have to give him another ounce or so in the syringe. We'll be back to the doctor today to see what else they have for us to try. I am NOT wearing a fake breast.

Luke really wants to sleep like 5-6 hours. I really don't understand why they recommend we feed him every 3 hours, and we can't let him sleep. It'd make us a lot less cranky. Missy's been good about letting me sleep, which will be nice next week when I go back to work.

Luke spent a lot more time awake yesterday. He had several 40 minute stretches and even a two hour stretch in the evening. He's been sleeping through most of the night now, which is fine by us!

He also basically doesn't cry, ever. We're crossing our fingers that he stays that way. He's a smart kid, though, so I think once he realizes the power he has when he screams, we're in for it.

Since yesterday, his bowel movements REEK. It supposedly gets a lot worse when they eat solid foods, and if this is true, I might consider investing in a hazard suit.

Tongue Massages

That's right. I now get to perform "tongue massages" on my son. What a way to bond.

Luke has apparently had his tongue to the roof of his mouth every time he's tried to nurse. While not a huge problem, I don't understand why it took FIVE lactation nurses to finally have someone figure out what was really wrong.

So now, I have to wear a latex glove and massage Luke's tongue with my index finger. It's pretty weird, to say the least. Evidently it will train him to keep his tongue down when he nurses.

They came up with a couple other tricks for us to get him nursing properly. The smart little guy still knows that if he's stubborn long enough, he gets his milk nice and easy from a syringe.

I've come up with a theorem. You know, those little rules you learned in physics. I call it the "Fetal Position Equivalence Theorem". The rule is as follows: "The parents of a newborn will at some point end up in a fetal position state greater than or equal to the fetal position of the newborn." Usually, we feel it around 4 a.m. when Luke's in one of his active states. Although he's been a great baby and not really crying, it's still 4 a.m. You remember playing the original Sims when your character would fall asleep on the spot he was standing? I've been close a couple times.

Although the last couple days, Luke has been sleeping a lot. He's gone as long as five hours without stirring. Unfortunately, the doctor and nurses say that four hours is as long as you should go without a feeding. What the? Now come on, if we can sneak in five hours of sleep because our baby is naturally sleeping that long, why can't we?? Let's see how you like waking to an alarm to wake your sleeping baby up in the early morning. No, of course we didn't go back to sleep for another hour. No, of course not...