Thursday, June 23, 2011

What I've learned about Jackson - 14 days old (or, Got Milk? I do.)

Jack.

Sweet
Content
Sleepy
Hungry
NOT sensitive to noise

Jack has been such a good baby since his birth. I'm not trying to jinx it by writing this out or anything, but he has been a seriously GOOD baby ever since we met him in the operating room.

I've learned that his swing and nuk puts him to sleep, his car seat and nuk puts him to sleep, and rocking puts him to sleep. Yes. He sleeps a lot at this stage.

Not only has he been pretty easy in his first 14 days, he even nursed! None of my other babies would, and I was so happy that Jack took to it. And while I was at the hospital and able to "nap when the baby napped" it was kind of the one thing that only mommy could do for this sweet, tiny, new little baby and it was so cool to have that time with him... just the two of us.

Then, once we got home and those super helpful nurses weren't there to bring him over to the nursery at night so I could catch some sleep, or come in every few hours, wake me up, and hand me a snuggly baby (complete with fresh diaper) to nurse... well, I realized that nursing is a big commitment and it's HARD! And since we didn't invest the big bucks for a good pump, no one else would be able to take on any of the (500) feedings each day/night. Oh, and it was no longer possible to "sleep when the baby sleeps" because the other kiddos I birthed were 1) noisy, 2) needing mommy to settle disputes like the one about whose pop tart had more frosting or the one about whose beach ball was whose, and 3) noisy. Yes, I mentioned noisy twice because while Katie and Jake can be quiet and play really nicely together, they can also disagree and they must believe that he who yells loudest automatically wins because they are looouuuuddddd.

I also thought about my "hips," as Katie calls them, wayyy too much. The scene in "Look Who's Talking" wasn't too far off. You know the one, right? (Well, okay, maybe it wasn't THAT bad, but close enough to scare me just a bit.)

So we got home from the hospital on Saturday, I enjoyed nursing a number of times that evening and into the night and then on Sunday John headed over to Target to pick up some formula and bottles.

Good thing too.

Jackson seems to like a 3 to 4 oz. bottle at every feeding and for all the size of my "hips", there were not 3 to 4 ounces being produced so Jackson was eating pretty much constantly... and I was tired.

Jack's also a good sleeper. After his bottle, a diaper change, and a swaddle he's ready to go back to sleep. (Unfortunately, I'm usually pretty awake and right in the middle of Law and Order - at least one version seems to be on every hour - so I'm not getting as much sleep as I could be getting if I didn't like that show so much and could turn it off before the resolution.)

I don't know how he's able to sleep so soundly but it's awesome because he is able to totally ignore the massive amount of noise that his siblings can make. Seriously. loud. noise. I've mentioned that, right?

Like screaming, playing the recorder right next to him (no music lessons, grandma and grandpa just happen to have one laying around at their place) (and it made it's way upstairs for awhile... we stored it in Katie's tall dresser. Top drawer. Way in the back. On purpose. You know... to keep it "safe"), loud fighting, and just the other day there were loud shouts of "SUPER JAKE!" coming from all corners of the house while a heard of elephants (AKA Katie and Jake) tromped through the house.

Yep. He can pretty much sleep through anything at this stage. Hope it continues. Forever. Because he'll be sharing a room with Jake once we're ready to move him to the big crib and Jake can be pretty noisy.

So. Basically, we're pretty blessed to have this sweet, healthy, happy baby boy join our family.

I fell in love with him the moment the doc pulled him from my tummy.