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Father Slowly Knowing Best

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The baby was a week late, so I'm going to be a week late.

What we quickly learned to not be delinquent about was feeding. I'm a schedule-orientated person, though not an obsessive one, so this works. I prefer schedules to not involve waking up in the too small hours of the night, but that's better than still being awake during the much larger hours.

It was quite trying to set up. The boy would nurse just fine and then fall asleep either during or not long after. That led us to believe we were doing things okay. Nope, turns out nursing just knocks him out. He was still quite hungry, but couldn't stay awake. Only took a few stressful nights to learn otherwise. He still controls the schedule, but now we know about it and can plan better.

I am curious how things are going to evolve once I return to work. We have similar methods of problem solving, so I'm in no way concerned about things.

Overall, it's definitely been great. I'm looking forward to getting past the eat-sleep-poop stage.

29 thoughts on “Father Slowly Knowing Best”

  1. Not sure that I've offered congratulations, so I'll do that here. Congrats, sean!

    Glad the feeding and the scheduling are working out right now. That's a very good thing.

    1. Thanks!

      The hospital gave us a sheet to document the feeding schedule. We're data-driven people, so using that has helped tremendously. I think we've managed to shift his active periods to daylight hours (roughly), which is convenient.

  2. eat-sleep-poop stage?

    That reminds me that my son has been home from college for the summer, without a job.

  3. He still controls the schedule, but now we know about it and can plan better.

    Keep this in mind - repeat it internally ad nauseam if you must - until it becomes a mantra. His schedule becomes superimposed on yours, takes precedent even, and you'll learn it's going to be that way for a very long time. Well, this is how my first 2 years have played out.

    1. And try to bend him to your schedule for short-term conveniences now (like visiting someone for dinner and keeping him up late), and you'll pay for it later.

      1. Now that our youngest is 7, we have been pushing that a bit this summer. It still comes back to bite us occasionally with breakdowns but not as bad as it was.

  4. I’m looking forward to getting past the eat-sleep-poop stage.

    About 3 months is when they start to smile at you. I forget about what age they start rolling their eyes at you.

  5. Ours had his first injury yesterday. Slammed his head back on the changing table. Nasty cut and hematoma. Thankfully, he's not a pussy like Mauer and has no apparent symptoms.

  6. Ah, babyhood. Last night I dreamed that I could see what the baby is dreaming about by looking on the video monitor. Turns out when he's wriggling in his swaddle, he's actually dreaming that he's fighting a ninja.

    2. Man, that would be great if that was the case with the bauble, but we're pretty certain that when he's wriggling in his swaddle its because his esophagus is burning from the reflux that the doctor is unwilling to treat.

      1. Speaking of his eating...

        ...this day turned south. Sitting in the PICU at the Children's Hospital in Madison because the bauble lost a bunch of weight this week (like, below his lowest weight after he was born). He was struggling with eating all week and we found it it was most likely a urinary infection, which is fun but isn't as bad as what it could have been. The trinket is doing remarkably well with the situaish.

        Its a new challenge every week with this kid.

        5. Hope you're all back home soon so he can turn his focus to fighting ninjas rather than a UTI.

        6. Thanks guys. This are going good, he's reading again and has his color back, so that's good.

  7. Sniff that boy's head! Seriously, there's nothing that smells so pure as the top of a baby's head. Congrats!

    1. So far, I haven't gotten all that angry. Annoyed certainly and I would agree with despondency. My wife and I have an engineer mentality so it's easy to treat him as a black box with a limited number of inputs. Analyze the inputs to make sure those are met and that has worked so far.

      1. That sounds like a reasonably fair way of going about things.
        We used the Baby Whisperer as our starting point of how to deal with reading outputs and anticipating better input combinations to attempt.
        But I believe that many systems will work. (But attempting many systems in sequence may not.)

        1. limited number of inputs, sure. But also limited insight into the function that is being maximized by the engine inside of the box. 🙂

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