The Newborn Period

Looking back, it's amazing to ponder how we got through the first couple of weeks. Thankfully my mother was here, and neither of us were working. We just stayed home and hunkered down with our bundle of precious joy.

The baby slept through most of the first couple of weeks, as most newborns do, apparently. This was kind of a relief in a way because as new parents, we were pretty overwhelmed anyhow, and needed the downtime since until we knew what we were doing, it felt like we were living from one crisis to the next. The worst part was that we were trying to battle jaundice. With jaundice, the sleepiness is exacerbated and leads to not eating enough, which creates a vicious circle. We had to work really hard to keep him awake long enough to feed those first couple of weeks.

The first week home, we actually spent a lot of time at the hospital dealing with the jaundice which was all kinds of fun. The last thing you want to do with a newborn is haul the poor thing out in the cold rain every other day to go to pediatric appointments. Uggh. I had to do a lot of pumping for the first month to keep things going, and the supplementing was a pain until I got the hang of it. It was pretty crazy for awhile, but now things are much much easier.

In spite of the problems around feeding and jaundice, luckily he wasn't much of a crier. His crying was pretty much limited to the obvious stuff: "I need to eat!" or "Help, I'm soaked!" The rest of the time he was either asleep--or briefly awake and looking at us. I remember he did a lot of squeaking and grunting, and thankfully not much crying.

Later on, he got gassy (especially once we had to start giving him formula) and then he would howl. It only took a couple of days to figure out that was causing the trouble. Then gripe water and simethicone drops became a part of our world--but neither of these things offer complete or instant gratification, so we still had to find ways to soothe him as much as possible. Some things that seemed to help were swaddling (he LOVED that), rocking, changing positions, patting his back, cuddling, humming, soft music, and laying on mom's chest or being held until he fell asleep. Poor kid, it took his digestive system a long time to figure out what to do, and he still tends towards gassiness, but at least now it doesn't hurt him the way it did in the beginning.

In the first couple of months, many nights, I basically just sat up with him in the LazyBoy rocking him asleep and holding all night long in the crook of my arm, since he would stay asleep as long as he was held. I managed to get some sleep this way. After a month, I got to the point where I could bring him back to bed with us (without waking him up in transit) and he would stay asleep (until the next feeding). He was considerate enough to sleep for 4-5 stretches at night so I could too. (Being close to us seemed to help him sleep better, and I could get some sleep, too. He would wake up and look around to see if we were still there, then go right back to sleep, content that the world was okay.)

After the first month, he would get fussier in the evening, so I discovered that dimming the lights, and laying him on my chest tummy-to-tummy with a blanket over us would settle him a bit. I think it calmed him to hear my heartbeat/breathing. Another thing that worked well was putting him in my Moby Wrap (carrier) and just going about my normal routine of doing stuff around the house. Wrapped up in there, all womb-like, he would settle down quickly and pass out and stay content for hours. In fact it worked so well, I had to drag him out or he wouldn't eat!

During the day, whenever the weather was nice, I would take him out in the jogging stroller and walk around the neighborhood. He really liked being in his car seat anyway, so putting him in the stroller also settled him. He would look around for about 5-15 minutes, then pass out until we got home. That was my post-partum exercise plan.