Week 2 - Nursing

Renee's cord dropped on Sunday. I took a picture of it. But it came out too blurry.

Like father, like daughter. She has exactly the same foot as her father. Her face was pinky when she was born, but it now slowly turned to be more like my skin tone. I cannot say that the mother is very happy about this.





We had some difficulty nursing her. She would get sleepy and stop eating, but become very active an hour later. Calming her would take an hour. But when we tried to feed her, she would become sleepy again after just 10 minutes. The next feeding would also be quite short. We are not sure what to make of it but we are keeping an eye (or rather, all of our eyes) on her hunger signs. The book says that a child goes through growth spurts, maybe she has just started her first.

With the mom and grandparents taking care of the baby, I actually don't do much during the day. So I returned to work on Tuesday. One nice thing about working for Guidewire is that you surely have your work and life balanced. I looked at the feeding schedule, realized that there is no way I can go to bed at 11pm and go to work on time without being sleepy. I now go to bed after 7 pm, so that I can wake up three times during the night to help feed the baby, and not losing sleep. So far it works well. It also helps to have "Uberman Sleep Schedule" experiment with other Borlanders several years back.

I noticed that playing with her a bit during the nursing can wake her up. Among all the warm greetings, fatherhood welcome, and comforting that "it will get better" from Guidewire coworkers that were sent to my work email address, Janice recommended the book "The Nursing Mother's Companion".

Is this a smile? Lianxin's parents told me a saying, "one day cat one day dog", describing the fact that the baby behavior changes all the time. That is really true. One day she could be so quiet, that you can change her diaper without even waking her up. The next day she would be so active, that you just have to stay up with her.

We went to pediatrician today. Guess what? Renee weighs 5 pounds 1.75 ounces! That is 7 ounces in 6 days. We were all very happy to hear that. She got hungry at the doctor's (only 2 hours from last feeding), so we had to stay in the room and feed her.

I am learning different burping position. This position is not as effective as others have told me. And it gets a bit harder with her letting out gas by my nose.