Our Charliebug

I was a little nervous before Charlie was born, because I had received so many warnings that the second baby is usually nothing like the first. Since Zach was a relatively easy baby, I was picturing our second as a baby who wouldn't stop crying, who had reflux or colic, who would get his nights mixed up with his days, etc etc. And... somehow we hit the jackpot again.

Don't get me wrong, we don't have that miracle newborn who sleeps 8 hours at a stretch. While there's certainly no pattern yet, I count myself lucky if he goes three hours between feedings. We've had some nights where he's woken every two hours to eat - those are not my favorite nights. But once he went four whole hours, so I'll just keep hoping we have a repeat of that.

One of my favorite things about this little guy? He does not wake me up by crying. In fact, he never cries at night. Instead, I wake up to the very sweet sound of snuffling and grunting, as Charlie does his very best to get some part of his hands into his mouth. Ehh, ehh, ahhh, mhmmm! A much better way to wake up than the adrenaline rush that comes when you wake up to a screaming baby.

It took us a few nights to get to this stage with Charlie. The first few nights he ended up sleeping with Scott (who somehow can manage to sleep while holding a newborn) for some portion of the night; he absolutely would not fall or stay asleep by himself. I was concerned, to say the least; we are not co-sleeping people. But then we realized the reason he wouldn't sleep was that he was desperately fighting to get his hands out from under the swaddling blanket. So now we swaddle him with his hands up near his jaw - and voila - a happy baby who does his best to soothe himself when he wakes up! Looking back, we remember that in every one of our three ultrasounds he always had his hands by his face - clearly his comforting method.

The whole snuffling sounds thing presents a dilemma for me, since I don't want to get up and feed him until he's truly hungry. But his cute little noises are enough to wake me up, and I don't really want to lay there awake for a half hour until his noises get a little bit more urgent and distressed either. One solution is to move him into his own room, of course, since he's currently sleeping in Scott's closet. But I'm not ready to wander all the way down the hall several times a night quite yet. So I think in the meantime I'll just keep trying to learn to sleep through the sounds emanating from the closet.

I took Charlie in to the pediatrician for a weight check on Friday. When we left the hospital that Monday, Charlie had dropped from 6 lbs 2 ozs to 5 lbs 11 oz. By Wednesday at his pediatrician check-up he had gained 2 oz. The doctor wanted him back to his birth weight by last Friday, based on the estimation that he would gain somewhere between one half and one full ounce per day. So that gave him 9 days to gain 5 ounces. When I took him in and got him weighed, he was... 6 lbs 9 ounces! He gained 12 ounces in those 9 days - what a rock star. It was nice, to say the least, to get confirmation that he was in fact eating well. Perhaps we'll be able to move on to newborn-size clothes soon!

Let's see, what else can I tell you about our little guy? Since he is either sleeping or eating most of the day, there isn't a lot of news. :) I've been delighted to see several gas "smiles" - he's going to be quite the charmer when he starts smiling for real. He continues to pee about half the times when we change his diaper; either he's getting used to it or we're just better at damage control. He does continue to scream his head off any time his clothes are removed. But trust me, I'm not complaining since that's pretty much the only time he really cries. Like his brother, he goes with the flow.

We have been overwhelmed (again) by the outpouring of good wishes and congrats, from family, friends, and neighbors. And not to mention support - thank you all for the offers of help, whether it's an outing for Zach or a meal for all of us. We count ourselves as truly lucky to have all of you in our lives.