Wow has it already been two months since she arrived??? Time goes by so quickly these days. Well today was Sophia's 2 month well baby check. She was scheduled for her first round of shots that we found out were going to be 3 in the thigh and one given orally. I think she wouldn't have cried as much as she did if I didn't have to hold her arms down while the nurse gave the shots but she was a trooper and quieted down shortly after. But all in all according to the Doc "she looks good, she looks real good".
Stats as of today's appointment: 12.8 lbs (89th percentile)
22 3/4 in long (68th percentile)
38 1/2 cm head size (45th percentile)
So what does the percentiles mean? Well nothing really that important, just that among other babies she is in the 89th percentile for her weight, etc....
Next check-up is in two month and she'll receive her second round of shots. Hopefully they will go as well or better than this round.
Sophie's 2 month check-up
7TH Week of Fatherhood
So finally after the 7TH week of fatherhood, Sophia finally lets me hold her and calm her down. Even from a complete meltdown stage she lets me calm her now. Before she would just get angrier and angrier. It was upsetting because I wanted to hold her more as a newborn. Things change so fast. She's not taking the bottle anymore so I can't help out in that department for now... until that changes again. She's definitely much more vocal and we can now distinguish her different cries. She's also much more smiley now! Yay!
Soooooooo #!!%$%@#!**$! Frustrated...
Week 5 and still cannot manage to calm Sophia. 2AM and I can't sleep now so I'm writing to cyberspace to calm MYSELF. I fed her at 12 she was done by 12:20. Burped and changed her. She's been crying and fussy since then and won't go to bed.
So Jeri wakes up and walks in to calm her from all the loud ass crying. Of course Sophia is instanly calmed (just like every other time)... I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME.
And it has nothing to do with how I feel at the time. I was not tense. And I am always so happy to be able to feed Sophia whenever I can. She just hates me or my smell or something about me.
What REALLY gets me the MOST is the fact that the waterworks completely STOP when mom walks in. DO YOU KNOW HOW USELESS THAT MAKES ME FEEL??? Seriously... the longer I try to calm her, the more loud and upset she gets. It's getting sooooooooooooooo f'n frustrating for me. It's like why the hell do I even bother since I just end up upsetting her even more. I've just wasted an hour and fourty minutes trying to calm her. *%^&@W#%^*(*&)($%uckkkkkkkkkkkkk!
I'm pissed because I can't enjoy her as a newborn. By the time she lets me hold her, she'll be old enough where she doesn't want to be held by anyone.
Man... I never thought I would feel so useless in my life until now. This sucks monkey _alls.
:|
Newbie Dad...
Yesterday was father's day. Sophia is now about a month old. It's been a rough month. I did not feel like much of a dad on Father's Day. Jeri says I do a lot, but I had pictured things so much more differently. I do as much as I can to help, but it's all stuff that you can hire a maid to do, really. Again, I have no idea what I was thinking... it's not like I have breasts or smell like sweet milk... what can dad's really do, but be sideline support for the baby and front line support for mom.
I don't mind it really, I just get really sad and frustrated at the same time when I try to comfort Sophia and she just hates it and cries even louder. Once she plops onto mom, blam... she may not just stop crying but at least you can hear her start to calm down. Within 5 minutes, she's able to at least calm her. With me... I'm doing laps in and out the kitchen for an hour to keep her quiet. As a last resort I have to grab the car seat, put it on my lap and shake, move, roll, it like how a moving car would feel. Sometimes I think Sophia is just like a female version of "Stewie" on Family Guy... wanting to kill the mom, but in this case me.
Crying decibels decrease with mom and increase with dad. I've come to the realization that, that's just the way it is. I don't smell sweet, and as Jeri says all the time, "boys are stinky."
Well Sophia, I'm here for you when you need me. I just have to accept the fact that you have no idea who I am right now and that I'm just the "stinky boy" who changes those huge poopie diapers, and sticks a boob shaped plastic bottle down your throat that contains mom's sweet milk... feeble attempt at bonding but you know it's not mom... :P
it's my turn
Since Ray has been bloggin up a storm I figured I'd put in my two cents for the few who read this thing. So as you know giving birth so our beautiful girl Sophia was bittersweet. Such a beautiful moment and I couldn't fully enjoy it due to my massive blood loss. And then to add to that I had to go in for two weeks every two days to meet with lactation specialists because no one helped me while we were still at the frickin hospital with breastfeeding. But after all that is said and done both baby and I are now getting the hang of it (minus the initial pain of her chomping down on me). Every day I look at her and smile, how amazing is it that Ray and I created such a little and beautiful baby!! Ray has been a great dad and husband, doing more than his fair share, helping us all out with taking a late night feeding so I can catch up on some much needed rest. I feel so lucky to have a husband who is so dedicated and wanting to help out. He had some hard nights but now I think he and Sophie have an understanding and hopefully that relationship will continue to grow. My mom has been coming up every week and staying a couple days to help out with cooking and taking care of Sophie. I'm really thankful for her help and her gift of hot meals!
Sophia had her 2-4 week check-up this past Tuesday. I was really nervous about if she had gained or lost and if the doctor told me she had lost I woulda just given up on the whole breastfeeding thing. But thankfully she didn't she actually gained another 6 oz.!! So her stats at the check-up are as follows:
weight: 8lbs.
length: 20.75 in.
head circumference: 36 cm.
so she's moved up in each category and is also now taking a vita D supplement. Who knew that babies also had to take vitamins???
Week TWO... daddy night shift
It's 1:16AM and I'm on night watch again. Everything seems to be leveling out slowly but surely. Sophia is finally above her birth weight after a second week of intense feeding and stool watching. Mannn, it was like watching freggin' the stock market! She went from birth weight 7 pounds 8 ounces down to 6 pounds 8 ounces, back up to 7 pounds 3 ounces, then dropped a few ounces, then shot up to 7 pounds 10 ounces today. That only happened because we supplemented all her meals with an extra ounce or more. Now for the next few days, the lactation specialist said just to feed her normally and see if she can maintain that weight!
Sophia still has her days and nights mixed up where she's so wide awake, sassy, and fussy as hell during the early morning hours.
After week one we left base camp (our living room) and went for the top of the stairs. It's quite a hike up and down those narrow stairs, but I guess it's good exercise for us. So Jeri is finally sleeping better in our comfy bed. I take a night feeding or two to let Jeri get more uninterrupted sleep.
Since I am the night owl, this is the time I take to write or work on the website. I find this very therapeutic to just write and spew out whatever is on my mind. Right now I'm still just so excited that our baby girl is eating and growing already so fast! I can't contain myself from taking too many pictures of her!
Welp, back to work. Still trying to make this a full time website job so I can be the boss and not be taken advantage of by companies that leave their employees SOL. I am trying sooooooo hard not to be very angry with my last company for jacking me out of three weeks pay plus all the vacation I was saving up to take care of Sophia. Not cool.
Normally I'd blow a gasket, flame a bunch of people, and burn many bridges. Then I'd find some way to get them back (light a few cars on fire, etc... j/k)... or not... But that was the OLD Ray... I used to be pretty spiteful to those who took advantage of my good nature. With Jeri and Sophia in my life now, none of that matters anymore. I love being home with my family. They make me so happy that I never want to work again. I know eventually I WILL have to find full time work again. Hopefullly, I can get DigitallyManipulated going full steam!
I still want my PAY, but no sense in wasting my energies on it. Hopefully, karma will bring them to their senses and I will get my money somehow.
Big daddy King out!
Daddy's Log ... Stardate May 30TH, 2009... 3:15 AM
3:15 AM and we're now on day 7. Jeri is finally getting some decent sleep. She was able to pump out almost four ounces of milk so I will feed Sophia this morning so mama can rest. Sophia is having problems eating. With this, she lost too much weight already. Her tongue gets in the way of her suckling properly. She also bites down on Jeri so hard that it hurts a lot. In addition to all that she's a sleepy feeding baby. She keeps falling asleep no matter what we do! (cold towel, tickle feet, rub hands, undress to daipers, blow in face, make noise, talk to her, bother her...) All this equals pissed off baby and tired mom unfortunately. Kaiser specialists couldn't even get her to correct the problem. That doesn't really say much since they forever soiled their reputation with us with the whole labor and delivery and the days after. It will take time to train our little girl, but we have all the time in the world for her. Whatever SHE needs. We're on HER schedule now and we love it! ...except of course the "no sleep for us" part.
Baby is also finally getting better sleep with the noise machine. Seems she has way better sleeps with it, than without it. Hopefully her feeds will be better too. We'll see! She should be like her parents very soon! Always ready to CHOW DOWN and GRUB!!!
Is seems like a month had passed by already. Mannnn, when people said it would be work they weren't kidding! It's so rewarding though. I can't get enough of our baby girl. We really think there absolutely no way someone can spoil a newborn. They have no concept of anything but being hungry and needing love and warmth. Yes, we do pick her up everytime she cries. We both have skin to skin time for bonding with her, and yet at night we can still put her to sleep alone easily now in her crib with the sound machine. She's just like Jeri... very adjusting to the conditions, but very stubborn in her ways too! Ha!
7 days seems so long to us because it's been a very challenging journey. Just during birth, Jeri lost so much blood everywhere that you could paint the entire room with it! There were about 8 doctors that rushed in to help when Jeri's blood pressure dropped very low. My heart dropped. It was such a bittersweet moment being both happy to be under the heat lamp with our newly born daughter, and worried watching Jeri start to lose consciousness a few feet away and couldn't be near her. One of the doctors even commented that it looked like a murder scene in there. Yeah... because you F'N morons forgot to keep an eye on her blood pressure! NUMBNUTS!
Then during these past 7 days we get ALL KINDS of advice and what to do and what not to do from Kaiser nurses, doctors, lactation specialists and pediatricians. Guess what, they all give us CONFLICTING information. WTF is that?!?!?! Like, are WE supposed to clean that umbilical cord area or NOT?!?! In another instance, with all their conflicting advice, we ended up over feeding Sophia to the point she barfed up everything we tried to get down her. In reality she was doing fine from our current schedule for her.
Ahhhk no sense in getting all worked up... Jeri is fine now and our baby girl is super healthy and gaining her weight back! YAY!
Anyway, so the plan tonight is get baby Sophia and Jeri a good night's rest. Daddy had TWO FULL nights of sleep last week thanks to Grandma Saito so I'm still charged up! I figure the BEST way to get mom and baby in sync is to have them both WELL RESTED. Once baby is well rested she well eat better. Once she eats better, she will gain her weight back. That's the plan and that's what makes this fun. She like a little puzzle to be figured out. She's a part of Jeri and I so she may just have the same happy tickle spots or upsetting breaking points we can try to avoid.
Nobody told us it was going to be this FUN!!! And I wasn't being sarcastic there. :) How else can one have a "mini me" of themselves to corrupt at their discretion?
