Happy Baby (as opposed to...well, keep reading)

This is a still from 34 seconds of video I shot with my camera. I haven't been able to post the video yet, but he was being a super cool chill baby and it was great.

It's amazing how mellow he is now that we got him fed. Last night was a rough one. Around midnight he had the worst crying fit he'd had yet, and we thought he was just crazy tired in that way kids get when they don't even know they're tired, but everything super sucks. I had a nice Daddy moment because I managed to lull him to sleep with a softly sung performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, with new words. We felt all full of ourselves and settled down for a long nap. It was ten whole minutes long.

For the rest of the night, the only acceptable order of things was to have his mouth on a boob -- anything else warrented serious griping. He'd fall asleep right there in mid-suckle, and we'd try to move him to the bassinet, and just the first nudge would get him going. We'd go through the list: try to burp him, check the diaper (that's pretty much the list), all the while he'd be outraged and letting us know. In short time we'd hook him back up and that would settle him and the process would repeat.

Bet you wish you had a pillow like this
In the short run this could work out, because we'd just let him crash where he was. Jules could nod off until he fussed and I totally zonked, making up for the hour and a half of sleep I got the night before. (I have a relationship with sleep that will probably come in very handy: once I get to sleep, I have no problem getting back to sleep if I get woken up. So last night I'd wake up to help out when needed, then re-plotz. Tuesday night I was too keyed up to even try to start sleeping.)

In the long term, this clearly won't work. Jules was already wondering if some supplementary formula was in order when the pediatrician seconded that notion this morning because he'd lost about ten percent of his body weight. (For those of you who don't know, the mom's actual milk doesn't come in for a few days; colostrum, the stuff Zack's been enjoying, is exactly what babies need but it's not very copious.) Some weight loss is de rigueur for newborns but 10% is a lot.

Despite the rough night, we'd managed to keep our heads. Still, when we got the bottle in Z's mouth it wasn't really calming him down. Nor did he seem to be drinking much of it. We were facing another frustrating puzzle with one seriously honked off baby to show for it. Then I made the important discovery you see below.

See that tiny hole in the nipple on the right? See it on the left one? No, you don't, because it isn't there. Yep, my boy's first rubber nipple was a factory defect, designed to tease babies.

Once he actually got the stuff, it was a revelation. You could see it in his face -- suddenly the world became much better than previously advertised. Little guy was starving.

After that he took a long, satisfied nap. He's been way more managable while we burp him and change him today, and has spent a lot more time just peacefully taking in the sights around him. I got some great stare time while Julie took a shower and he looked over my face, a slightly suspicious expression on his. But no more monster baby. Until the next adventure.