It’s been a rough week in the Young household. It seems our youngest constituent is unhappy about almost everything. Or was, anyway. Learning about a baby’s needs has not been intuitive for us, but I think we’re making definite progress.
Latest mistake: in all of the books I have on babies, they have this general rule of thumb that babies feed on one breast for 15-20 minutes, then they pause; you can offer the other side at that time; they may or may not be interested; all in all, it takes about 30 minutes to feed your baby.
Emily was by the book. She would eat for a while, have a little nap; we’d change her diaper to wake her back up; she’d eat from the other side; she’d finish. Then the ordeal would begin where she would scream for an hour. We figured it must be gas, so we’d bend her in this position and that, pounding on her little tiny back, trying to get all of the burps up. We’d eventually convince her to go to sleep.
A few days ago, I threw the towel in. She seemed to be saying that she was hungry all of the time, but how could that be? Didn’t she just eat an hour ago? I finally said FINE, I’ll feed the child whenever she claims she’s hungry; we’ll see how that goes. We’ll throw away our clocks and base everything on her whims.
Lo! It went fantastically well! I learned a very important thing about Emily: she takes forever to eat. Remember how she used to cry and cry after a feeding? And we thought it was gas? She was just hungry! (She still has the gas/reflux issues, but they don’t bother her nearly as much as hunger does.) Her little cat naps in the middle were not a sign that she was done; she just needed a chance to digest a little before forging onward.
So, now that we’ve changed our feeding schedule to suit Miss Emily’s needs, she’s much happier. So much happier, in fact, that she went four hours between feedings. Which means that I, for the first time in 5 weeks, got more than two hours of sleep at a time. How rejuvenating! I feel like I’m 29 again!
[Good segue, Self!] My 30th birthday came and went with little acknowledgment by yours truly. I was too tired to care much that day. But friends and family did a great job of making it special, including lots of emails, 
phone calls, cards, gifts, flowers, and a dinner out with the family. Oh, and my man Barack took office. That was pretty sweet. As long as he faithfully does his job — no, wait — as long as he does his job faithfully — no — faithfully, as long as he does — sigh.
We’re trying to transition a bottle feeding into our new plan, too. We’d really like to have Chris do one of the feedings. So far, she’s lukewarm about the idea at best. She did take the bottle, but she hasn’t yet had a full meal. She eyes the “fake booby” suspiciously and glares at Daddy. 
It was the strangest thing — I found myself mildly jealous when she took her first bottle. I should have been happy — maybe I can get five hours of sleep one of these nights — and yet I was a little saddened. Not to worry: I got over that pretty quickly.
Other big news in the world of Emily: she’s becoming much more alert. We actually get to see those pretty blue eyes once in a while; she looks around and focuses on things. She’s even started to smile! That’s enough to melt your heart.
