Hello My Name Is ...

Faith and Zane from the weekend’s party. Looks like he was headed towards his name tag already. Within the next ten minutes he managed to chew or otherwise mutilate the top half of it, a few errant chunks would get stuck under his chin and we’d have a devil of a time trying to peel it off (he didn’t cooperate).

One of the babies I got to hold at the party Saturday was a little boy two weeks younger than Zane. Holding him seemed like holding a couple Zane’s, there was just so much more mass relative to the baby size. As our friend Janet puts it, “All other babies are judged in relationship to your own.” It’s true, I see another baby and think “Zane is bigger/smaller/taller/rounder/calmer than that” or, worse, “that kid doesn’t look right!”

Remembering how hefty that kid was I convinced myself on Sunday that Zane had somehow gained a bunch of weight too. Popped him onto the scale, did some math (it’s Zane & Faith on scale and then just Faith) and it looks like he’s over fifteen pounds. Woo hoo! He gained almost a pound in a week!

“Hold on Faith, I’ll be right back,” I said, taking the baby and heading to the changing table. Sans a big, wet diaper and three layers of clothes we tried it again: 14.6 lbs, just a couple tenths of a pound in a week.

Well, at least he’s TALLER!

The last time I was picking up baby supplies I also grabbed a couple sets of #3 nipples. This is the larger sized opening for six months and older. After they were washed and sterilized I thought we ought to give them a try. It may all be coincidence: warm milk, bigger nipple, older baby, but his consumption has gone up. On average the daily consumption isn’t all that much higher, but individual feedings are much larger and there are fewer of them. Where he’d sip on 50 to 70 ml every couple of hours he now gulps down 100 to 140 ml and isn’t hungry for four hours or more.

Capitalizing on this Faith has started us on a baby-extension program, whereby we extend the time between feedings at night when he is sleeping. Yesterday she last fed him at midnight (after a good 4 hours of sleep) and wrote a note that I shouldn’t feed him until 6:30. Sure, easier said than done.

Daddy Robot works like this: baby makes sound, daddy robot engages — warms bottle, picks up baby, feeds baby, burps baby, cuddles baby, puts near-to-sleep baby in crib. Notice there’s no thinking in there, just a primal feed-the-offspring response. But yesterday I woke up at 4:30am, listened to the baby noodle around (he’s chirping, exclaiming, and thumping legs…no crying) then fall asleep, then wake up and noodle, then fall asleep, etc.. This went on until it was after six and I could engage daddy robot again.

Same thing this morning, although last night he last ate around eleven so it was around seven hours of sleep. Zane seems to be cool with it, we’ll see how easy it is to re-program daddy robot.