Sonny @ 1 month

Growth & Appearance: You were born with brown hair. It’s not as dark as I remember your brothers’ at birth and I anticipate that it will lighten, as theirs did, over the next several months.

I had to trim your nails in the hospital as being ‘overdue’ allowed you to be born with daggers. You scratched yourself often until I was able to give them a proper cut. I’ve had to cut them twice since then.

By your third week of life, you developed a bald spot on your head. Near your cowlick you have a longer patch of hair so you look a bit like this.

Your eyes are a deep ocean blue, which again is reminiscent of your brothers and I imagine they, too, will change with time.

Your fingers, toes, and limbs are all long. Like, really long.

At birth you weighed 10 lbs, 22 inches. At about a week old you were 10.4 lbs and 22 1/2 inches. At your one month appointment (at 5 weeks) you weighed 12.5 lbs and were 24 inches long. Your head circumference is 15.5 inches. sonny05b

 

Eating: I breastfeed you on demand. I’ve been floating through these days too much to take note of any sort of pattern, but there does seem to be some vague sense of one forming.

You like to cluster feed, especially in the evenings and will either flip flop between breasts several times or separate feedings by a mere 30 minutes.

You have a great latch and fortunately the whole breastfeeding gig has been smooth for both of us.

You’ll take a bottle and we’re trying to remember to give you at least an ounce of expressed milk once a week or so to keep up on this skill.

You’ll latch onto anything. A video of you latching onto your Papa’s nose has generated over 81K views on instagram with only a small handful exercising their social media policing powers. Hashtag: eye roll.

If I had to guess, I’d say you nurse a total 8-9 times during the day and 2-4 times during the night. sonny07b
Sleeping: By your second week, you were sleeping in 2 to 3 hour increments, with a rare 4 hour stretch thrown in once, I think. For the first two weeks, feedings took an average of an hour (30 minutes on each side).

By the third week, our nighttime schedule looked like this: go to sleep about 10pm, wake up around 1am, 4am, 7am. I think there was one 5 hour stretch slipped in on one of those nights. Feedings took an average of 15-20 minutes on each side, for a total of 30-40 minutes per feeding.

At one month, you wake, on average, every 3 hours and nurse for a total of 15 minutes or so on each side. Sometimes you’ll fall asleep without taking both sides. Most nights we go to bed around 9 or 10pm and you wake around 1 or 2am, again around 4am, and for the day around 7am.

We’re sleeping together, in the guest bed.

You’ve been sleeping in the woombie, which Hooper refers to as your ‘worm packet’ since week one. You sleep much better in it.

Even when you wake to feed, you don’t cry; instead you let out a few grunts and gently start kicking your feet.

Your farts during the night are enough to make the bed vibrate. sonny20b
Development: You spend much of your day either sleeping or eating.

You prefer turning your head to your left over the right. The doc noted that the left side of your head is slightly flatter.

You’re independent in the sense that you don’t need to be on or around anyone; you’re content to snooze wherever we lay you and in true third child fashion, not much disturbs you. This is in-spite of the fact you’re constantly being kissed by your brothers or licked by Jimmie. I suppose it just comes with the territory and you’ve proven to combat any distractions with some wonderful adaptation techniques.

You don’t mind being on your tummy.

Other than peeing on me during your bath, twice, you have not sprung a leak while having your diaper changed. Considering your brother peed in your Papa’s mouth, we’re all celebrating this small victory.

You’re patient. Again, I chalk this up to being the product of a third born. You rarely cry when you’re hungry or need to be changed, using quite grunts to tell us gently that you’re hungry or uncomfortable.

When you are awake, it’s obvious the wheels are spinning. You lock eyes with us on occasion and study our smiles; I can tell you’re trying to smile back, it just isn’t translating quite yet.

You don’t care who holds you, you’ll cuddle with whoever’s arms you’re in. I’m sure this will change in time, but I remember both of your brothers’ always preferring to be on me, at all times.

You’ll take a pacifier for a short period of time but end up spitting it out. You prefer to suck on a finger instead. And not your own, unless – that is – it happens to land in your mouth. In general, you’re just not that coordinated yet.

sonny08b

All of these lovely images are by my talented friend, Noel, whom I am greatly indebted to. You can check out her site here and follow her gorgeous instagram feed here

Van @ 1 Month

Whew! The month I have coined as “survival month” has come and gone and by golly, not only did I survive, but I truly cherished each day. And I don’t even smell bad. You know why? Because I showered. Everyday. Woot woot. I’m telling you, the things we come to brag about sure change when we become moms. I told a girl at the store that I got four consecutive hours of sleep one night. She looked at me with this poor you kinda face. Little did she know I was bragging. Four hours of consecutive sleep and I feel like a million bucks. Anyway, here’s to your first month, Van! (Cheers, high fives, dosey does all around)…
Growth: You weighed 9 pounds, 8 ounces at birth and were 21 inches long. On the day we left the hospital, two days after you were born, your weight dropped to 8 pounds, 14 ounces. By the next morning, you had already gained an ounce when weighed at your first doctor’s appointment. Two days later than that, you gained three more ounces. You out-grew newborn diapers in the womb and are already wearing a size 1. At your one month checkup, you weigh an incredible 12 pounds (91st percentile = high fives all around) and are 23.5 inches long (95th percentile). I’m curious to see how your weight fluctuates. Hooper was in the 90th percentile at birth and dropped to his lowest, 10th percentile, sometime before six months of age. I could careless about percentiles this time around and feel pretty confident, based on all your pissing and shitting, that you’re getting just what you need. It is such a relief to not have to worry about your weight. 

 

Appearance: Your hair is light brown and your eyes appear steel blue, which I imagine will turn brown in time. The sclera of your eyes were red at birth, proof of being pushed into my pubic bone for three hours. You have a small birth mark on the top of your head, long skinny fingers and toes, and long skinny legs. You looked almost identical to your brother initially, but after your second week of life I’m not so sure. You seem to have different features and at this point in time, you look more like your Papa. Even more than your Papa, you look like Benjamin Button. You have a bald spot on the top right part of your head where your newborn hair has already fallen out, which doesn’t help the old man resemblance. You Papa says the bald spot will make you a faster runner. And your eyebrows and eyelashes are so light they appear non-existent.

 

Feeding: You are a tit sucking mongrel. They say I should feed you every two to three hours, but sometimes not more than an hour goes by before you’re rooting again. My milk came in on your third day of life and my boobies look so full and plentiful because of it. Sure beats the saggy tits your brother left me with. So thank you, we are both benefiting. You like to cluster feed in the mornings and evenings, gearing up for a long nights rest (I hope) and an afternoon nap (I hope). 

 

Sleeping: You’re a newborn, which means you don’t sleep for any length of time. On the plus side, you do sleep. On the negative side, you sleep mostly during the day and then expect me to party with you all night long. My days of staying up late drinking are long gone, please learn to drink your milk during the day and sleep at night. The days of swaddling seemed like so long ago, but alas, have returned. I must have swaddled and re-swaddled you twenty times a night for the first week or so. The best was when I would unswaddle you to check your diaper, discover it’s clean, then re-swaddle you only to hear a loud shit explosion come out your butt. I slept with you on the sofa for the first three weeks of life to allow Papa to get better rest so he could care for all of us during the day. He had the first couple weeks of your life off from work. You make lots of little noises during the night and I’ve had a hard time sleeping even when you’re sleeping because it always seems like you’re about to wake up. You’re in your crib now and sleeping much better. Co-sleeping doesn’t work for us. 

 

Development: Again, you’re a newborn, so development at this stage consists of opening your eyes from time and time. You are quite the wiggle worm and I presume you be an early roller just like your brother. You eat, you sleep, you shit, you pee. That’s about it. I lie, you’re also into staring at the ceiling. And not because you’re lying down on your back, but because you really and truly love the contrast of the ceiling beams. Your brother was the same way. Even when you’re sitting upright, you tweak your head to see those things. You also seem to recognize faces. Your Papa brags about the 20 minute love affair he had while you gazed into his eyes. You have a very peaceful and gentle disposition thus far, but of course that’s subject to change. 

 

Some other tidbits:
-We’ve taken to calling you “Vanderson” as a nickname. Typically nicknames are a shortened version of your given name. We are aware that we have added to you name. And we don’t care. You also call you our “little bean”.
-If you were a girl, you were going to be named Penelope. It’s a good thing you came late, however, because we would have been stuck in the shadow of the Kardashian chick who named her daughter Penelope just days before you were born. We both agree we would have had to change your name last minute. I know, we’re dumb for caring, right?
-It’s only fair to confess that you have tried to latch onto your Papa’s hairy nipple. And his nose. More than once. We call this maneuver “the woodpecker”.
-You don’t fuss often. When you do, it’s usually followed by a shit explosion. This leads to your helpful Papa changing your diaper, which in turn leads to you pissing a mile high stream into the air just as he’s about the fold over the clean diaper. It’s true, each diaper change has required at least one, sometimes two, extra diapers.
-For the record, your Papa treated himself to a massage before me. I’m just saying, for the record.
-You make many odd noises in your sleep. Sometimes they resemble a pig squealing, other times they sound like a pissed off cat or an old man grunting. It makes co-sleeping undesirable and led me to research “baby grunting syndrome”… apparently it’s a syndrome and apparently it’s normal and supposedly you’ll grow out of it. If not, I feel for your future roommates and wife.
-I’m pretty sure your brother realized his life had changed as evidenced by the random whacks on the head. By the second week, however, I’m fairly certain he has no recollection of life without you. The whacks have seemingly been replaced with an eagerness, and I mean a down right insistence, to hold you, kiss you, and get right in front of your face to say “hi-yee!”.

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