7.6.99 and 7.10.99

Well, as usual, I’m not getting everything done that I want to.  My goal was to be writing lots and lots of things down for Milo, and I’m doing okay with the day to day things, but not enough with the indepth business.

Anyway, it’s already murky in my mind, so I better get this down now:  When we brought Milo home, I always took the night shift with the baby and slept on the couch and Curtis took the 6am shift until he went into work.  At first, I was on the couch, but then we convinced my mom to lend us one of their guest beds, and I put it in my office.  Then I kept Milo with me in there.  From the beginning, he was a TERRIBLE sleeper.  He would sleep for 20 minutes or so at a time.  I remember once, falling asleep and waking up terrified because an hour had gone by and he hadn’t woken me up.  I was afraid to look in his stroller (that’s where he slept, even though we had a crib, a play pen, and a bassinett – he didn’t like the bassinet, and the others weren’t portable) for fear that he’d stopped breathing.  Of course, before I even got to him, he started fussing.  Yes, he’d slept for an hour, but not a second more!  He slept the best when I was holding him in the rocker.  I have a neat set up for feeding:  the recliner next to the big picture window, with the cedar chest to the side of it.  It looks terrible, but when there’s company over, I can put up the fireplace screen with a blanket over it, and have total privacy without having to leave the room and miss the conversation.  He also didn’t eat much, but he always seemed to be feeding.  He is/was known as a nip and napper.  So yes, a terrible eater and sleeper, but at first, he was remarkably laid back.  He loved to be held and rocked, and as long as you did that, he just hung out and loved right back.

          Now, today is day 70 – a big milestone, because he spent 70 days in the NICU, and now he’s been home for 70 days.  Nice nice.  Milo eats much better now, not quite so constant, although, he still stretches feedings longer than the books and doctor say we’re supposed to.  He’s found his fists and thumbs, and he’s begun “self consoling” a little.  It’s really exciting to watch him fuss a little and then a few seconds later start munching away on his hands.  It’s nice to know that if I can’t get to him right away when he cries, I have a little lee-way.  The sleeping situation is still pretty disastrous.

July 10, 1999

I had to go the other day because he started crying.  Anyway, I guess I spoke too soon about him being a more efficient eater.  I guess he’s going through another growth spurt.  I swear, in the last two days, I haven’t been able to stop nursing for hours at a time.  It’s pretty much:  Curtis goes to work, I feed him and feed him and feed him and feed him, we take a bath around 5:30, I feed him and feed him, Curtis comes home, Milo starts his longest sleep of the day:  Anywhere between 7pm-1am, never for more than 4 hours at a stretch, but it’s great – nice break, and a nice opportunity to play catch up with my husband and with the housework (that’s not such a nice opportunity…but a necessary one).

In the last few weeks, Milo has begun having fussy periods in the evening.  I’ve found that the less we leave the house, the less fussy he is.  When we go out and do a lot, he falls apart and is very difficult to calm.  The other day, we went to Plain Gramma’s house, and at first it was just me, Mom, and Gramma and Grampa, but then Brad, Laurie, Ashley, Brian, Julie, Whitney, Greg, Brianna, Zack, and Jenny came along, and by the time the party was in full swing, Milo was screaming so loud, he was overtaking even my loudest relatives.  Jenny was in from NYC, and we were talking over his screaming (or trying to, anyway), and Jenny (not unkindly) said “Yeah, I’d heard Milo was a crier.”  I was totally unprepared for how devastated I was when she said that.  It was my first outside parental criticism.  I’m a bad mommy because my baby’s a crier.  But, Milo, when you read this some day:  You are NOT a crier.  You do have bad days some times, although usually it’s only a bad hour here and there.  You have an evening fussy period that is common in 85% of all babies.  As a baby, you are a snuggler, a hugger, and you’ve just started being a talker (baby talk, of course – lots of vowel sounds that melt my heart).  Today, you squealed at your stuffed frog that Grandma Sonie gave you.  I can’t tell yet if you’re going to be a happy baby.  You look so much like my father, that I fear you’ll be ultra serious like him, too.  Although, on the bright side, my father has so many really terrific qualities.  But he’s very serious.  If you end up being serious, I fear it will take no time at all for you to come to the conclusion that your father and I are complete idiots.  I’m still rather hoping that you’ll be an idiot along with us:  making dumb jokes and laughing at each other’s ridiculous-ness.  But if you like sports and lawn mowing like my dad…well, we’ll handle that just fine.