Newstocks

Superbaby!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's Superbaby!

Aidan tries on his Halloween costume... and gets the pose just right!

One month

Last Wednesday, Aidan turned one month old. He’s already beginning to change.

When he was born, I was surprised to discover that he didn’t have any eyelashes. While feeding him yesterday, however, I noticed that they’re now starting to grow. He seems to be blinking more now too.

He’s continuing to eat well, usually taking a full 5oz of milk now at feedings. At the two-stage feed we do at 5.30pm and 6.30pm he has no problem knocking back 6oz and often wants more. I don’t think we’re over-feeding him, but sometimes his cheeks look awfully chubby! We think he’s probably getting on for 12 lbs now, which seems consistent with the amount he’s eating (we’ve been told that the number of ounces of milk that a baby should be able to take in one feed is roughly equal to half his weight in pounds).

He’s still not particularly interactive, although he will now stare at us for longer than he used to, if he’s in the mood. We’ve been trying to work out if any of the smiles that he occasionally flashes us are a result of anything other than gas. At the moment, the answer seems to be “probably not”. We can sometimes elicit a smile by stroking from his cheek to his chin, but I think that’s just reflexive. Hopefully it won’t be long before his first real smile though. Whether we’ll recognise it when it comes is another question.

The noises that Aidan makes are still mostly unintelligible. However, when I was playing with him yesterday he did make an “a” sound that stood out from the background grunts and exclamations. I spent the next ten minutes trying to get him to repeat it, without success. It’s amazing to think that one day I’m actually going to be able to have a conversation with him.

Sleeping patterns

Last Sunday we decided that Aidan should start sleeping in his own room at night.

Since coming home from the hospital we had kept him in our bedroom, mostly because we felt a greater sense of security having him somewhere close by. But after two weeks of having our sleep disturbed by the little noises he makes throughout the night, we began to wonder what the advantage of having him in our room really was. It may be convenient for breastfeeding mothers, who don’t have to go far to grab the baby for his middle-of-the-night feeds, but since Aidan is being bottle fed, we have to go to the kitchen anyway.

We now put the baby monitor next to the crib in his room and take a receiver into our room, turned low so we only hear him when he really starts making a fuss. Aidan doesn’t seem to mind the change of sleeping location and we’re getting better sleep too.

Happily, we seem to have succeeded (touch wood) in getting Aidan into a good routine. He now goes to bed around 7pm every night and sleeps until 10.30pm. The value of this can't be overstated: it usually means we get to eat dinner undisturbed and have the evening to ourselves. At 10.30pm we feed him again and put him straight back to bed. He then usually only wakes once in the middle of the night, around 3am. During the week, while I'm at work, Mandy has been doing this feed. Since she's on maternity leave until January it's easier for her to catch up on her sleep during the day.

On Friday and Saturday nights, however, it's my job. I usually stay up until it's time for the feed, since I'm a fairly heavy sleeper and find it difficult to wake in the middle of the night. Even before Aidan came along, I often used to stay up until the small hours playing video games - a bad habit that I started when doing World of Warcraft instance runs. It's nice to be able to use that habit now to make the 3am feedings easier for me, while giving me some guilt-free gaming time too. Mandy also sleeps better, since it allows her to turn the baby monitor in our room off until I come to bed.

My only concern now is what happens to my guilt-free gaming time when he starts sleeping through the night!

Little swimmer

Yesterday, Aidan had his first swimming lesson.

Being a swimming instructor, Mandy has been itching to get Aidan in a swimming pool since practically the day after he was born. Unfortunately, since the heater at her parents’ pool isn’t working at the moment, the water in it is too cold for a baby. So instead, Mandy decided to give Aidan his first lesson in our bath.

The first thing we had to do was swap his regular pair of Huggies (which would have instantly ballooned in the water) for a pair of Huggies Little Swimmers. Unfortunately, the smallest size in these is intended for babies between 16 and 26 lbs (almost twice Aidan’s current weight), since most babies aren’t swimming when they’re still less than 3 weeks old. So they were a little big on him, but we made do. With a pair of swimming trunks on top he looked very sporty!

I wasn’t sure that we’d be able to get enough water in the bath for him to float, but I was wrong. With Mandy supporting his head, Aidan spent about five minutes doing back floats, and for the most part was very happy doing so. If he carries on like this, I fully expect him to be doing butterfly before his first birthday!

Natural born hiccupper

While he was still in utero, Aidan hiccupped a lot. I’d often sit with my hand on Mandy’s belly and grin at the regularly-spaced spasms that I felt. The idea that a fetus could have the hiccups seemed very strange to me.

They say that babies that hiccup a lot when they’re still in the womb tend to hiccup a lot when they get out too, and so it has proven to be with Aidan. The poor guy usually has to contend with a hiccupping fit at least once a day, which can go on for as long as ten minutes.

Thankfully, the hiccups don’t seem to bother Aidan much. What is rather alarming, however, is how much his chest dimples in with each one!