I’m so exhausted today for so many reasons. I’m trying to navigate my way through family drama and shifting priorities. I am learning the hard way that while I may have many roles–wife, mother, daughter, sister, teacher, and more–that certain roles have to take priority, namely those of wife and mother. I need to convince my extended family, especially my mother, of the same. I can’t be daughter first and then wife and mother.

It’s a strange shift, a strange bit of grappling I’m doing. I need to write about it, but I don’t know if I’m ready to go into it much yet. All I know is that there is a huge shift that has to take place if our new little family is to thrive. I never realized just how many things would change as a result of having a child. I never knew it would be so hard to maintain so many relationships or to endure their changes. What I do know is that my relationship with my wife and my dedication to my son have to take priority over everything else now, even if this means disappointing others in my life.

So as we recently reported, our baby boy is growing at exponential rates. Friends have pointed out that he is nearly the size their babies were at six months. Our baby is a mere two months old. While for the most part, we’re okay with his size, there are some things that are less practical about it, and one of the biggest issues is that he’s just plain growing out of things.

Let’s take his sleeping arrangement. Instead of getting a co-sleeper or bassinette, we bought a moses basket in hopes of keeping cost down and having something that was rather portable for him to sleep in for his first few months. In fact, we were hoping it might last him to six months. Sounds like a good idea, right? Well it was,or rather, it might have been for an average-sized baby. While our Baby Genius has enjoyed his moses basket, and we have enjoyed its portability very much, but look at this:

Yes, he has nearly outgrown the basket. Fortunately, we rarely lay him down without swaddling him, so this takes his length down a few inches, but I think we have less than a month before our son has outgrown his bed. We aren’t sure what to do after this. We have a crib, but we’re pretty committed to having him sleep next to our bed right now. We’ve got a great night-time routine that involves staying in bed for feedings and diaper changings and just placing him back in his basket when he falls back to sleep. It keeps us all sane, especially on nights when he wakes up a lot. We’re not ready to move him to his room, and frankly, his crib scares him. Right now, we put him in it for play time, but I think all the extra space is overwhelming to him. J and I also like having him there, but we’re getting closer and closer to needing a whole new sleeping arrangement after just two months.

We’re finding, too, that he grows so rapidly out of his clothes. He has already gone through two clothing sizes. At two months old, he’s wearing either 3 month or 3-6 month clothes. We were fortunate to have several friends give us clothes before he was born, but we also bought plenty of items for him. Who doesn’t want to buy new clothes for their new baby, right? Sadly, there are a number of items we bought new that he was only able to wear once or twice. A few items we purchased at our local consignment shop he never got to wear.

Today we began to realize that it won’t be long before our son outgrows his infant car seat. It was just another of many things that we researched until we found the right one only to learn now that we’ll only be able to use it for a few months. There is no doubt in my mind that we’ll have to replace this thing by the time he’s six months old, unless his growth slows significantly.

Obviously, we can’t do much about this but find a place of acceptance and move forward, but J and I find ourselves on a regular basis turning to each other in shock and dismay that our son has outgrown something else. Had we known we were going to have such a Baby Giant, had we known he was going to be on some sort of crazy infant steroids, we might have made some different choices–shelled out the extra cash for a true co-sleeper, for instance–but then again,I doubt there is much we could have done.

He laughed today. Our Baby Genius laughed and laughed as he stared at his string of elephants above his changing table. I almost missed it because I was in the bathroom washing out a diaper while J changed him, but she called me in, and he kept laughing and laughing.

Until now, he has giggled only in his sleep. He had a fluke giggle-type-thing once in response to the same elephants, but this was unmistakable and conscious and so incredible. So as our boy laughed and laughed at those crazy elephants, I cried and cried. I have waited so long for this moment, and now I have a new favorite sound.

It certainly makes last night, our worst night of sleep yet, seem like a distant memory.

Thanks so much for the sleep suggestions and also for the sympathy. We do swaddle Baby Genius, and this, I believe is the only reason he (and consequently, we) gets any sleep at all. Otherwise his roaming hands and wild feet would wake him up instantly. That said, we’re convinced he must be Houdini reincarnated, for given the time, this boy can escape even the tightest of swaddles. We often awake to hear him grunting only to look over and find him wriggling his shoulders until he can bust a hand loose. There is a very specific grunt associated with the swaddle break, and despite our frustration with his unwillingness to sleep, we find his escape artist ways to be very cute. I think we’re going to start trying the special swaddler wraps again to see if they’ll confine him (I can see his eyes glinting at the new challenge already). Before, these things would just result in wild kicking, but his sleep kicking seems to have subsided some.

On the pacifier front, we just can’t get him to take one on his own. For him, pacifiers are a social habit, much like smoking can be. If Mama (J) holds it for him and talks to him, he’ll take it, but the moment she tries to walk away, he spits it out. He won’t take it from me at all. We have these old school natural rubber pacifiers that we use, and I thought maybe they were too big or heavy, so I got some run-of-the-mill silicone pacifiers, but he completely refuses those. The kid prefers his either social sucking on the old school paci or just his fist or his arm (he occasionally even gives himself hickies)–or better yet, Mama’s finger–if he must be pacified at all.

I have even tried putting him down for naps in his crib this week, and even when he seems to be in the soundest of sleeps, he’ll awaken just moments after I leave the room.

I fear that he may just not be much of a sleeper, and that would be okay if he didn’t get so cranky about it. But it is entirey possible that he’s going through another growth spurt and that this is a temporary strike. Only time will tell.

Our boy had decided he’s not fond of sleep anymore, especially during the day. He won’t sleep longer than half an hour for his daytime naps, and we never know when we put him down if he’s going to awaken after a  few brief moments or not. If we want him to sleep at all during the day, we usually have to keep him on one of us. 

At night, he typically doesn’t go longer than three hours (and that’s a good night) in his basket. Lately, he seems to need to awaken at night every hour and a half. Sometimes it’s because he’s hungry; other times, it’s because he just wants comfort.

For awhile, we had a fairly reliable night time routine, where he went down for the night at around 7:00. We would wake him up for a diaper change and to eat at ten. He would be back to sleep by eleven and would then sleep until 2:00 or 3:00. It was great. Those days are no longer. It seems our trip out of town, combined with the time change has resulted in a baby who refuses to sleep in the evening too. Instead, he becomes so very tired that he fusses and fusses. Our evenings are becoming fairly exhausting.

We are beginning to wonder when our boy will succumb to sleep again. Is he going to be fifteen and waking us up three times a night?

Today brought us my favorite family moment yet: our first family bath.

At first, it was just me and our baby. I held him as he floated around and kicked in the water. His eyes were bright and wide, his body relaxed. He was so happy, so alert, so peaceful. J was sitting on the side of the tub helping me bathe our son, but before long, when she recognized the magic in the moment, she got in too. We sat quietly in the tub, wearing nothing but sleepy smiles, floating our son back and forth to each other. We each held him close. We both swelled with love.

After we all dried off and diapered the boy, after we donned our comfiest of comfy clothes, we curled up on our bed, listened to the rain, and took a nap.

We have had a hard week, a week of tears, fights, and difficult compromises, but these simple, precious moments today brought us healing and closeness. They brought us back home.

Dear Baby Genius,

Today you turn two months old. I can hardly believe that two months have passed since I first held you, and yet it really does feel like you’ve been here forever. Baby boy, you are amazing. Every morning as our little family wakes up, I am surprised all over again at how much I can love a little person like you. Often, your mama and I will marvel at how much cuter you seem to get each time we look away for just a few moments. You’re positively adorable with your big blue saucer eyes, bowtie lips, and dimples on your pudgy cheeks. You are indeed our chubby, chubby cherub.

This month, the smiles have come in earnest. They started out these awkward smiles that would come on in a crooked sort of way until your mouth was wide open and your eyes were sparkling. Now you have all kinds of smiles. You have little grins, half-smiles, and my favorite, the big, whole-face, mouth-wide-open smile. You melt my heart with these grins, especially when you are nursing, and I look down to see you grinning up at me. That’s the sort of thing that will turn your mommy to goo.

You’ve got some new favorite things this month. Your changing table, which your grandpa built for you, has become your favorite place to be. Above your table are your dangling elephants with the bell attached, and when we lie you down on your table, we ring the bell. This elicited your first giggle one day, and even when you’re in a bad mood, it can bring a smile to your face. You also seem to love the picture above the table, as well as the light fixture, which casts circle shadows on the wall and across your face. You wiggle uncontrollably when one of us hits the light fixture to make the dots dance.

This past week, you really started to find  your voice. You have all kinds of coos and sweet sounds you make, and sometimes you’ll have a full conversation with us. You also like to talk to your moose, your bird mobile, Francois the Fish, and the new fish on your activity mat. You have a beautiful voice, and we’re looking forward to hearing more and more of it in the months to come.

This month showed us a new, alert Baby Genius. You like to interact with your moms and to be held, but you also like to chill on your own from time to time. The B.oppy pillow has become what we call your easy chair. You lie back in it and jabber on about Baby Genius things. We’re guessing you’re giving lectures on quantum physics; we just don’t understand your language yet. However, your gesticulating gives you away every time. You also positively love your new activity mat that your grandma gave you. You get to kick a jingly ball (kicking is another favorite pasttime of yours), and you get to coo and yell at the fish. It’s great fun for you, and it’s even more fun for us to see your little personality emerging. We can already tell you’re going to be a fun and curious boy.

You must enjoy all of these great activities a lot because you sure don’t like to sleep anymore. Most of your daytime naps are no more than twenty minutes. If we want you to sleep longer, we have to hold you or wear you, and while we always love holding you, there are times when your moms need to get things done. It would be really cool if you could start taking a longer nap or two during the day. Naps are really great. I think you could come to like them.

This month brought you a series of firsts. You met lots of people for the first time: your uncle and aunt who were living far away, your great-grandma, your other great-grandparents, your cousin, my cousins, and your moms’ dear friend, Aunt A. And guess what, Baby Genius? Everyone loves you. You smile at everyone, and you sleep on them too. You even managed to poop on Aunt A, and she still adored you.

You also had your first road trip, your first Halloween, and your first nights away from home. You took all of this in stride, and you were utterly charming, even when your toddler cousin screamed “Baby!” at you every time she saw you.

And finally, you had your first round of immunizations. These made you miserable. They made you scream, and they made your moms cry. Your mama and I agree that if we could, we would get them for you. Since you got your shots, you have been a much crabbier Baby Genius, and you have nursed and nursed and nursed, but you are recovering, and you won’t have to go back for more for another two months. At that same appointment, we learned that you are growing so very big! You are a whopping fourteen pounds, and you are over twenty-four inches long. Your doctor says you’re a healthy guy, and you seem to like him, even though he’s always pretending to drop you (he seems to like to check out your startle reflex).

Baby Genius, we are having such a good time getting to know you. You inspire us to make up all kinds of crazy songs about you (our new favorites: “Squirmy McWiggles” and “King of the Swamp”), and we find ourselves doing everything we can to make you smile. There are times when you are finally asleep in the evening when your mama and I look at each other and agree that we miss you and just need to hold you, so we do, even if it means you might wake up. There is nothing so wonderful as cuddling with our sweet boy. We both know that all too soon you won’t be interested in snuggling with your moms, so we’re soaking this up while we can.

Oh, baby boy, I know there is so much more that I could say about this month, but words tend to fail me when I try to describe our time with you. You have changed everything; you have brightened our world and made our hearts so much bigger, and we know it’s just going to get better and better from here. Thank you for choosing us, little crocodile.

Love,

Mommy

two months old

I’m finally dipping back into my fabulous reader questions, and today, I’ll be focusing on Elsha Quinn’s question: 

 How did you choose C’s name?

Our son’s name* was something one of us saw a couple of years ago on some baby name site. We saw it once and then never could find it again, so for some time, I thought maybe we had made it up. Nevertheless, we loved it because it was unique without sounding unfamiliar or strange, and it was the one name we could agree upon. I have no idea what we would have done with twin boys. Perhaps the second would still be called Baby Boy ____-____.

Initially, we thought the name had Irish origins, and once we were able to find versions of it online again, we did learn that it is a relatively rare Irish surname; however, we also learned that it is a somewhat common boy’s name in Japan, but spelled K-a-e-m-o-n. Of course, there is also the link to the Cayman Islands and to caimans, caiman being the genus name for crocodiles.

Early on in my pregnancy, J was convinced we were having a girl, and my only regret about that was that we might not get to use this great boy’s name. Of course, things turned out quite differently, and we’re so happy to have this boy with this name. It suits him.

Needless to say, once people made the crocodile connection, our son started acquiring a large variety of crocodile paraphernalia. Who am I kidding? We went crazy with the crocodile stuff too. We have even made up crocodile songs about our boy, and one of his many nicknames is “King of the Swamp.” I fear I may be oversharing here about our family life, but there you have it; this is what happens to a couple of academics when a baby boy steals their hearts.

As for our son’s middle name, it was a favorite name of J’s for years. It is also my step-father’s name, and J’s dad was called by this name’s nickname (Pat). She always wanted it as a first name, but because it is the name of someone in my immediate family, I just didn’t want to go there. I think kids deserve some autonomy with their first names. Middle names, on the other hand, are so often throwaway names, so I think they’re a nice place to honor people, and this is what we have done.

Our son’s last name is not something I’ll share here, but  it is a hyphenation of our last names, both of which have two syllables. We played with a few options here. We entertained the thought of developing a single family name, but both of us are kind of attached to our last names. We thought about giving him just one of our last names, but that didn’t seem right either, so eventually, we defaulted to hyphenation.

Baby Genius has a lot of name, but he’s a substantial boy, so it somehow seems appropriate. We know that he can pull it off.

–

*We aren’t writing our son’s name here because its spelling is unique, and we don’t want people to be able to search for him here. You are welcome to view this photo here to see his name’s spelling, but please do not use his name in comments.

Perhaps instead of Baby Genius we should be calling our son Baby Giant. We had his two-month well baby visit today, and he is still huge. In fact, he is huger.

Weight: 14 pounds 1 ounce (95th percentile)

Height: 24.5 inches (90th percentile)

We knew he was getting big because he’s growing so rapidly out of his clothes, but this is quite remarkable. At this rate, he’s going to be the size of a five-year-old at three months! It really is shocking sometimes to see this little guy growing so quickly. It’s harder and harder to fathom that this was the baby in my belly, the one I pushed out of me, but he is, and sometimes when I see someone else holding him, he still looks like that tiny little baby he (sort of) is. But on a regular basis, he really does look huge.

Because this was his two-month visit, we also had to endure his first round of immunizations. J and I did struggle a bit with the vaccination issue. Generally, we are pro-immunization, but we also have problems with the irresponsible and greedy actions of the drug companies who make vaccines, so this was hard in a number of ways. That said, we are also unwilling to expose our child to ailments like pertussis and diphtheria when such diseases are easily prevented with vaccines. So we went through with it today, and it sucked.

They did allow me to nurse BG while his shots were administered, and this worked with the first one, after which he let our a horrible wail but then was easily soothed by some nursing. The second and third sticks (why three? why?) were horrible. He turned nearly purple, opened his mouth so wide, and just screamed his little head off. He couldn’t nurse anymore because he was too upset. My wife turned white, and the nurse was concerned about her. I felt bad too because I had made her stay despite her earlier pleading to let her wait outside. Once the nurse was gone and we had settled the baby and gotten him back into his carseat, J and I hugged and cried. It was so heartbreaking to see our little guy go through this.

We were led to believe by many message boards that our son would come home after his shots and sleep off the trauma, but that is not the way our Baby Genius operates. He slept for about twenty minutes, after which he was ready to wake up and breastfeed nonstop. I handed him over to J just fifteen  minutes ago after feeding him for nearly three hours straight, and I can already hear him crying to nurse again. It has now been four hours since his appointment, and the boy refuses to sleep.

But he’s really, really cute. Here is our Baby Genius in the onesie from the ladies over at Chronicles of Conception (It’s size 3-6 mos. and already almost too short. Did I mention that he’s big?):

Baby Genius

And here are some bonus shots from the weekend:

Sweet Boy

"Don't make me use this thing!"

I haven’t taken the opportunity to talk about my body much at all since I gave birth, but circumstances have presented themselves that encourage me to do so.

In short, I’ve got my first postpartum period.

That’s right, readers. I am eight weeks postpartum, and I’ve got my period. For the record, my postpartum bleeding ended completely only two and a half weeks ago. How did I get to be so lucky?

I meant to write about this last week. I had a feeling this was coming. I had EWCM galore and even some ovulation pain. Still, I thought naively, I’m breastfeeding. I won’t have a period for at least a couple of months. Ha. Ha. Ha bloody ha. On Saturday while at my parents’ I had my first hottub since I got pregnant, and on that same day, some spotting, and it was all downhill from there. Amusingly enough, I assumed it might just be a little more postpartum bleeding. Ha.

I guess this means I’m fertile again. My wife jokingly asked today, “Do you want to start TTCing again?” Not today, dear. Not today.