theparkerfamily

The quick brown fox jumped over the good, but lazy Parker family.

birth weight

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

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ECPA20091028_0505, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
i think we’ve totally become some of “those” people — the kind of people who do nothing but talk about their kids, and (worse yet) their kids bodily functions.

i think this puts us right along side senior citizens who only talk about their latest surgeries (which is probably exactly what people like us become in 30 years) or New York Yankee’s fans who only talk about their 26 27 world serieses (decidedly not what we’ll become, unfortunately).

with this realization, however, comes expectancy — and news about sparklet’s bodily functions.

we had our fourth pediatrician appointment today, and sparklet has packed on nearly a whole pound (15 ounces) since the last visit two weeks ago. this is a huge relief because she had lost a ton of weight by the time we left the hospital (~8%) and she’s now back above her birth weight finally … albeit by only three ounces.

the driving force (obviously) is that she is downing milk like it’s going out of style. she’s doing about six one-hour feedings a day (6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, 2am) and is up to about four ounces at each. this is *ALOT* of milk, and we’re still having to supplement with some formula to cover the massive and sudden jump in sparklet’s intake.

the (mostly) great side effect of all this is that her energy is through the roof, which means that she is regularly staying up for an hour or two after feedings … and is particularly active after the ones where we want her to go to bed straightaway (eg. the 10pm/2am feedings).

soooo, the lady sparkler and i have rotated our schedules around a bit to manage. she goes to sleep now at 7pm, i cover the 10pm, we swap places midnight, she covers the 2 am, she grabs whatever sleep she can, we both handle the 6am, after which I go to work, and sparklet/mommy get a couple more hours of sleep before the 10am.

before this weekend, we had been doing a lot of joint feedings (mommy is the starting pitcher, goes deep in the game, i’m the closer for those last essential outs) but the added “awake” time has forced us to rethink exactly how important it is for us to bond over babies, bottles, and … well, you know.

i hear all this settles down at month three, or maybe four. of course, i’m pretty sure that’s in 2010 … so, thank god she’s so damn cute.