Becoming A Dad

On Friday we drove from Vancouver, BC to Portland Oregon. Total distance is about 500 km/360 miles and normally takes about 5-1/2 to 6 hours. Our trip down took about 10 hours.

Heading down we got stuck at the border (US Customs) which took us 2 hours to clear - 1 hour and a bit for waiting to get to the border kiosks, then just under an hour waiting inside (Becoming A Mom is travelling on a foreign passport despite being a Canadian Citizen). After than it was about an hour to feed baby Juliette before getting back on the road. About an hour later we found ourselves in a 2-hour traffic jam from just south of Everett to somewhere south of Tacoma… dead stops at multiple points along the way, with no period driving above 60 km/hr during that 2 hours. Frustrating! Another stop to feed and give Juliette a little exercise and outside time, then it was the final stretch to Portland. With Juliette screaming in the car seat for the final hour of the drive.

Once we got to Portland everything settled down. Baby Juliette was surprisingly happy to be in the hotel room and fell asleep almost instantly after having a sponge bath and feed.

We had a nice relaxing weekend, and Juliette seemed pretty happy with the change of scenery. We’d worried that she’d freak out not being in familiar spaces, but that didn’t happen.

The drive home Sunday evening was uneventful, though we once again spent too much time at a dead stop or crawling along at 60 km/hr or less for at least an hour from Olympia to just north of Tacoma. Sheesh!

All in all the vacation was a success - the car performed well with all the baby stuff (portable crib, stroller, changing bag, car seat, toys) and little Juliette didn’t mind it to much at all. This bodes well for future trips away.

It seems the aliens did a silent software upgrade to our baby Peach the past week. And like most Service Pack 1 releases, it’s not been going very smoothly.

First, the upgrade has introduced new features and improved processing. Baby Peach can now reach out and grab items, and move them around at will. She’s able to lift her head up fully when she’s on her belly. She’s learning new ways of vocalizing and (unfortunately) scream.

However these features have come at a price. No longer is she content to play on her playmat and make noises at her little hanging stuffed friends for an hour. Now she tires of their company after only a few minutes and loudly complains to all around about the injustices she’s experiencing. Ditto for the nice swinging chair - before she used to fall asleep pretty quickly in it and sleep for an hour or so. Now if she’s not in the mood to sleep, she’ll shriek and fight and yell until we give in and pick her up.

In general she’s demanding more face-time and stimulation than before. She gets bored of the house and fusses and cries until we get it and take her outside for a walk. And now she’s busy staring at the trees! So happy to be outside and seeing them that she’ll do her little happy dance waving her arms and legs about with an ecstatic smile from ear to ear.

Finally she’s broken her pattern of eating and sleeping, no longer napping during the afternoon as much. She’s feeding more frequently again (up to 10 times per day after dropping to 6-8 times) and she’s not feeding as strongly. To boot, when Becoming A Mom gets tired of her playing with her nipple and pulls it from baby Peach’s mouth, Peach will have a screaming and flailing full-on tantrum for the next 3-5 minutes.

I think it’s going to be a long summer.

Juliette turned 3 months old yesterday. Congratulations baby Peach, you’re 1/4 of a year old!

In the 10 days since my last post, she’s really changed a lot. Physically she continues to grow and grow. She’s now definitely the largest baby of her peer group from the prenatal class - even babies older than her weigh less and are less solid in the body. Another little baby boy who was born 8 minutes before her looks to be a month younger - much smaller, with less hair and muscle tone. And a baby girl who was born about 2 weeks before Juliette has the same big cheeks but not the same body mass or thighs.

It’s funny to look at her legs - she’s got turkey thighs! So big that she can’t fit some of the 3-month size outfits she has. She’s kind of worrying me at how big she is already.

And mentally she continues to develop. She’s gotten to the point where she no longer is satisfied lying on her play mat looking at the toys hanging from it. She gets bored and then cries for attention, so we have to pick her up and find other ways to keep her entertained.

Today she got really angry when Becoming A Mom tried to put her in her crib for a nap in the afternoon. She cried and cried for 15 minutes, getting really red in the face with anger. Even after Mom picked her up, she continued to vent her anger for a few minutes before calming down.

Becoming A Mom decided to take her outside for a walk - exactly what baby Peach wanted. She laughed and did a little happy dance in her stroller when she saw trees, and was alert and peaceful during a visit to a mall. She’s getting to be a little more demanding on us - something that really makes me worried!

Little Juliette is definitely becoming more of a sentient creature these days. Up until about a week ago she was still proto-human - not really aware of much about herself and her world other than when she wasn’t happy. She’d look at things and burble and kick and swing her arms about, but not with any conscious control. All that started to change at least a week ago.

The first sign was that she seemed to recognize the different rooms in the house - she’d turn her head and look for the curtains in the bedroom and that seemed to calm her once she found them. The next was that baby Juliette began to form a rhythm for mornings and nights - she would break into broad joyful smiles and make happy-dance motions when we opened the curtains in the morning, and would look around calmly when we swaddled her prior to peacefully falling asleep.

She also started staring at new things intently, namely some different toys and brightly-coloured cloth books Becoming A Mom had put out. And then I saw her stare at one of her toys on her playmat, then she deliberately swung her arm to hit it and grab on. She looked so surprised and happy when she saw she had it, she jerked her arm back and promptly smacked herself in the head with the toy! Luckily they’re all quite light and soft, so no damage or tears.

Things have continued to develop and she now grabs things willingly and pulls on them or moves them about.

Best thing is that she recognizes me - Becoming A Dad - and breaks into the same broad joyful smiles and wiggles with pleasure when she sees me in the morning and when I come home in the evening. That alone makes everything right in my world.

Peach is 10 weeks old today! Hard to believe that a mere 10 weeks ago baby Peach arrived and has forever changed our world.

In that short time, she’s grown tremendously - from 8.5 lbs to over 15 lbs. She’s sleeping well - up to 7 hours at a stretch during the night (average 6 h). And she’s outgrown a whole bunch of clothes, including some of her 3 month sizes! Yes, she’s a big kid coming in at 97th percentile in weight and 92nd percentile in length.

Even though she’s only been here for 10 weeks it sometimes feels like a lifetime… both in the good and bad senses! But mostly for the good.

She’s becoming more and more aware of her world with every day, and is learning to make new sounds too. Her communication methods are changing as she’s acquiring different types of cries and yelps for different situations. The challenge is for us parents to figure out what means what!

Yesterday our little baby Peach had her first set of vaccinations. Three shots, two in one thigh and one in the other. Poor baby.

Becoming a Mom took her to the health clinic and said baby Peach was happy as could be, smiling at her and cooing and generally making happy baby noises. Little did she know what was about to happen.

The nurse asked Mom if she wanted to nurse Peach while she got the injections. Mom didn’t want to do that and held her on her side while the nurse gave her the shots in the upper thigh. She started to cry when the first needle went in, then screamed after the second.  Because she was so distraught, Mom started to nurse Peach to comfort her while the third injection was given, but this wasn’t enough to dull the pain of the final needle and poor baby Peach screamed again.

For the rest of the day Peach was very clingy and miserable - understandable after such a traumatic experience. When I got home from work I held her on my chest where she slept fitfully for about an hour and a half before I went to change her diaper.

Little did I realize how tender her thighs were. I normally stroke the outside of her legs when I’m taking her diaper off so she knows what’s going on, but that suddenly caused my sleepy little baby to scream in pain and cry her heart out. Feeling terrible, I quickly changed her diaper and tried to soothe her without effect.

We gave her a bit of baby Tylenol syrup to help her through the pain - she didn’t really like that at all. I have no idea why manufacturers decide it’s a good idea to put those terrible flavorings in the syrups… I suspect just straight sugar would be better as the baby hasn’t a clue what that flavor is supposed to be and it certainly doesn’t taste like breast milk!

At that point Mom took baby Peach back and nursed her in bed until she fell asleep. She slept poorly, waking up 3 times during the night when she normally would wake up 1 or 2 times.

Today she’s much better, almost back to her normal self. Her thighs still have the little bandaids on the spots where she got the injections but the swelling of her thighs is pretty much gone and she’s not tender there any more.

I’m not sure who it was more traumatic for - Mom and Becoming A Dad - or baby Peach.

Our little sweetie just turned 2 months old today. Which means tomorrow (May 19) she’s off to the clinic to get a raft of vaccinations.

In the past 2 weeks both Become a Mom and I have seen a lot of changes in baby Peach. She’s definitely becoming more aware of her world and is a very big kid!

When I weighed her on the adult scale today (Peach in my arms, then me alone) she tipped in at 16 pounds/7.2 kg. I’m not sure how accurate the scales are, but it’s pretty obvious she’s getting bigger and heavier just looking at her. And I managed to pull a muscle in my lower back this weekend picking her up, so now I’m complaining and moving very gingerly trying to stretch it out. Maaan, I’m getting old.

Baby Peach is also more attentive to things around her. For the past 4 or 5 days she’s now able to focus and see things further away. She’s now starting to twist her head back and forth, craning her neck to see what’s off to the sides or behind her. The first time she did that I had visions of the Omen with her head spinning ’round and ’round, but thankfully it didn’t come to that! But she’s definitely more engaged and interested in looking at the world around her. She recognizes when we go into different rooms, and also when we’re somewhere she doesn’t recognize.

She’s sleeping pretty well now too, and has had one particularly surprising night where she slept from 9 pm right through until 5 am before waking and feeding like a demon. But normally she sleeps from 9 pm until 2 or 3 am, then wakes again for feedings around 7 am and 10 am. The pattern is pretty solid and allows both Mom and I to get a reasonable sleep.

She’s down to perhaps 8 or 10 feeds per day now, taking less time as well. I’m sure it’s partly due to Mom’s breasts pumping out the milk - I can hear the loud swallows as she gulps down the milk gushing from Mom. Glorp-Glorp-Glorp for the first 5 minutes before she slows down a bit.

Related to the reduced feeding frequency is the reduced number of diapers she’s using. She’s now on the size 3 disposables - 16+ lbs. And it’s a good thing, because in the other ones she’d let loose poops so big that they’d shoot out the top or sides and stain her clothes. Now with all the extra space in the diaper it’s not happening. She’s peeing about 8 times a day and dropping a big poop perhaps 2 or 3 times for a total of 8-10 diapers, down from the 12-15 she was using about a month ago. Whew!

And the best thing is that when she wakes up and sees our faces - can be either Mom or me - she breaks into the widest happiest bunch of smiles you can imagine. And those beaming smiles are enough to wipe away all the other stresses of the world. For at least that moment, nothing else in the world exists.

It’s becoming harder and harder to go to work each day. First of all, because work is getting more and more onerous… lack of planning and resources making my job managing it all extremely difficult and frustrating. I spend most of my days fighting fires that spring up with customers than actually charting the course of our business. And throw in a few human resources issues — it pretty much makes my life hellish.

So for the last two mornings when I’ve gone to say goodbye to my precious little girl, I’m torn even more when she looks deep into my eyes and then breaks into a huge smile. I’d love just to stay home and hold her for a while. Until she poops and cries for Mom that is.

Now that I’m at work the lingering memory of those smiles fuels my day. I can’t wait to get home to see more of them.

Yesterday was our first Mother’s Day and it went mostly quite well. For starters Baby Juliette AKA Peach and I got Becoming a Mom a nice bright pot of yellow lilies on Saturday, though Becoming a Dad nearly forgot.

Sunday we met up with the majority of the families from our pre-natal group at a local baby-friendly cafe - the Little Nest on Charles Street off Commercial Drive in Vancouver. Eight families showed up with babies ranging in age from 5 weeks to 10 weeks old - and one extra at 8-1/2 months. It was a very welcome outing to meet and share stories while having a nice brunch.

Peach behaved herself wonderfully. She had a couple of feeds and then spent most of the rest of the time charming all the others with her thick shock of hair and big blue eyes. She slept in my arms for about 1/2 of the time - and wow, is she getting heavy! My shoulders were aching and I had to prop them up on the table top and chair arms after a while.

So Becoming a Mom had a nice social first Mother’s Day. And Becoming a Dad got to get out of the house and spend some quality time with a non-wailing baby Peach. Mind you, after 2 hours we were both exhausted!

Today I had yet another first… I’ve become a Dad who’s been pooped on by their otherwise utterly adorable baby.

Well, to clarify - I was sprayed with a high-pressure stream of fecal ejectus fresh from the little ejector. It was not a pleasant experience and I loath to experience it again, but something tells me I’m going to be getting this treatment a lot in the coming weeks.

So the title “Jets of Poo” really do describe what happened.

Imagine this: little adorable baby Peach is waking up and obviously hungry. Becoming a Dad is being forced to wake up (a) because Becoming a Mom has just woken him up to watch over baby Peach and (b) baby Peach is busy making all sorts of grumpy growls and wake-up wild animal noises. Mere inches from my right ear. At high volume.

Becoming a Dad decides to wait for Becoming a Mom to have a shower and finish brushing her teeth before getting up to change baby Peach’s diaper. Changing the diaper will no doubt fully waken Peach, which means the little growls and wake-up noises will soon turn into ear-splitting sonic blasts of her I’M HUNGRY! cries. And no one appreciates that, especially a bleary-eyed Dad who’d really just like to lie in bed quietly for the next 3 days.

In a few minutes Mom gets out of the shower, so Dad dutifully picks up his adorable precious baby Peach and heads for the change table. Dad turns on the CD player with her favorite tunes on it and immediately she settles down and starts to jive a bit to the music. Dad takes this break in the bedlam to quickly undo her little outfit and pull off her dirty diaper, wipe up the traces of poo from her bum and slide a new diaper in place. He picks up the hairdrier and gently dries off little baby’s bum - and promptly gets a jet of pee fired in his general direction!

Quick hands and a sixth-sense of when these jets are coming somehow allowed Becoming a Dad to deftly flip the front of the diaper up and over to catch the outflow - not even a tiny drop gets outside the diaper. He gives himself little back-slaps of self congratulations on his skill and perception.

He pulls the now wet diaper out and blots little baby Peach’s nether regions, then pulls out the hair dryer to blow her dry again. He makes the fateful error in judgement not to put another diaper in place. He finishes blow-drying baby Peach’s butt and puts the drier down, looking to the side for a brief second.

Ppppttttt!!! A farting sound, and immediately a warm sensation on the front of his belly. He looks down to see the horrific sight of bright yellow seedy baby poo stuck to his t-shirt and shorts! And while he’s looking, PPPTTTT!! PHHTTT!! he gets to witness another couple hyper-sonic jets of poo shoot out from his beloved child and spray the nearby floor and furniture.

The sheer horror of it is far too much to endure, and he cries out to no avail. He grabs the wet diaper and slaps it over the source of the jets of poo in the nick of time as more PHHHTTTT! sounds let him know that another few jets of poo are being released.

Time slows and stops for Becoming a Dad. He becomes aware of a low terrifying yowl in his ears, only to realize that it’s he who’s making it. He looks down to survey the mess of dark-yellow wet sticky poop on the front of his shirt and shorts as well as on the floor, chair and nearby baby outfit. In a daze he removes the soiled diaper and folds up the towel on the changing mattress so his darling child isn’t lying on a poopy surface. He cleans her up and quickly fastens a new diaper in place.

Becoming a Mom has miraculously appeared and laughing while helping wipe up some of the mess. Becoming a Dad hands off the source of the jets of poo to Becoming a Mom and mournfully surveys the mess. He sighs, taking off his shirt and shorts. Rinsing them under the tap, he watches the bright yellow flecks circle the drain and eventually go down. With a sigh he grabs the dirty towel and wipes up the remaining poop splatters, rinses it off in the sink and wishes he had a tequila. It’s now 11 am and the day is only beginning.

****

As a side note, this is also a test. I’m waiting to see how long it takes for this page to make #1 spot in a Google search for the phrase, “jets of poo”. Can’t be long - currently there aren’t a lot of those pages out there.

Update May 16, 2009: I’ve succeeded! Do a Google search with quotes for “jets of poo”… This post comes up number 1. Doesn’t work without the quotes but hey, small victories!