two weeks old!

You are two weeks old today, Little Pebble, and you’re turning out to be a guwapito (of course, Mommy and Daddy are biased in this department).

The past 14 days have been humbling. Mommy thought she was ready with all the guidebooks she has read but she had to go through each and every one of them again and again after little mishaps.

In one of Mommy’s panic reading sessions (very similar to cramming for an exam), Daddy asked her, “Don’t you get confused with all these things that you’re reading?” Mommy said that she does not completely trust the advice she’s been getting from some of the hospital personnel and she’s doing her own research. Lest you think that we’re building you a Time Machine, the questions Mommy and Daddy have grappled with the past few days may sound surprisingly mundane to you. Examples: how to check if baby has jaundice; how much sun does baby need; how to sponge bath the baby; what to do about a colicky child; or how to clean the umbilical cord).

You’re asleep most of the time during the day we hardly had time to socialize. Mommy’s Infant Stimulation Program has flown out of the window past two weeks and has been substituted for the Parents-on-the-Job Training Program.

Q: How many people does it take to bathe the little pebble?
A: Three, and they're still not doing a very great job.           

We’re getting better though, little one. Yesterday, we’ve been able to wash you properly without making the whole procedure seem like a major surgical operation or absolute mayhem. Mommy and Daddy have asked for a demonstration on how to bathe you before we left the hospital but it seemed much more complicated to do at home. On our first try, Mommy forgot to wash your face. On another day, you pooped all over Daddy’s hand just as we finished washing your behind.

 

Am cool!

We’ve also been able to get you out of the flat and give you your sunbathing sessions (You look so cool lounging by the pool, Anton Lee Thomas with nary a care in the world). We’ve also managed now to get you into a schedule which has allowed Mommy and Daddy seven hours of sleep last night, interrupted only twice to feed you and clean you up.

What’s happened:

1.       On your first week, you could track your black-and-white checkerboard by 45 degrees! Not bad, little one, not bad at all.

Look! No more umbilical stump!

2.       Your Baby First Year’s Journal says that the umbilical stump generally falls off between the second and the fourth weeks. Your umbilical cord stump has fallen off by the end of your first week! 

3.       You love your head and face being washed but it’s quite another story with the rest of your body.

4.       By the end of your first week, you’ve been smiling a lot in your sleep. “What to Expect the First Year” says that most babies don’t smile in the true social sense before four to six weeks of age.  So most of your smiles now are just gas or may be signs of comfort and contentment.

5.       You can hiccup quite a lot (there is no known cause for a newborn’s hiccups; these are not bothersome to the baby but if its bothers the parents can be addressed by nursing the baby).

6.       When you do your toilet business, you make it sound like the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. “What to Expect the First Year” says that these movements and sounds are normal, the result of gas being forcefully expelled from an immature digestive system.

7.       The skin on your hands and legs are starting to peel. Your Baby First Year Journal says that this is a natural process that makes way for a new layer of skin.