Sep
24
We’ve made it through the first week as new parents, and things are going well. Special thanks to family who have been a great help by cooking us feasts. We’re still getting used to Samantha’s rhythms and syncing our routines to her needs. Eating and sleeping are basically all that newborns do, and both seem to require a bit of managing and mindfulness if Samantha is to be satisfied.
Feeding can be somewhat of a learning curve and quite challenging, especially if the baby is being breastfed like ours. Luckily we managed to get wonderful lactation consultation, and Samantha’s been eating heartily and gaining proper weight since. Not sure about other first-time fathers, but I sometimes feel quite helpless and vulnerable for these first couple of weeks, since I won’t be able to do much on my own if Samantha cries (uh, I mean scream) in hunger. Bottles won’t come into the picture until 2 weeks or so.
Babies’ sleep routines and durations also might not be as self-evident as one may expect. From my readings, it seems as though a rule of thumb is to never awake a sleeping baby. I know some parents would naturally want to wake their baby to feed them, especially if they’ve slept for many hours. But apparently hunger is controlled by the stomach, while wake/sleep cycles are managed by the brain. Hunger does not play a role in waking a baby. So if her developing brain is being fed with sleep, should we disrupt that in order to feed her stomach? What to do? For now, letting her sleep uninterrupted seems preferable. Plus, the long sleeping appears to condition her to sleep easier subsequently, as it’s a learned behavior.
More later…
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