Daniel at One Week

We are settling in as a family of five, and while I recover, and Michael is home, our normal routine is askew - which is throwing the kids for a loop - particularly Will. But other than that things are going well. This kid is a pooping machine! He poops at every feed and sometimes before and after a feed!

His stats today are: Height - 21.5", weight - 9lbs 1.4oz, and head circumference - 14.17"

Breastfeeding has been relatively easy this time. He has a great latch and no tongue tie, and seems pretty eager to eat at regular intervals. My milk came in on day two, and for those first two days my milk was in, Daniel wanted to eat every hour on the hour, round the clock. That was exhausting, but it meant that he had regained his birth weight by day 5. He had dropped down from 8lbs 12oz to 8lbs 4oz on day 2, but by Saturday, had regained all that he had lost. At his one week appt he weighed 8lbs 15oz. By day 4, he started to space his feeds out and by day 6 he was eating every 3 hours on average. While it was nice to have some breaks between feeds (especially at night), my boobs had gotten used to hourly feeds, and I had to deal with some bad engorgement for a few nights. We are on day 9 now though and last night was the first night that the engorgement pain started to feel a bit better. Between engorgement and nipple pain though, my entire chest area is just a hot mess. I can't wait for that to calm down in a week or so here! I had forgotten just how painful that could be! One other cute thing is that he likes to nurse with his hands by his face, particularly his left hand. He has a thing for that hand too. Not only was he born with that hand next to his face, but in the womb, I could often feel that hand down near my cervix, next to his face. Its so neat to see babies do the things outside the womb, that you could feel them doing inside the womb!

After living with him for a week, here are some things we have learned about Daniel:

Likes: 
Nursing
Being warm
Being held
Car rides

Dislikes:
Anything cold or less than body temp - damp cloths and cold hands are particularly abhorrent
Diaper or outfit changes (see above)
Bottle feeding
Being tickled (hes my first newborn who is actually ticklish!)
Heel pokes

This is all pretty standard stuff for a newborn. One nice thing is that he is a VERY calm baby, He will sleep just about anywhere and sleeps a lot. He is only really awake for maybe a hour total each day. He basically wakes only to eat and then passes back out again.


He did spend the first week of life being VERY smelly. The poor thing had a cord stump that started rotting fast and smelled exactly like roadkill. It was AWFUL! Nothing helped the smell either. The midwife had remarked to me on the day he was born, that he had a particularly robust umbilical cord. This meant that it would take longer to fall off, as there was just more material that had to dry and shrivel. It finally fell off yesterday, on day 8, and though there is a tiny bit more left in there, the bulk of the stump is off, and the smell went with it. I could not be more relieved that my sweet newborn no longer smells of a rotted, dead thing!