Baby Bear

I had a baby. On December 2nd. I’m writing a birth story, but it takes a bit longer than I anticipated.

Right now he’s soft and squishy and a perfect baby. Blue eyes, brown hair. Loves his mama. Eats frequently, poops mustard, sleeps three hours straight when swaddled, which I only do at night because I love him taking tiny 45 minute naps and being up again, even if it’s only for a few minutes. He does take one long nap in the afternoon and by the end of it I kinda miss him.

I was afraid of how breastfeeding would go, given my previous experience, but he’s doing great. He has a problem with fish lips but that can be easily fixed, and I do every time. I’m hoping one of these days he will just get it.

I started switching the days and nights from Day One, before it became a problem. I did the same thing with Styx and it worked very quickly. Roscoe already knows the difference, his nights are 10pm-8ish am. Not that he sleeps that whole time, but he wakes up only to eat (in the dark) and have his diaper changed (also in the dark) and gets rocked back to sleep.

Yes I rock my babies to sleep. And I let them be in bed with me. No I have no plans to change that. Yes, my three-year old outgrew it all on her own. No I do not think babies need to be independent. Frankly, Styx is too damn independent for my taste.

We’ve ventured out of the house twice, once ending up with us coming home just as he was beginning to cry in the car seat and another time ended with me breastfeeding in the car because I didn’t want him crying at all and we were nowhere near our destination. Yes, leaving the house with a one week old who eats every hour is a little ridiculous but I can’t stay in all the time without going crazy and I can’t go anywhere without him yet. Not that I would want to. My favorite pastime right now is holding him while he sleeps.

And I’m calling him Bear, the way I call Styx Bug. It came out the first night and now it’s stuck. (I’ve also been calling him Baby Jack sometimes, even though that is not his name). Coming up with a name was awful. It was a huge problem before he was born and once he was here we agreed that none of the names we were OK with fit him. I had been torn between a couple of names I liked a lot and they both went out the door when we tried them out loud. We finally chose the one and only name we could both live with, and David picked his middle name from his side of the family since I’d chosen Styx’s middle name from mine.

We both (David and I) ended up not getting our way, so we’re both a little peeved when it comes to this subject. The name does fit him completely, and just like with Styx we ended up with a name neither of us really liked but was definitely right.

Next up: Of How the Older Child is Dealing With It All.

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