Mnurrrrrghhhhhh....

No bones about it. Caring for a newborn is HARD WORK.

Our little guy likes to eat every 2 hours or so, around the clock, although in the past couple of days he's taken to having a longer snooze right after we put him to bed for the night: 3 - 3.5 hours at a stretch. Then we're up every 2 hours with diaper changes and feedings after that. He's becoming more of an efficient nurser, and no longer takes 20-25 minutes on each breast; rather, it's closer to 10-15 minutes. Still, I'm looking forward to his stomach becoming larger and more mature, so that he sleeps for longer stretches and with less gas and discomfort (it takes a good 5 minutes to burp him!). After burping him in the middle of the night, I typically rock him back to sleep for about 5 minutes -- it has the added benefit of helping me to get back to sleep, too! He sleeps particularly well after a bath, so tonight we'll probably bathe him again, even though he's not dirty.

Some more details: His umbilical cord stump fell off exactly 2 weeks after he was born (Wednesday, 12/12/07). Today the scab from his intravaginal monitor (which was screwed into his scalp during labor) finally fell off. He is now officially perfect.

He still doesn't do much besides sleep, eat, cry and poop. But, I swear he smiled at me today.

My recovery has been, for me, surprisingly slow. I mean, I knew it would take some time for my body to recoup, and I was very excited to see that I'd lost nearly 30 lbs soon after delivery, but I've had some very irritating episodes of feverishness, engorgement, headache, body aches and lots of trouble regulating my body temperature (chills and then feeling way too hot). My bleeding took longer than I'd expected it to slow down, and I think I'm dealing with the aftereffects of too much blood loss, and perhaps some dehydration. Am going to make more of an effort to drink water (and only water), but it's soooo hard when all I want is a nice cup of (caffeinated) tea after a long night of waking every couple of hours...

Our dogs are adjusting well to Andrew; when the baby cries, they typically come over and try to "lick it all better." Gotta love dogs.