Age = 5 weeks 2 days

Linus has had some grizzly spells lately where it’s been hard to soothe him, so we’ve had to get some new techniques:

Songs

It’s surprisingly difficult to think of songs that are of a decent length (i.e. not simple nursery rhymes) and that we know all the lyrics for, but we’re slowly adding to our Mummy-and-Daddy repertoire. Current favourites are:

• The Saga Begins by Weird Al Yankovic, chosen because Bob and I both know all the words and it’s a grown-up song (with a darn good story, nonetheless). It’s also easy to sing it upbeat (to cheer him up) or downbeat (to put him to sleep).
• I Know An Old Lady by – well, as far as I knew, it was by my Dad, but apparently Peter, Paul and Mary also had a part to play in it.
• Shaddup Your Face by Joe Dolce. When more serious soothing is required! All songs sung to children – especially babies – are partly to soothe the parents and keep stress out of their voices. This song is particularly good at that.

We are on the lookout for more songs. No matter how good any one of them is, they tend to drive us a bit batty after a while. My latest idea is Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (The Beatles). Just in case the above list doesn’t scar/scare Bug enough!

I’m adding more and more songs to my separate songs page on this blog. It’s growing quickly!

Ball

When I was pregnant, my friend R sent me her big rubber ball (“exercise” ball or “Swiss” ball or “medicine” ball – you know what I mean!). This was great for me to sit on to keep my back straight and provide a change of position from normal chairs. If I’d had a longer labour, it might also have come in handy then.

I hadn’t used it since Linus was born, until I read somewhere that it was useful post-partum for bouncing the baby. So now when we’re tired of walking up and down our hallway with a crying baby, we sit down on the ball and bounce-bounce-bounce our way to a happy baby. (Well, OK, it doesn’t work miracles, but it does seem to distract him for a while.)

Poster

The final tool we have to calm Linus when he’s being fractious (I love that word) is our Grand Theft Auto San Andreas poster. It’s surprisingly difficult to find objects or pictures with bold shapes and colours around the house, but this poster is the bee’s knees! It has large black and white text and big cartoon people (with guns, tattoos and masks) on it. Stand in front of this with Linus and he’s hypnotised – we get bored long before he does.

Age = 5 weeks 2 days

My little boy is changing so fast. Every change is bittersweet – it’s exciting to see him develop, but every change means some part of him is gone, and if we’re lucky we’ve managed to capture it on camera. I imagine it’s a hundred times harder if you know that it’s your last baby you’re seeing grow up; at least I have the consolation that I’ll probably have more babies to moon over in the future.

Hair

Take Linus’s hair, for example. He’s had a glorious head of dark hair since he was born. It’s getting quite long at the back, and doesn’t seem to have rubbed off at all where his head rubs on the bed. He also had a cute little fringe (see picture) that I was looking forward to watching develop. But the fringe is no more. It’s disappeared, along with almost all the hair on the front half of Linus’s head. I don’t know why. We don’t rub or kiss it that much!

Focus

Linus is also getting much better at focusing on us and looking at us directly in the eyes. He’s looked at our faces for quite a while now – maybe since day one – but “looking at your face” used to mean eyes flicking all around the silhouette of your face, not an eye-to-eye “connection” with you. Now that connection is starting to kick in, and it’s delicious – this boy gets more and more alluring every day!

Age = 4 weeks 6 days

Mummy’s Mental State

In the first week Linus was I was quite emotional, and teared up a couple of times a day, mainly when anyone asked me sympathetically how I was coping. I was dealing with Linus OK, but was overwhelmed by all the stuff I had to get sorted out, e.g. nappies, a safe bed, places to put his things, etc.

Since then, however, I’ve been quite chipper (I’m talking about days, not nights – I can be a demon when I’m woken at 2am or if he pees on himself when he’s being changed!)

Symptoms?

However I had my first bad day yesterday, and all because of a simple thing Bob and I noticed on Tuesday night: Linus had bad breath, with a revolting smell that I described as “vomit-like” and Bob described as “chemical”. I figure the sum of those two descriptions is “acidy” (as in “stomach acid”). A quick search on the internet yesterday revealed that “bad breath” was one symptom in a big long list of symptoms of gastreosophageal reflux. This, like reflux in adults, is when stomach acid comes up your throat, and can be painless, uncomfortable, or painful.

I dreaded the thought of Linus having this – I don’t mind his crying too much generally when it just means he’s tired, hungry or uncomfortable, but the idea of him crying in pain is quite distressing.

What led to the real distress of the day was that of course once I’d read the list of symptoms, I found it very easy to see those symptoms occurring in Linus. And I knew very well that that was what I was doing, which made me feel completely confused and helpless. Linus seemed to be more upset than usual yesterday, which was probably a combination of my imagination and his picking up on my anxiety.

Today has been better, and I’m starting to think that the reflux thing was my imagination, or probably (given the definite bad breath!) a short period of reflux (perhaps following some food that didn’t agree with him?) rather than the start of a chronic problem.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for the symptoms now, but fingers crossed it won’t be an issue for our wee boy (or for us).

Age = 4 weeks 5 days

Apparently choosing the name for Linus was the easy bit! Getting names for the grandparents has been a struggle, and I’m not even sure it’s completely resolved yet.

The grandmothers were a little easier than the grandfathers. My mother committed to a name first, choosing “Nana” because the grandmother that my sister and I were closer to – Mum’s mum – was “Nana”. I think she told us her choice two days after Bug was born. Once Jean knew that my mother was “Nana”, she decided to be “Granny“.

A week or two before Linus arrived, Keith jokingly suggested “Papa” as his name, because he had a “Papa”. I think in one of the videos of me in the hospital I even call him this (although I pronounce it wrong, i.e. as “Poppa“). Bob also started calling him “Pop-Pop“, which rather poetically meant that every time Linus farted it reminded him of his granddad. Over the course of the next few days, Keith decided that these names didn’t really suit, and chose “Gramps“, so that’s what he was called for a couple of weeks. But wait! There’s more! Now “Pop-Pop” has made a comeback – I’ve even had an email from him signed this way, so I think it’s pretty solid, but only time will tell.

My dad joked when he came to see us in the hospital that he wanted to be called “Gaga” – that way he would be Linus’s first word. We called him that for a couple of weeks (although not in his presence), but when I mentioned it to him he seemed to prefer something more conventional. I’m still not sure what he’s called, but I think it will be “Grandpa” or “Granddad“. We’ll have to wait and see. (He’s probably going to come and visit once a week, so I’m sure we’ll work it out soon!)

Age = 4 weeks 5 days (yes we’re counting in weeks now!)

Since our first, very successful excursion, Linus and I have had a few more field trips, and now I think we’re so comfortable with them that there’s not really any need to list them all individually anymore – they’re ridiculously uneventful.

Last week I took Linus out to Mosgiel to spend the afternoon with Granny (where he met some of Granny’s neighbours), then this past weekend he had:

1. a first walk with Mummy – we went to the local shop and back and used the front-pack with no problems;
2. a farewell dinner (an awesome spread by Pop-Pop!) for Aunty Andi in Mosgiel;
3. shopping (groceries, housewares, hardware) with Mum and Dad then a brief (first) visit to Aunty Claire‘s (where he met his feline cousin Kimber) then a whole evening out watching DVDs at our friends‘ place;
4. a first walk with Mummy and Daddy - we went up to the reservoir and back, attempting to use the pram, but changing Linus into the sling after a couple of blocks (the pram didn’t seem to agree with him);
5. visitors over for fish ‘n’ chips and board games (Linus didn’t play).

It’s fantastic how Linus can sleep through a lot of noise and people. At the dinner on Friday night there were eight adults in one room, plus a TV going, and he slept almost the whole time in a variety of arms – I don’t think I got to hold him most of the night (not that I’m complaining)! I hope his quality of sleep isn’t too badly affected. But then again, if it keeps his parents happy and stimulated, I suspect a few evenings of sub-par sleep won’t be too detrimental.