Day 57: Baby Stretches

I am noticing an alarming correlation between Atom's full body, face crunched, contorted into an incredibly awkward position stretches and my own almost full body, leathery, bent into a dangerously awkward position stretches. Obviously his are more improvisational and jellylike in nature while I look more like a 80 year old gymnast making an attempt to reclaim past glory but in the rawest form I see a resemblance.

This correlation is obviously disturbing for many reasons. Who invented this stretch? Was he born with it? IS that the only trait of mine he has acquired? Did I start out that way, so flexible and free, when I was a baby and now many broken down years later lucky to be able to touch my toes on regular basis? Food for thought.

The other side is just as alarming. The other side being me of course. Am I mimicking him now? AM I regressing back to childlike behavior? Is there something in him that I am trying to emulate? Drink for thought at the very least.

You may think none of this is problematic or that I am being hyper sensitive but that's what new parents do. Isn't it? We stare at our new child for hours on end and analyze everything about him. Even if he is just laying on his playmat like a wet noodle we strive to find that meaning, or connection between him and our selves. I used to spend a tremendous amount of time stalking the Pacific Ocean. I couldn't get enough of it. I could spend an entire day staring into the giant body of water and loose myself in myself. I would re-route my daily travels as much as possible to maybe get the chance to sneak a peek at it. I'm surprised no restraining orders were ever issued. Now I find myself staring the same way Atom. The sublime rushes in and over takes my senses. I can stare at him for hours on end sometimes deep in thought and others seemingly floating between levels of conscientiousness. The truly amazing thing is for all of those hours of staring at the Pacific Ocean I don't think I ever saw myself in it and now now I do in Atom. I hope he has some of my other stellar attributes in addition to my stretch but even if he doesn't the connection has been made. And for that I am amazed.

Day 52: What's in a smile?

He did it. He really did it. A smile. Well, it was a baby smile. All mis-shapen, crooked and beautiful. Atom has officially moved from random sleep smiles to what appears to be purposeful goodness.

You might say "But isn't he in the mimic stage? The stage where he might try to mimic your facial expressions." Yes, you are right, he is in the mimic stage. The stage where he enjoys doing more than just stare dead eyed at you until you feel the urge to give him all your money. I am not trying to minimize how cool this stage is but BAM! He entered the stage and kept going right into smiles. A feat few zombies walking around New York City seem to have mastered themselves.

I have to give my wife credit because she seems to bring the most out of Atom and of course he can't seem to smile enough around her. In fact, everyone smiles around her so I didn't put much into this new trick until he turned that gummy mug on me. Mona Lisa looks quite Munch-ish compared to him when he lets it loose. It is hard to describe the feeling when your child smiles at you for the first time. Your lungs expand with a sudden burst of oxygen, your heart squeezes an extra beat into your normal rhythm and time slows to a few frames a second in effort to capture the image into your memory. I feel lucky to have been the beneficiary of his smile and hope many more people feel that way over the course of his life.

Not only does he have a smile that could sell smog to an Angeleno but this means he is learning muscle control. He is making the connection between feelings and how to physically express them. He is making his first attempts at communication. He is looking at me and saying "You make me happy". Of course another explanation is he is looking at me sand saying "Do you smell that?"

Day 46: Bottle Feeding

We tried bottle feeding for our first time this week. It was a small yet stressful hurtle for us. We need to get Atom used to the bottle but at the same time his schedule isn't 100% set with breastfeeding and it made us nervous to introduce another nipple into the game.

We have read and have been told by other parents about a  wide range of possible reactions to the bottle. Some said it would be a problem others said he won't want to breastfeed anymore because he will fall in love with the speed and convenience. I guess even with the low-flow nipples his intake is "faster" from the bottle when compared to the boob. Well once again the old saying that every baby is different has come into play here. Atom doesn't seem to even understand the difference between RN (real nipple) and FN (fake nipple) at least on the surface and for the first try. He drank as he normally would, I got the opportunity to bond a little with him, and my wife got to pump and "relax". The hardest thing was the psychological effect it had on us I believe. The bottle represented a step forward for him and one back for us. I realized, and I will use "I" because I can only speak from my insight, Atom is on his way to independence and college.

It is amazing how he can adapt to this new thing (and remember how to swallow and everything) but it emphasizes that fact that even though the first month of no sleep and worrying has been tough and at times seemingly static, he is in fact growing into a little person. I know he is a long way from going to his first dance or from his first buritto but life seems a little cruel in it's ever changing momentum and just as we are settling into having this oh so tiny human being, he is developing at a quick pace into something so much more than just bodily function after bodily function. I didn't know that time, in the present tense, is so precious and to be enjoyed. I have a tendency to always be looking forward as I tread lightly across the roses of today but I guess I need to make a better effort to see the world again since it has become an infiniltey better place with Atom in it.

A side note: We accidently thawed out two days of milk, we are told you should ease into the bottle once a week at first, so we feed him a bottle the next day too. That did not go down so easily and he seemed to throw somewhat of a not so silent protest for the third ounce. He would suckle and then cry, suckle and then cry. It was heart shattering, not only cause you want him to get nourishement but because you have no idea what's wrong. I figure the bottle and dad feeding is passable in a pinch at this point but it is not a solid replacement for my wife and what she brings to the table. The bonding that happens between the two of them when he is feeding is sublime.

Day 40: Ceiling Fans

The last few days have brought on lots of changes in Atom's sleep patterns. Well at least we think so. He seems to be closer to a "schedule" but it is hard to tell. When I asked him if he felt like he was getting a hang of this sleep thing he made a sort of a "coo" sounding noise. I am taking that as a "not really, but that ceiling fan above your head sure looks interesting" statement.

He is having his good days and some bad ones but I think we are getting better at working on acute amounts of sleep so it is a wash.

Atom's latest thing is exercising his vocal chords while he is awaiting for sleep to overcome him. All sorts of strange noises flow from him. Some of the noises are funny, some are scary, and others are just curious. I have a feeling he is going to be a talker. Of course the other possibility is he simply has something important to say.

One of the most frustrating things is not being able to effectively communicate with him.  However effectively communicating is a skill that very few people ever master so maybe I should just focus on not standing under ceiling fans.

Day 35 - On sleep

Sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub...The rub being in this case a lack of dreaming or REM sleep. I actually got 5 and a half hours sleep last night, not consecutive mind you, and what a difference it made. I was pepped and ready to take on the world for at least 20 minutes this morning. Watch out!

So the one thing people keep saying to you when you have an infant on the way is "SLEEP, SLEEP, SLEEP". Sleep whenever you can and when the baby comes sleep when he does.
 Sounds like a simple enough idea. So simple and obvious that it is almost insulting. I am not the baby here and I can figure out when I am tired and when I need rest. Been doing it for years and besides I don't need that much sleep anyway. I have been running off small amounts of sleep since college and have done nicely with this arrangement.

A baby, on the other hand, needs lots of sleep. Depending on what you are reading, a baby's need to sleep could reach upwards of 18 hours a day. So again this "sleep, sleep, sleep" thing sounds painfully easy to grapse. New parents get 18 hours to sleep too, right. Surely one can squeeze a nap in there somewhere. Well...I (and my wife) have not taken a single conventional nap yet. We have tried giving each other a "break" by letting each other sleep for one of the eating cycles (i'll get into those later) either early in the morning or late at night. It is like a little sleep appetizer that is enough to remind you how much you like sleep but not enough to satisfy any real hunger because the baby rarely ever sleeps more than 2-3 between feeds. It turns out once you add normal life activities to the baby routine, or lack there of, 18 hours of sleep becomes elusive.

I'm sure we will find the time to steal some sleep in the future or at least that is what people tell us. It is true that Atom has created such a drive in me to stay awake and to watch his every move but that doesn't stop me from occasionally daydreaming of days past where sleep was so abundant that I never felt the need to over indulge.

Atom - Day: 33

Prologue-ish: I will start off by saying I know nothing about bringing up a baby. Armed with plenty of prolix periodicals, multifarious techniques, innumerable internet illuminations, and having played one myself did little to shine light on the subject for me.

Parenting is an odd thing. It's like being asked to do geometry cold. You learned once so why can't you just pick it up again easy cheesy? Make sense until you leave the hospital and are bombarded with an onslaught of minute decisions that need to be made to ensure your child becomes all that he can be or at least "normal". Ugh! Was it simpler when I was a wee lad? Or has the overflow of information made it almost impossible to leave anything up to chance ("Chance" is his middle name btw). I am not sure but hopefully there is still room to be more like water and let some things pass and others to be diverted. Bruce Lee believed people should be like water and should be able to fluidly adapt or adjust with whatever life gives them. I like that idea. Thanks Bruce.

So in the following days, weeks, and months that make up Atom's first year I will be musing about this and that with the goal of finding some clarity, humor and sanity. Hope you enjoy the ride as much as I know I will.

"This parenting thing appears to be quite the challenge. A challenge that I accept fully with open arms." - Me, right now.

Day: 33

Yeah I know I am missing a few days here so this post will be 33 words that capture the first 33 days in more or less order or some kind of order.

fear, amazement, humility, surprise, wonder, joy, exhaustion, stress, enlightenment, awe, fear, bliss, jubilance, exhaustion, glee, wonder, reminiscent, pride, exultation, astonishment, exhaustion, hopefulness, beatitude, serendipitous, buoyancy, panicked, potential, stupefaction, flabbergasted, exhaustion, precious, captivating