JJ continues to grow fast, he's now 62 cm tall and 12 lbs 5 oz! That has people who meet him pegging his age at 2 or 3 months not 6 weeks! Oddly enough, he seems to be a regular sized 6 week old baby on the bottom half and a 3-6 month old baby on the top half...
Our follow up with the Midwives is now complete and Jack will now be cared for under our Family Doctor (we are lucky to have a great one, in fact we are lucky to have a Family doctor at all in Kingston). All of the staff at Community Midwives were fantastic. We got to know 4 midwives in total and each had something that we really liked. We will definitely be going back when JJ's little brother or sister comes along. We appreciated their "informed choice" approach. They had no problem that we wanted a hospital birth from day one and we were not interested hollistic, homeopathic stuff.
All the books we've read always mention things get better at 6 weeks. Well, JJ seems to have read that too. He is sleeping great (only 1 feed during the night), growing, happy, smiling and cooing. He has taken straight to his Aunt and Uncle and does well when we take him places. He did have a bit of a shell shocked look on his face after we brought him to a restaurant last night (it was possibly a bit much for him) but it didn't throw him off his routine.
Now the only issue we have is getting him to do well with a bottle so we can share feeding duties. He was doing great but now he gets fussy and upset part way through. As this is one of my roles as Dad I'm keen to make it easy for both of us. Bath time is going great, settling him down for bed goes well too. It's just the 1 am feed that causes (me and JJ I imagine) stress. Maybe we'll change the time, maybe we'll change the bottle. I know this will get resolved and JJ and I will get the hang of it but it is difficult.
I'm realising a few things as a new Dad. First, I'd never planned or got myself ready for looking after such a young baby. I'd focused on the toddler stage and with very little experience of newborns, I felt completely useless. Nothing came naturally really. I focused on getting things done to help E but the best help would have been getting more involved with JJ earlier on. Second, once I returned to work I was now spending much less time around JJ and my chances to gain experience were fewer and further between. Again, I defaulted to getting things done, reasoning that this was a positive contribution to our family but really it meant my bond with JJ was getting thinner.
The solution: re-prioritise, not be so "cool-Dad" and spend quality time with JJ. As I mentioned above, bath time is now Daddy time. So is putting him to bed at night and play time when I get home from work. I can see the results already. It is very heart-warming to know he looks around for me when he hears my voice after I've been gone for a while and I'm much happier now I know how to make him smile (basically give in to baby-talk and general sillyness, something I was reluctant to do).
It would be great to have some more family leave at this stage. For now, I'll settle for a long weekend with our little family and his Auntie and Uncle. This weekend we're off to see how Maple Syrup is made. It'll be our first day out and fingers crossed JJ does well...
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