It’s now been 12 days since the birth of Caitlyn. 3 days have been spent in the hospital and the other 9 days at a “yue zhi zhong xing.” (More on that in the next post.) How are things progressing, you ask? Well, Jessie has increased her milk output from 2 drops up to 30 ml. Boo-yah!
I was completely psyched about this until I found out that some moms were pumping out over 200 ml each sitting. 200 ml?! Are you kidding me?! It almost doesn’t seem fair. But I’m not letting that get us down. I’m still taking comfort in our small victories.
Feeding time has become more routine, with Caitlyn feeding every 4 hours or so. But it’s also become a power struggle. Because Jessie still isn’t producing enough milk, Caitlyn isn’t able to gain access to the milk as quickly as she’d like to.
To protest, Caitlyn will go into a tantrum, shaking her head and hands violently, and refusing to take Jessie’s nipple back in, all while crying at the top of her lungs until her face literally turns dark, dark red. It’s rather frightening. This usually leaves Jessie defeated and dispirited. This in turn, leaves innocent, little me bearing the unfortunate brunt of her frustration.
On top of this, Caitlyn has lately been waking up at all hours and causing a ruckus for no apparent reasons. The nurses on staff have already labeled her as having an extremely “strong” personality. Trying to find an explanation for this, Jessie said it was because I sang too loudly to the baby one night, and that she hasn’t quite recovered from it yet. She’ll try to use this as a guilt trip any time she’s had a rough time calming Caitlyn down.
Unless I was screaming into her ear, which I wasn’t, I somehow doubt the volume of my singing had any impact on our baby. Perhaps it just seemed loud to Jessie because while she tends to prefer humming lullabies softly to Caitlyn, I favor a hearty rendition of my favorite children’s song, “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.” If anything, it’s probably my off-note singing that does more harm than good to Caitlyn.
But now, Jessie seems to finally be coming to the realization that our baby’s personality mirrors her own. Her own family members are all in agreement that Caitlyn’s impatience and quick temper is just like hers. Even she can’t argue with that. Unfortunately for us, that means we’re going to have our hands full these next few years.
With the origin of Caitlyn’s temperament firmly established, the question now turns to, who does she look like? Personally, I tend to disregard people’s comments when they say a baby looks like so and so. Seriously, can you really tell who a baby looks like when they’re that young?
I mean, if you’ve never seen my baby before and I gave you a line-up of babies, could you pick out which one was mine? I’m guessing the odds probably aren’t in your favor. I’m not saying all babies look the same, because they do look different from one another, but I think for the most part, they’re still too young to resemble anyone.
If you want to claim that our baby’s ears or mouth looks like mine, then you’re going to have to say that 10 other babies in the nursery with her have body parts that look like mine too. And I’ve got at least one supporter on my side.
Mom: Look at Caitlyn’s eyebrows. They look just like Ed’s.
Dad: Are you crazy? What are you talking about? All the babies look the same here!
Yeah! You tell her daddy!
I was completely psyched about this until I found out that some moms were pumping out over 200 ml each sitting. 200 ml?! Are you kidding me?! It almost doesn’t seem fair. But I’m not letting that get us down. I’m still taking comfort in our small victories.
Feeding time has become more routine, with Caitlyn feeding every 4 hours or so. But it’s also become a power struggle. Because Jessie still isn’t producing enough milk, Caitlyn isn’t able to gain access to the milk as quickly as she’d like to.
To protest, Caitlyn will go into a tantrum, shaking her head and hands violently, and refusing to take Jessie’s nipple back in, all while crying at the top of her lungs until her face literally turns dark, dark red. It’s rather frightening. This usually leaves Jessie defeated and dispirited. This in turn, leaves innocent, little me bearing the unfortunate brunt of her frustration.
On top of this, Caitlyn has lately been waking up at all hours and causing a ruckus for no apparent reasons. The nurses on staff have already labeled her as having an extremely “strong” personality. Trying to find an explanation for this, Jessie said it was because I sang too loudly to the baby one night, and that she hasn’t quite recovered from it yet. She’ll try to use this as a guilt trip any time she’s had a rough time calming Caitlyn down.
Unless I was screaming into her ear, which I wasn’t, I somehow doubt the volume of my singing had any impact on our baby. Perhaps it just seemed loud to Jessie because while she tends to prefer humming lullabies softly to Caitlyn, I favor a hearty rendition of my favorite children’s song, “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.” If anything, it’s probably my off-note singing that does more harm than good to Caitlyn.
But now, Jessie seems to finally be coming to the realization that our baby’s personality mirrors her own. Her own family members are all in agreement that Caitlyn’s impatience and quick temper is just like hers. Even she can’t argue with that. Unfortunately for us, that means we’re going to have our hands full these next few years.
With the origin of Caitlyn’s temperament firmly established, the question now turns to, who does she look like? Personally, I tend to disregard people’s comments when they say a baby looks like so and so. Seriously, can you really tell who a baby looks like when they’re that young?
I mean, if you’ve never seen my baby before and I gave you a line-up of babies, could you pick out which one was mine? I’m guessing the odds probably aren’t in your favor. I’m not saying all babies look the same, because they do look different from one another, but I think for the most part, they’re still too young to resemble anyone.
If you want to claim that our baby’s ears or mouth looks like mine, then you’re going to have to say that 10 other babies in the nursery with her have body parts that look like mine too. And I’ve got at least one supporter on my side.
Mom: Look at Caitlyn’s eyebrows. They look just like Ed’s.
Dad: Are you crazy? What are you talking about? All the babies look the same here!
Yeah! You tell her daddy!
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| These are the alleged body parts that people say look either like Jessie or me. |
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