People keep telling me that it's going to get worse.
People keep telling me that it's going to be worth it.
Whatever it is, it's going to be interesting.
My wife's routine day so far consists of feeding, changing diapers, and sleeping.
I can sense that it's taking a toll on her already, but so far she's holding on.
The other night my wife fed baby Oz at around 9 PM till about 9:30 PM, and then went to sleep until the next feeding.
I stayed up on the computer with little Oz next to me in the stroller (it usually helps when I roll it around to make him fall asleep).
Oz had a bunch of zits or something on his face (probably because he was sweating too much due to the heat), and I think they irritated him. So it took about another hour before he finally managed to fall asleep.
I was on the computer until about 1 AM when he started to wake up again.
It was way past his feeding time anyway, so I went over to wake up my wife.
She looked at me still half-asleep and said "what? but I just fed him a few minutes ago".
"No, you didn't", I answered. I figured that maybe she didn't notice the passage of time.
She said "but I remember clearly.. I sat right here on the bed and fed him"
Obviously I knew she didn't because I've been with him in the living room for the past 4 hours and the last time she fed him was in the same living room at 9 PM.
"Honey, it's already after 1 AM", I told her.
"what?? are you serious?? that's too long!", she answered, and got up to feed the baby.
I think the lack of sleep is getting to her. It looks like she's starting to have trouble distinguishing between dream and reality. She even told me that it's the second time that this sort of confusion happened to her.
I'm starting to fear that her sleep deprivation may bring her to dangerous situations, such as falling asleep during feeding while holding Oz in her hands.
I spoke to a few people about this and they all said that this situation is normal and that mothers get used to it and still manage.
The next day her mother came over to try and help.
"Go to sleep", she told her. "You need to rest, let me take care of Oz while you do."
My wife would have happily obliged, but her genius mother decided that while her daughter tries to sleep in the bedroom, that's the perfect time to be making phone calls with the speaker on full volume in the living room!
My wife told her that she can't sleep like this, so instead of talking on the phone, her mother went into the kids room (adjacent to the bedroom) and started sorting through the baby's clothes and making noise closing and opening doors and messing around with the clothing.
Eventually my wife had to tell her to just leave because she was doing more harm than good.
I sure hope this won't deteriorate because there's a lot more to go through.
Oz is not even 3 weeks old yet. There's a whole lot of sleep deprivation to go...
A couple of days later the zits on his face went away.
Probably because we stopped wrapping him up all the time so he sweated less.
Slowly but surely we're easing into a routine and getting better at it.
I'm getting better at making Oz fall asleep by holding him in my hands as if to breastfeed him, except that I'm giving him a pacifier instead of... well... my breast.
I think the warmth and intimacy calms him down.
I'm also getting better at changing his diapers faster and faster, although sometimes he's still crying like crazy (but much less than before).
Even the baths are becoming more and more effective.
He's still very young, so he's not much more than a cute bag of reflexes and instincts.
I don't think he's capable of seeing more than general outlines and no farther than half a meter away.
I'm told that after about 1 month or so they begin to interact with you more and react better to what's happening around them.
Just a couple of weeks more and we'll start having an actual human being in our home, instead of a... squeaky toy with reflexes.
Looking forward to it :)
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