Days 5-7

Day 7: Poor Jack continues! He cried for a 40 minute stretch in the morning. Nothing would comfort him. It is very upsetting to hear him cry... even though I know that babies cry, and that they sometimes cry for no reason (or for a reason you can't help them with), it is still really tough to be holding a sobbing infant with a warbling chin and not be able to do anything to make him happy.

Still, he cried himself out, napped for a good 3 hours, and then I switched my nursing pattern around. Either the new nursing pattern helped, or he just exhausted himself, because he was lovely and happy all afternoon and through the night. He woke up at 10:30pm, 3:30am, and 7:30am. I can definitely, definitely handle that schedule! I only hope he continues being such a good sleeper and a fast eater.

I'm a bad momma and didn't get any pictures of him today!

Day 6: Poor Jack! The night of day 6 marked his first bit of true fussiness; in all fairness, he couldn't help having a little GI distress, and I think it may have had to do with a change in the way I was nursing him. He went from sleeping in good 3 hour stretches, to needing to nurse every 2 hours and having a good cry in between.

We are getting into a routine. Nursing is also finally at the point where only one of the two of us is crying (the reputed "toe-curling pain" of the first week is no joke). Jack is a highly efficient nurser, and he has one of two modes: on or off. When he's hungry, he needs to eat NOW, and he will get his fill in less than 10 minutes (some babies will nurse for more than 40 minutes). On the one hand, this means that he is vigorous, which can be painful for me, but on the other hand, I don't have to wait a long time for him to finish. I'm quite happy with the trade off.

Here's a picture of Greg's parents with Jack:

He loves his swing. Even on the slowest setting, it's pretty fast (each back and forth is about 1 second... hey, 1 Hz!). My brother Michael and his wife Leslie stocked us up with some google items. Here's one of my favorite pictures of Jack in his swing:

Definitely can't get enough of the little guy:

There's no baby in this picture, but Greg's pretty cute ;) Ya' think this kid's going to have curly hair, or what?

Day 5: On day 5, I had a bit of a scare and needed to go to the doctor's for a few hours. Everything was fine. Luckily my in-laws were able to watch Jack while we were gone. Guess I passed the whole "being away from your infant for the first time" thing without much fanfare!

Here are some more pictures (these are actually from day 4):