We think that Takeshi might be able to recognize us now. Jay makes these funny faces and he laughs (with his cute little gummy grin) and this morning he was crying but when Jay handed him off to me, he looked at me and smiled. Of course, all this can be gas (which he does have a lot of) so we’ll see.

Last week he was doing moderately well at the night sleeping. His first stretch would usually last 4-5 hours. But I think he’s going through a growth spurt now; most of yesterday and now into today, he has not slept for more than 2 hours at a time… and my nipples are killing me — I have to keep checking to make sure they’re still there.

He’s also not as newborn-ish as he used to be. When he was hungry he used to cry and wimper but now he screams and tears roll down face. And he’s still not into tummy time. I try to get him to move but he hates it and just screams and screams and screams.

He still loves his bath time and it’s now part of his nighttime ritual. Hopefully he’ll start to understand that bathtime means that bedtime follows and that he’s supposed to sleep 6 hours so I can get some shut eye. I’m starting to feel like a cat with all these damn naps.

Although our glider and ottoman were scheduled to be delivered on June 3rd, it seems those Canadians got a little ahead of themselves and it will arrive at our house tomorrow morning. I’m glad it’s sooner rather than later but now I’m realizing that it’s probably too big to fit in Takeshi’s room and we’ll most likely have to keep it the master bedroom. I have no idea how we’ll fit it in there but I guess we’ll figure something out.

Yesterday was Takeshi’s one month checkup and he’s doing just fine. He weighed in at 8 pounds 5 ounces and measured 21.25 inches.

So far things are going well with us although the past few nights he gets extremely fussy right around bedtime. Even though it took him a couple hours to go to sleep last night, once he was down he stayed down for almost 5 hours! I think part of it has to do with the ‘gas relief drops’ we gave him. At first I thought all his straining and red-faced grunts were his attempts at taking a crap but now I’m realizing that it’s gas. I think that’s what’s waking him up and preventing him from sleeping longer so we decided to try the drops last night and they seemed to work. I’d like to try Gripe Water which is supposed to have the same effect but is more natural; the Europeans use it and they seem to be better at the baby thing. Ok, well they might not be better… but they have higher safety standards than the US. And besides, I’d like to say that I raised my baby Euro-Style.

I’ve also been on a baking kick this week. Although it’s really been more out of necessity than desire. I made cupcakes (a la Duncan Hines) on Monday, banana muffins on Tuesday (had some overripe bananas) and apple crisp (to get rid of the quickly ripening apples) on Wednesday. Thankfully, Jay works in a place where there is not a shortage of hungry people. I think I’ll make more apple crisp for him to take to work next week — we have a dozen apples that are not getting eaten and need to be baked (who wants to eat apples when you have apple crisp in the fridge?).

And if you are looking for a recipe, may I suggest checking allrecipes.com — this is my new favorite site. I got my banana muffin recipe and my apple crisp recipe (as well as my sugar cookie and icing recipes) from this site . What I love about it is that all the recipes are rated so you can see what other people think. I also check the reviews to see what other people think as far as adding/removing/increasing/decreasing ingredients. I only pick recipes that have 5 solid stars and I haven’t been disappointed yet. Seriously, check it out.

Twenty-two days later and we’ve gone through a (small) bout with jaundice and our baby is eating so much I’m concerned we may be raising a little sumo wrestler. His first week was so easy and we’re not sure if it was because he came a little early or if it was due to the jaundice. Either way, he is awake for much longer periods of time and is so much stronger than when he was first born; I can no longer hold him while I am preparing his bottle because he will squirm and thrash so much that I’m scared I’ll drop him.

I have to say though that the birthing experience was nothing like I thought it would be. First of all, I thought it would be much easier than it actually was. And second, it lasted a lot longer than I had originally thought. I also learned so much and I am hoping to take the following knowledge to my other births:

1. When they say ‘push like you have to poo’, don’t listen. Push, yes. But not like you have to poo. I did that and ended up pushing out a lot of shit but no baby. It was hard for me to push vaginally because I had no experience in that. Once the OBGYN put his hand down there and specifically told me to push where he was putting his fingers, I knew where to push and my labor went much quicker. Next time I’ll know (if I have an epidural) to have someone put pressure down there so I know where to push.

2. Massage or put a warm compress on the perineum. My muscles were so tight that I couldn’t get Takeshi out. The OBGYN tried stretching it as much as he could but ended up having to give me an episiotomy (which I had wanted to avoid).

3. Walk more. When I was walking around the hospital, I dialated 3-4 centimeters in one hour. What made the contractions worse was when they had me lay in the bed to monitor Takeshi. The pain was never as bad as when I was confined to the bed.

4. Breastfeed early and often. After I gave birth, I didn’t even attempt to breastfeed until at least 6 hours later. Takeshi did not take to the breast easily (he just wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep) and I ended up supplementing formula. Once I had done that, it seemed easier to give him a bottle than a boob. Then my milk came in and I got horribly engorged and that pain was almost as bad as the contractions. To ease the pain I used cabbage leaves and ice packs which I found out later probably reduced my milk supply. I’m now working to get my supply back up but it hasn’t been easy and I’m now dealing with blisters on my very sore nipples.

5. Bring calling cards. Jay had to leave the Labor and Delivery area to use his cell phone. If we had calling cards he would have been able to make calls from the room and wouldn’t have missed things like the breaking of my water bag (which was the most odd sensation I’ve ever felt).

We both learned so much with this pregnancy and birth and I know it will make our next venture a little easier. I never would have been able to get through it if it hadn’t been for Jay. He was an excellent coach — even better than I thought he would be. I knew he was excited about it but I still felt that once things progressed he would freak out but he remained calm and his curious nature proved invaluable to the both of us. He could read the contraction monitor better than the nurses and knew before they did that I was getting ready to push. Plus, he provided his Jay-humor which kept me sane and helped me get through something that I thought I would never survive.

I still can’t believe that tomorrow is Takeshi’s “due date” and we’ve already been parents for 3 weeks.