Not all that interesting a fan you say? Oh no, you are a mistaken… Apparently the fan is the most interesting thing in all the universe. More interesting than mommy, or daddy, or toys, or the dog, or anything. If there is a fan in the room, Ashley must stare at it. If it’s moving, she stares at it. If it’s off, she stares at it. Lights on or off, she stares at it. Though when the lights are on it makes her sneeze. The only thing that is able to distract from the fan is… The Boob. But even then, she will occasionally peek at it from the corner of her eye.

Is it distrust? Did the fan commit some heinous act of malice against her? Did it make fun of her in another life? Does she thing the fan is a higher being? I have no idea. I wish we had thought scanners from the future so we could see what she is thinking. Maybe she thinks its the parent, and we are just appendages?

Holy cow thats a big freaking baby. I enjoy the “what the hell???” look from the normal sized baby…

via Neatorama

A sunken softspot is a sign of dehydration, however, not all by itself. There are other signs, at least some of which need to be present. Well, I made the mistake of mentioning this to mom. So of course, in the middle of the night, she felt her softspot and started freaking out. Partly because Ashley slept for over 6 hours, after not eating that much, but also because she actually didn’t know what the softspot felt like before. I felt it, and since I have felt it every day since birth, I knew whether it was good or bad. She however did not. As a caution to any parent, DON’T FEEL THE SOFTSPOT FOR THE FIRST TIME AT 3AM!!!! Especially not emotional mommy. Its just a bad move all around.

Don’t be afraid of the softspot. You are not going to lobotomize your child by touching it. Yes, you shouldn’t press on it hard, duh. But i guess a good way to describe how much pressure you can touch with would be to press no harder than half as hard as you would press your own eyeball without it hurting (even after your done pushing). At least that is what it seems to me, but basically, just enough to feel the edges of the skull, and the depth of the depression. But really, how many infant lobotomies have you ever heard of by a parent pushing to hard on the softspot. Even by accident, you will end up pushing on the spot, harder than you want, while changing her clothes for example.

The softspot is a result of the skull plates not being fully formed so that the head can be deformed allowing it to fit through the pelvic opening during birth. As an adult, your skull is a mostly solid casing for your brain, that no longer flexes to external pressure. Even after birth the softspot serves a purpose, indirectly. Since the skull plates are still loose fitting and able to deform, your baby’s head is actually pretty tough against impacts. Most babies have hit their heads at some point, often falling out of a chair, off a table, or out of the parent’s arms, no matter how careful you are. It has almost already happened to me, since Ashley seems to have the legs of freaking Olympic Weightlifter and gave a big push right as I was switching arms. Short of getting stabbed by something sharp in the softspot, its actually a good thing.

The other thing people don’t realize is that the softspot is not just a layer of skin, then brain. There is actually a fairly tough fibrous membrane that protects the brain from poking and prodding. If you want more info about it check out this article on DrGreene.

So Friday we decided to try to just go back to the boob, exclusively, if we can. It went really well on saturday and sunday, but went downhill since monday. On tuesday it was really bad. She must have been really hungry, because the afternoon she was awake and bitchy the entire afternoon and evening, over 10 hours straight, with some micro naps in there. But by no stretch enough sleep. We had to give her some formula or she would never go to sleep. Now of course, this puts us back into the original situation. She is so tired she won’t go to sleep, until she passes out. Then she sleeps for so long that she is ravenous when she wakes up and can’t eat. Very difficult to deal with.

Length 21 3/4 inches - 90 percentile
weight 9 5.5oz - 75%
head circumference 14 3/4 - 75-90%

Above average. Ain’t she special. She’s a giant among her kind, and will rule with her gargantuan fist! Actually the thing that is funny is I think she is gaining most of that weight in her neck and her hands. Her hands are already way bigger than they were when we first brought her home. The other day I started laughing because her face looks like Alfred Hitchcock, and her hands make her look like HellBoy with his club-fist.

Of course the doctor offered no actual help of any real value regarding the breast feeding issues. But Ashley is now on zantac to see if she is having pain from acid reflux, apparently because of some actions we described indicated it.

We had an ultrasound appointment yesterday at Scottsdale Healthcare Outpatient Radiology to make sure Ashley’s hip sockets were OK, which they were. This visit was because the pediatrician thought that Ashley’s legs felt a bit loose, but all is well it seems. The visit however, SUCKED. We had a 10:30am appointment, which we did not get seen until 12:15pm. I don’t expect much, and if I was there for something I needed done, I would have probably just sacked out on a chair and gone with the flow. However, when you have a 5 week old, that was fed right before coming so she would be in food coma and be very compliant, but then you have to wait one and a half hours, plus the drive, you run out of time on the baby scream machine countdown timer. Normally I would not be one to encourage preferential treatment, but, it seems a little excessive to make newborns wait that long. It thankfully did not become an issue, but it easily could have.

the video links on the right are how you get there. New ones are up for your viewing pleasure.

LOL. Apparently Ashley has become the authority on baby farts. I was just going through my traffic logs to see if we were getting any traffic for something I could push an affiliate for, and low and behold there is. Ashley is ranked number 3 on google right now for Infant Fart. AWESOME! Actually she is ranked for tons of fart related stuff apparently. I guess farts are not a competitive market…
We have ranks on google,yahoo,msn for:

infant fart
farts
baby fart
baby farts a lot
baby fart a lot
pumping baby legs
comment on infant mylicon
smell of babies fart
babies fart
why babies fart
how to make a baby fart
fart on my baby
fart removal
my baby farts a lot
fart

Fart on my baby… WHAT?!?! People are weird… However, this does tell us that obviously we are not the only people with a really farty baby.

awwwwww. how inappropriate of me.

LOL. Their not supposed to do that. But frankly we are making our own rules at this point since feeding and waking have been such an issue for us. The downside is that when she wakes up, she is SO hungry that she is panicky and basically tries to drown herself by drinking too fast.

I did a little research to find out some sleep info. Newborns sleep between 16-18 hours a day. Which means that if each feeding takes 1 hour, and you are supposed to feed 8 times a day, they are never actually awake to play with them. Only sleep/eat, unless your feeding times are shorter. However, with Ashley this was never the case. Feedings took up to 2 hours because she kept falling asleep while eating. So as a result she was getting sleep deprived I think. At 1 month, the schedule can get down to 14-16 hours a day of sleep, but the feedings should stay at about 8 a day. Again, though this doesn’t work out with Ashley.

At least none of that works out when we breast feed… Last night we fed Ashley breast first for a bit until she started dozing. Took her off, and finished her with formula. She slept 7 hours… When she woke up at 3:30am, mom fed her formula only. Feeding took 40 minutes, and Ashley went right back to sleep for another 3 hours. Far less stressful. Ashley seems to be getting much more satiated, mom is rested finally, and everyone seems happier.

The breast becomes such a focus, and there is so much “bad mommy” bullsh*t associated with stopping, that it creates way too much stress that shouldn’t be there in the first place. Breastfeeding is easier when everyone involved actually wants to participate and is happy with everything about it. When the baby doesn’t seem to be happy about the food quality, and mom is not happy about the time-sinkage, and dad still ends up feeding her formula while mom pumps out the last bits to try to get her milk level up higher, it’s generally a bad deal all around. If you take all the man-hours that we are involved in feeding the baby, including pumping, feeding, heating up pumped milk, etc, we spend over 12 hours a day are spent feeding. Your only supposed to feed 8 times up to an hour each. We are doing double duty because of the pumping, while I feed her. It’s stupid.

So we are probably just gonna use breast feeding as a comfort thing, and formula as the nutrition source. Otherwise life will not move forward, and Ashley will continue to be a source of frustration outweighing the source of joy we are supposed to be feeling. Still not fully decided, but I think we are leaning to that decision.