Kid Amnesiac

For the last few days, Simon has spent much more of his time awake. (Soon we’ll post new pics where Simon is doing something other than sleeping.) There’s a downside to this, as I can no longer plan on regularly spaced two-hour blocks of time to eat, go for walks, run errands, clean, read, knit,etc.

The upside, of course, is that it’s more fun to look Simon in the eye than it is to simply watch him feed and sleep.

And the real payoff came late yesterday, when he smiled at me for the first time. I had just fed him, and he got fussy shortly thereafter (reflux I assume). So I walked with him for a bit, then sat with him facing me in the glider. His cries gradually softened, then stopped. And then, just when he would have drifted off to sleep only days before, he took some quiet alert time to look around the room, look at me, and then smile widely and show off his dimples.

I know Simon is too young to really be smiling at me. But I don’t care! It looked like he was smiling at me, and seeing those big blue eyes staring straight into mine when he broke into a grin made me absolutely melt.

Today was Simon’s three-week birthday and his second trip to the pediatrician. As you can see, he had a great time at the office. At Simon’s last visit, he weighed 6 lbs, 10 ozs. They want babies his age to gain an ounce a day, so today he should have weighed 7 1/2 lbs.

Well, he came in at 8 lbs, 5 ozs instead, making Dr. Newstadt very happy (”He’s gaining quite well…”) and his mother very relieved (”I’m not starving my baby!”). Also, this means he’s big enough to use the Baby Bjorn carrier and try out the Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers. Whoo Hoo!

At his current weight, Simon is in the 25th percentile for babies his age. Which is funny, because he was in the 24th percentile when he was measured in utero at 34 weeks. The kid is nothing if not consistent.

* That’s “chazzer” as in Yiddish for pig. At Simon’s age, it’s good to be a chazzer. By preschool, not so much.

Check out more pictures as Simon approaches week three.

As most of you know, Simon spent his first days in the NICU because he aspirated amniotic fluid, which resulted in irregular breathing.

His stay in the NICU ran five days and four nights. They did chest X-rays, had him on oxygen, ran antibiotics via an IV, had him hooked up to monitors, and did tests including a blood gas and blood culture. Then he spent two days under bili lights to clear up his jaundice. And of course, he was under the constant care of neonatologists and specially trained nurses.

The cost of this neonatal adventure? $16,000. That’s right, sixteen thousand dollars. Or as I thought when I saw the bill: “OH MY G-D, SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!”

Now I feel a credit card commercial coming on:

Price of premature breathing: $16,000

Peace of mind that comes from United Healthcare picking up the tab: Priceless.

Before Simon was born, I spent much time wondering what he (or she, since I didn’t know) might look like. Matt and I are physical opposites, so the possibilities were endless.

Would his hair be reddish and straight or dark and curly? Would he get Matt’s large but distinguished nose, or my family’s equally large but rather bulbous one? Tall or short? Brown eyes or blue? My prominent chin or Matt’s slightly weak one? Would he have Matt’s warm coloring or my cool complexion?

Well, it’s too early to know about almost all of these questions. All we can see now is that his hair is dark to start with and that he seems to have gotten Matt’s chin.

And alas, for the last week or so he’s also had my blotchy skin. Matt and I both had lousy skin as teens, but Matt’s cleared up in his late twenties, while mine kept being crappy right up until I got pregnant. And now, at only three weeks, Simon has his very own case of newborn acne. Newborn acne is probably caused by Simon processing estrogen from my system, and in Simon’s case it is exacerbated by the amount of spitting up he does. It’s just impossible to keep it off his face and hands at all times, and newborn pores don’t function well.

This requires no treatment and will clear up on its own, but it’s hard not to look at him and feel personally responsible and like I’m getting a preview of what we all have to look forward to once Simon hits the teen years.

Yesterday Simon hit another milestone. For the first time that I’ve seen, his crying was accompanied by tears. Previously, when he cried his body twitched, his forehead crinkled, and his wailed his heart out, but his eyes remained dry. Turns out new babies don’t have functional tear ducts for the first two to three weeks. Who knew?

Last night and again this morning Simon had a fussy patch and cried (Most recently when I attempted to put him in his/my new Maya Wrap for the first time). And both times I saw a few tears run down his face while he was wailing. It really makes the whole thing even more heartbreaking and me more desperate to calm him down quickly.