As Georgia mentioned, I’ve been able to export and compile three really great videos. I am still impressed by our new video camera, especially when stationary and filming things with lots of colors.

 The first video is of Olivia when she was only 4 hours old! Mommy and Daddy miss this quite, calmer version. Oh well…

This second video is of Olivia’s first bath. I’ll mention here that her reaction hasn’t changed even after her third or fouth baths. <chuckle>

This third video was taken just this afternoon. We tried some tummy time, and then realized we hadn’t used the camera is days. Here was the result…

The days have been getting quieter and quieter as a routine starts to settle in. Well, it’s either a routine or we’re just getting used to having Liv around. On some level, I wish she was a little more interactive. Right now she eats, sleeps, and soils diapers but that’s about it. I realized today that I didn’t have a lot of pictures of me holding my own daughter. We have tons of pictures of everyone else holding her, but not me! Maurice snapped a pretty cute one this afternoon. I was the only one who could get her to pass out today by swaddling her, turning her to her side, and shushing her to sleep. She passed out all nice and curled up in my arms while we watched, you guessed it, more Law and Order. I swear, I don’t think the world could continue rotating around its axis if a Law and Order wasn’t playing in syndication somewhere.

We’re counting down the days when we may be able to see a voluntary, social smile from her. At least then I could know I’d get an emotional response from her. She has taken to staring at us when we feed her a bottle. It’s a very loving “thank you so much for not starving me this week” look. Maurice will hopefully be posting some nice HD video tonight. We have forgotten about the camcorder over the past few days and neglected to post any videos of her.

PS: Woot, I turned in my final exam today as well! Who says you can’t take a full load of graduate school in the summer, go through the final implementation milestone of a AAA game, and have a baby at the same time? Phaw!

Day ten has arrived and our bundle of joy has once again decided to thwart the efforts of mommy and daddy by not allowing them to sleep for longer than an hour at a time. I have found myself glued to the couch in a state of constant cow-dom, mooing incessantly at my husband as he walks by wondering what the hell he can do to help out aside from worrying. Breastmilk does not sit well on my child’s stomach. Instead, it passes right through only to leave her hungry again in a half hour. Not only that, but she has been unable to produce enough poopage to satisfy the doctors and lactation consultants.

The verdict has been passed down to us from the doctors and lactation consultants… (cue Law & Order transition sound)… Olivia must be fed formula in the evenings to resolve her fussiness and lack of sleep. Mommy is apparently inefficient as a producer of milk and should keep to what she does best, programming and making handbags. It turns out that I can only churn out about 16oz a day of milk. Olivia needs at least 24oz a day to satisfy her at this point. Doing the math, it seems as if Mommy just can’t produce what she needs. I’m still trying my hardest and pumping furiously with a hospital grade pump, because I want her to have the benefits of the milk regardless of the delivery method used, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling like a complete failure as a mother. I don’t normally fail at the things I set out to do, but I suppose I don’t have much control over my own body. I could place blame on a number of factors that led up to this point (not latching on after delivery, nurses neglecting to tell me there was a pump in my room and I should have started using it right when I got in there, no lactation consultants in the hospital on Sundays, lack of sleep, stress of being a first-time mother, etc.) but it won’t help anything. I guess what really kills me is that no matter what I do, I simply won’t be able to provide the nutrition she needs. We’re just going to do what Danielle and others have suggested, which is to spend the daytime hours giving her breastmilk and the evening hours giving her formula. I will continue to pump with a hospital grade pump every 3 hours for as long as my body allows me. The lactation consultant said that if I’m not pumping more by next week then I need to just stop.

Aside from my own self pity, we’re doing quite well. We took Olivia on a little stroll through the neighborhood yesterday to calm all of us down and prepare for a long night of bad television and infomercials. Charlie also dropped by this evening to meet Olivia. She greeted him with a generous fart. Sorry Charlie… she takes after her father

Picture 1: Charlie holding Olivia

Picture 2: Daddy preparing Olivia for a nice stroll through the neighborhood

Picture 3: Daddy needs to have a one-on-one chat with Mr. Daniels this evening it seems…

Ok, sleep… or the lack thereof. Olivia seems to want to be a nightowl and stay up at all hours of the night. Last night it was from 2am until 7am. She would sleep, but only if she was in a cuddled position in her swing or bouncer. Naturally, one of us has to stay up to watch her when she’s in a state like this, because it carries a really bad SIDs risk, especially when she flails about looking for food. One thing I have discovered is that she really does like to sleep with her arms straight out to her sides. Swaddling her just makes her get angry with us or she finds some way to get out of it and fling her arms outward. She also didn’t like her legs being swaddled tightly, so we just loosely cover her legs so she can kick her feet out later at night. In other words, she sleeps like her daddy I’ve got a trick I’m going to try that a friend told me about to see if perhaps the Miracle Blanket would work for us.

The problem we’re facing is that she wants to nurse nonstop now. Either it’s a growth spurt or I’m just not capable of feeding her enough. She seems to want to be held more than anything at night and detects that she’s not being cuddled as soon as she hits the Pack-n-Play mattress. She wiggles around a bit then begins screaming bloody murder. We’re not entirely sure what’s going on there, since she’s fine in her swing or bouncer when we take her downstairs again. She only does this in the late hours. She’s fine in the afternoon, which boggles the heck out of me.

Anyhoo, here’s a picture of Olivia sleeping soundly in the afternoon…

We’ve officially survived our first week as new parents. Lessons learned are as follows:

•  Breastfeeding is hard to get started, but rewarding if you put in the extra effort. Daddy can become involved with the feedings once breastfeeding has been established!
• Breastfed babies poop rarely, but when they do… back up and grab the tongs.
• Gnawing on fists and making piglet grunting noises means “I’m hungry, drop everything you’re doing now, or I swear I’ll make your evening a living hell!”
• You can actually leave your home with an infant in tow. You are not a slave to the house.
• Dads love to change poopy diapers!
• Final exams + baby = tough, but doable
• Last, but not least: TEAMWORK - it takes two to make the baby and two to take care of it!

I only have two pictures today. We really haven’t done much in the past two days other than visited the lactation consultant and had a follow-up appointment with the pediatrician. Thankfully, she has gained 3oz since her last appointment on Wednesday. That means we started doing something right after all! We’ll have her two week appointment next Friday to make sure she’s back up to her birthweight, but as hefty of an eater she is, I don’t think we’ll have any issues with reaching that goal.

The lactation consultant appointment was well worth the money spent on it. It turns out that I had an incorrect latch, which was what was mostly frustrating poor Olivia. We can still use a bottle, but preferably only once a day (that’s Maurice’s time to feed her when I’m asleep) or whenever I cannot satisfy her hunger between big feedings. She seems to like to do this thing where she’ll eat, then need a little top-off about 30 minutes later. Hopefully this will help build my supply so we won’t have any major problems when Maurice goes back to work. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to handle doing everything on my own when he’s not here. Everyone assures me that she’ll be a lot easier to handle after she gets out of this initial newborn period of 2 weeks. Let’s hope they’re right!!!

Here I am holding little miss Olivia yesterday when we got back from our appointment with Dr. Johnson. I thought it was a cute picture, since she had fallen asleep in an adorable little pose.

We purchased a swing from our friends, which has a newborn seat setting. We have another swing from a friend, but it doesn’t lie back far enough to support Olivia’s head and she would fuss whenever she got in it. As soon as Maurice got home from picking this one up, we put her in it and she passed out for 2 hours. Lovely! This swing is in the living room and the other swing is in the basement, so we’ll have a swing on every “active” floor in the house