Atomic Tonic

Tomorrow Linnea is one month old. It feels like she's been here simultaneously for 3 days and 3 months. She's outgrowing clothes already. She wakes up about twice a night. Tends to get fussy around 7pm and sometimes again around 4am. She's started pooping once a day, gigantically, blowing through oufits and reaching clear up to the back of her neck, instead of everytime she nurses. Her umbilical cord stump fell off at one week. I don't think it was ready to -- I think her clothing pulled it off -- so the pediatrician swabbed her button with something to dry it out. It's looking healed now but she has yet to have a proper bath or a shower. So far, it's been sponge baths and baby massages on the Safer Bather.

She's been taking a pacifier here and there.

I have mixed feelings about this. Matilda took one for about 2 days when she was wee and screaming which prompted us to find a place online to order replacements for the only one she deemed ok. This time around, the hospital didn't cough up even one pacfier and I didn't ask as I assumed this kid would be using me as a pacifier much the same as Matilda did. But Linnea is a different creature and my milk production doesn't allow for hours of comfort nursing unless it's followed by grunting and spitting up. So when the need to suck comes up, as it often does for the newborns, we've discovered that the pacifiers leftover from Matilda's brush with them are coming in handy. I'm apprehensive about this as I don't look forward to breaking the habit but I have to admit I'm enjoying the time between meals when I get to keep my shirt on.

Her personality so far mimics how she was in utero. While Matilda was all Bruce Lee all the time, both before and after birth, Linnea is a little more Martha Graham, maybe. More apt to organize her stretching out and bending backwards. She enjoys sleeping. Is finally losing her ruddy jaundiced complexion but is still working on the baby acne. The hair on the back of her head is darker than the hair on the front. Her nostrils are perfect triangles. Her (blond) eyelashes get longer everyday. Her hands are long and delicate.

She's a great sleep aid, helping to get Matilda down for naps and bedtime. With Linnea lying next to her, Matilda is out in a quarter of the time it usually takes. If she wakes up and Linnea is no longer on the bed with her or even if she's no longer wedged under her head and is instead lying on the other side of me, there are tears and demands and "I wan taka Naya! I wan taka Naya!" It's sweet but too bad Matilda is only two and we can't use her as a babysitter.