Category Archives: Random

How many BabyBugs does it take…

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Did I say 4 lbs 12 oz? Make that 4 lbs 13 oz! I just spoke with the NICU nurse (yes, sometimes we call in the middle of the night) and Leah gained over 30 grams at tonight’s weighing! And that was after a huge poopy diaper! (You’re welcome!)

In other news… I’m fairly certain the reason babies start off so small is to give their parents’ muscles time to work up to heavier weights. After hauling 9.5-month-old baby Ry Ry around in the Ergo yesterday I have aches in muscles I forgot I had. I’m sure one day I’ll be able to bench-press a toddler, but in the mean time I guess we should appreciate that Leah is lighter than any of our cats at the moment.

Warning: Severe Geekery Ahead.

To be precise, our fattest cat, Jeepers Creepers, weighs roughly 5.44 newborn BabyBugs (at her birth weight of 3 lbs 5 oz). Lobo is more lean – maybe just over 3 newborn BabyBugs. Which is to say that even at her present weight, it would take roughly 5.82 BabyBugs to balance the scales with our two indoor cats. S’mores (a.k.a. “Farm Cat”) doesn’t stick around long enough for weighing. She’s smart like that.

I would also like to state for the record that when we were discussing trying out Z’s Baby Ergo (several months ago, long before Leah was born), my first thought was that it would be hilarious if we stuck a cat in the Ergo to approximate the weight of a baby. Then Z and Mandy pointed out that we could just use Baby Ry Ry to approximate the weight of a baby. “Oh yeah, huh.” It was kind of disappointing.

Not too much of an update…

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…but when I don’t post everybody says, “Where’s our update??” so I figure I should write something in here. 🙂

Leah is 4 lbs 12 oz today. While I was holding her this afternoon she was suuuuper fussy. We tried everything (except feeding, which we can’t do on demand) – the nurse changed her diaper while I held her, we vented her g-tube, suctioned her nose and mouth (oh, she was not happy with that), and still she was fussy. Ultimately it took a whole lot of rocking and singing to calm her down, though she started fussing every time I stopped singing. Have you ever had to sing non-stop? You think you know a ton of songs but when it comes down to it, you start running out sooner than you would think. I went through my entire repertoire of soft, melodic Shabbat songs and other songs sung round the campfire at summer Jew-camp (as well as my one Yiddish folk song), moved on to humming the tunes to my favorite soft, melodic Israeli folk dances, to which I don’t know the words, and then started on Indigo Girls songs (yes, the soft and melodic ones), at which point I was joined in harmony by Mandy, who by that time had returned from snack-time in the waiting room. Yeah. We kept the kid asleep for a good while with this method. We might have to make a recording of mama-song, because if it takes that much singing to keep her asleep, we’re gonna wear out our voices within a week of bringing her home!

But really, I love it.

The Baby Floor

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The maternity floor is a rough floor to be on. It’s an odd mix of anxious families waiting for the birth of a new addition, glowing new parents wheeling around massive displays of balloons and flowers as they pack up and take their little ones home, sobbing, helpless mothers and fathers consoling each other in every language you can imagine, and exhausted new parents who have long since recovered from birth but still come back to the hospital day after day because they left something important behind when they walked out the day before. And since it’s all on the same floor, somehow we often all wind up in the same waiting room. Awkward.

Long day!

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We had a long day in the NICU today! Mama Mandy and Gran stayed with LeahBug this AM while Mama Lisa went to the ER again (come on now – this is getting ridiculous). Later in the day, Aunti Staci came to visit, and then this evening, BabyBug got to meet her cousin Zach! Didn’t take too many pictures today but this is my favorite – Zach was asking about the glowy band wrapped around Leah’s foot and the nurse explained that it measures her oxygen saturation level. I noted that for grown-ups this would usually be attached to our finger, and then commented that our fingers probably aren’t that much smaller than Leah’s foot. And then this picture happened. Itty bitty baby feets!

feetsies

New video for you!

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BabyBug had another day full of visitors! She spent most of the day sleeping. We’re keeping fingers crossed that tomorrow will be the day she breaks 4 lbs. Here’s hoping!

And now, a video for you. For context on the video’s title: Mandy and I have a tendency to pronounce Leah’s name differently. Mandy says Leeeeeah, whereas I use the Hebrew pronunciation of Ley-a. Like Leya-bug, meant to sound like Ladybug. I fully expect most people will call her Leeeeeah, but hey, that doesn’t mean I can’t have my own nicknames for her, right? I already have so many. BabyBug, LeahBug, BabyGirl, SnuggleBug, Poofy-Cheeks, Scrunchyface, Lambchop (when she cries, because she sounds like a little lamb baaaaah-ing), etc. What’s one more?

Late night musing

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I think I’ve figured out why I can’t keep track of the time. Somehow when you wake up every 3 hours so your wife can pump… it feels like so many more days have passed. Maybe that’s why some people say the first month of life with a newborn feels more like a year. It’s like Groundhog Day. Somebody go grab the Sonny and Cher albums.