Week 5: smiles and tears

Sleepy smile

Owen smiled for real for the first time this week!  (Sleeping smiles have been happening for a while--above photo is a near-miss capture of one of those).  His first smile even came with a little laugh, like an aaaahhh sound.  This morning he smiled again at Granma and Gramps on Skype.  He must have heard how much they missed him.  
Another new development this week is that Owen is starting to use his vocal cords, so there are a lot of new sounds--a few mmmm's and ahhh's, and a lot of new noises when he cries, most pitiful.  He is holding his head up better and moving his arms with more purpose.  When he's awake and happy, he is really attending to faces and turning his head to follow sounds and sights.

On Friday we went to UCLA for some errands, and had a really nice lunch sitting out in the shade on one of the lawns.  Owen seemed to enjoy the fresh air and breezy outdoor time, so we're going to try being outside some more.  Yesterday I took him for a short hike at a park in Culver City that I had never been to before.  I felt great getting a little exercise and sunshine, and the view from the trail was wonderful.  Owen seemed to like being in the Ergo carrier and had a nice snooze.  I only made it up a little bit to what promised to be a 360 degree view of the city.  I'll make it my goal to eventually see the top!   

We started swaddling Owen tightly at night, and it has helped him sleep longer.  We are now swaddling him for naps, too. Otherwise he startles himself awake just as he is falling into a deep sleep, and ends up overtired.

Baby hand imprint stamped on face from sleeping in Ergo

We have had several occasions when he went 4 hours between his tasty buckets of chum at night.  This means that Noah's giving him a nighttime bottle has fallen apart a little, because I can't wait 8 hours between feedings.  We will continue to give him a bottle of breast milk at least once a day so he stays used to the bottle.  He is taking it with no problem, and even drank a bottle I gave him once this week.

He weighs about 10 lbs and is noticeably chubbier.  He has a double roll under his armpits.  Footie pajamas that looked huge when we brought him home now fit perfectly.

And last but certainly not least, the crying continued this week.  Endless, loud, inconsolable crying.  It seems that Owen is colicky.  For the uninitiated, "colicky" is a word that means your baby cries for no reason, for hours on end, every day.  Our baby book indicates that the most serious problem with colic is its effect on the parents' mental health.  Noah and I have been at our wits' ends more than once.  Even big sister cat Cleo has been at her wits end this week.

It seems that he gets tired in the afternoon, and then he gets a little cranky, and then something upsets him like he has to burp or milk comes out too fast when he's eating or he poops.  Then it sort of spirals out of control and it is very, very hard to calm him down.  Going in the Ergo and walking (sometimes on the treadmill) sometimes works, and going in the car works great although it is not always practical and/or safe to go for a drive at 2 am when we're half asleep. 

We are learning to trade off when it gets to be too much and trying our best to be patient.  We are thankful that Noah is home with us. (I am, anyway.  Noah might wish otherwise at times.)  We watched the Happiest Baby on the Block video last night which is all about how to calm a baby who won't stop crying.  We learned a few tricks and, more than anything, had our confidence restored that there is nothing seriously wrong with him, or with us.  Lots of people tell us that there is a critical turning point where things improve around 6 weeks.  The books tell us that colic usually goes away quite suddenly by 4 months.  I'm not sure we can wait another 2 1/2 months, so here's hoping for the 6 week milestone to come through for us.  

Hanging in there...