Sunday, February 24, 2008

Lessons from one month old parents

Today Roshan officially turned one month old! He celebrated with two "cups" of milk. I figured that now we are veterans of parenthood, we would pass along some lessons learned to all of you young kids out there.

  • Ever heard the phrase "sleeping as soundly as a baby"? Well, it is all a lie unless "soundly" refers to tons of grunts, gurgles, and wimpers throughout the night. It took us a few nights to not panic on every noise during the night. Be warned.

  • Parents who say their babies sleep through the night are liars. That is what I plan to believe.

  • The poop schedule, or lack thereof. We diligently tracked all of his dirty diapers for the first few weeks to learn...he goes through a lot of dirty diapers (10 a day!). We even started measuring his "poops" on a 1-10 scale, until we started hitting a few elevens and twelves and had to reset our scale.

  • Pampers are better than Huggies. There is nothing worse than a leaky diaper at 3AM. Once we hit the level 1 diapers we will let you know how well the Kirkland Signatures work.

  • Most people say babies feed every two to three hours. What they don't mention is that time is measured from the start of one feeding to the start of another. Once you factor in the 30-45 minutes to feed, you soon realize every nap is an opportunity for one task and one task only. So you either eat, watch TV, shower, check email, nap...but don't expect to do more than one.

  • Sadly, rumors of baby boys peeing on you during a diaper change are true (with surprising distance!). Roshan even got our doctor.

  • Another secret that only recent parents know or talk about...breastfeeding. One would think that nature had found a way for this to be simple and easy once that baby has arrived. Wrong. There is tons of work that needs to be put in (for baby and mother) before everything "works".

  • Sleep deprivation has some interesting consequences. Short-term memory is history. One time I soaped myself three times in the shower before I realized what I was doing...luckily I ran out of body wash or I could have been in there for hours.

But at the end, pictures like these make it all worth it...

4 comments:

Priya Sodhi said...

Happy One Month Birthday Roshan!

Hope that you are making your parents proud!

Nick said...

Wait for the projectile poop - way more exciting than pee.
You may think it a good thing when Roshan starts pooping less during the night. It's not. It makes changing the nappy (diaper) in the morning terrifying: shock and awe.

Unknown said...

All very true and funny comments! Let me tell you though it is still a rare occasion when Olivia sleeps thru the night and she is almost 2 yrs old! And the poop really gets worse, oh man! Wait for solid food! Yuck!!!!
Great pics....love the slideshow. You guys look so happy despite the sleep loss and poop! Love you guys!

Eugine Chung said...

How cute.!
I'll be no longer flying to Seattle starting March 10th so hopefully we'll get to hang out more. :)

Here's one hope. My friend Sarah's baby is 4 month old and he's sleeping 10-11hours through the night!