It’s been an interesting and trying week with Ezra. The first couple of days with him were really really good. The kid slept a lot and we felt a energized. One morning I even went to Costco with Danielle (who is a life saver being here to help us out) and had a great day!
Then the vampire son came out. Ezra did NOT want to sleep during the night. He would feed and then stay awake for a few hours making grunting noises/crying a little. Ugh.
Let’s back up a little. The hospital offered a program which allowed us to leave the hospital earlier than usual (we left Sunday afternoon, not 24 hours after the birth!) as long as a midwife can come and visit a few times in the week to do some tests. At first we initially declined this option but after a really hard first night where I squirrelled Ezra and myself up in the bathroom so Vero could get some sleep away from the grunting and cries…we realized that it may be better to head home so at least I could go into another room with him and get him away from Vero if need be.
This turned out to be the best decision of our lives. The midwife was incredible. She came in on Monday and Wednesday and also followed up with an additional Friday just to make sure we were doing fine. The Monday appointment was pretty good…we all had some energy in us, we asked some questions and she took some measurements and some blood samples from Ezra.
Once Tuesday night hit and the vampire awoke, the midwife saw that we were a couple of adults who were destroyed by lack of sleep. I couldn’t even comprehend how I could function. But she put things into perspective and talked us through the issues we were having so far with him (not many at this point other than not sleeping through the night) and we got some much needed sleep that day.
While it would be nice to get a straight shot of 6-8 hours of sleep, the human body can still function quite nicely if it only gets 6-8 hours over the span of 24 hours. The week got easier but Ezra has kept on staying awake during the night.
As I write this one week after his birth, Danielle and Gaetan have taken Sierra for breakfast and Vero and Ezra are sleeping in the bedroom. He doesn’t seem to like sleeping in his bassinet in the bedroom so we have figured out that if I sleep on the couch, Vero has enough room to feed him in the bed and create a Fort Knox type barricade around him in the bed so he’s safe and sound when he sleeps. I’m pretty impressed by the setup. Last night in particular Vero couldn’t get him back to sleep after 2am and I sat for 3 hours with him watching Star Trek Deep Space Nine in the living room. It’s nice to be sitting with your baby at first and just taking it in and trying different tricks to put him to sleep. But after two hours it gets a little tiresome!!
At this point, the only tricks that seem to work is to put a pinky finger in his mouth to suck on and also to come along for the ride of doing squats with me. He likes dropping down and coming back up. It calms him. While I don’t particularly care for the newborn phase of a child’s life (who really loves the lack of sleep and not knowing why a kid is crying?!) I do enjoy stumbling upon some new trick that calms him down.
All is not lost however…he is a great little boy and we don’t see many issues at this point like we did with Sierra. Sierra had an intolerance to milk protein and soy that we didn’t really diagnose until four months later. How were we supposed to know that her poops weren’t looking normal and crying her lungs out all evening wasn’t normal?
Ezra seems to be having the right type of stool coming out of him and nothing makes me happier. We can’t remember if Sierra also was good at the beginning so we will keep an eye on things once a month goes by.
It’s hard not to talk about Sierra when I talk about Ezra because I am always comparing the experiences in my head.
Speaking of Sierra, she is turning out to be a great big sister. She wants to play with him and hold him and generally be around him but she listens well if we tell her that certain times aren’t the best for playing (like when he’s sleeping). I think a good relationship will bond the older he gets.
Onto to some pictures!
Here’s a snap of Ezra and I after a night of no sleep. But he’s already a diehard Smashing Pumpkins fan. He gave me the thumbs up for my choice of t-shirt.
Here he is before leaving the hospital for the first time. I’m thinking he’s giving me some type of gang sign?
Proud Papa!
Obligatory “Here Comes the Son!”. What a great first song to listen to.
”What do you mean he’s a boy?!”
Sierra was very excited to show Ezra all her toys.
We snuck outside onto the front porch to get some sunlight.
“Excellent.” I think this is the picture in which Nanny was saying she had never seen fingers so long on a newborn before.
Clearly Ezra thinks my jokes are pretty good.
I saw this on a box at Costco and thought it was hilarious.
Grand-maman said that the ladies love seeing a guy push a stroller.
Grand-maman sneaking in a much needed nap.
Sierra playing Frère Jacques on the kazoo for Ezra.
I’m crushing your head!
I send these shirtless photos to my colleagues every few days. I know they are happy to receive them.
Hanging out in the living room
Grand-papa dropped in for a visit
I got some lessons from the bricklayer. Pouring cement wasn’t all that hard. I was expecting it to be harder. I suppose the hardest part is creating the form to put the cement in and I let Gaetan do that part while I slept.
The final product! I raced to the daycare to pick up Sierra because we had the great idea of putting Sierra and Ezra’s foot print into the cement before it dried. We got Ezra’s done and then Sierra didn’t want anything to do with it! After minutes of trying to convince her it was a cool thing to do, we wiped the slate clean.
First outing with Ezra..it wasn’t a far walk…a couple of houses away!
We survived the first outing together!
A nice family shot
