What a year! It's felt like we haven't had a chance to breathe in a few months now, and now we have a new little one to take our breath away. We welcomed Eila into the world Tuesday September 6th at 5:34 am. There are more details to that story (sigh) but that's for another time.

For now, I wanted to make sure to capture a few thoughts after a few days of parenthood. Jill and I agree that everything is much more wonderful and much harder than we anticipated. I think there are some things in life—falling in love, having a broken heart, the sorrow of losing a loved one—that can't be conveyed in words, or perhaps at all, if you haven't experienced it. We are completely overwhelmed with our love for Eila in a way that I don't think we could express. At the same time, I think we didn't realize that just feeding her is essentially a full time job (at least, so far). We've been catching naps, but I worry that Jill isn't sleeping enough, because my presence for feeding is technically optional whereas Jill's is not. She's doing an amazing job and hanging in there but I'm not sure our current schedule is sustainable...we'll see if we can get her a little more sleep.

Today's milestone: Eila's first book (The Hungry Caterpillar).

Day 5: Hungry Caterpillar. She didn't really pay attention, but neither did she fall asleep, which was my goal. — Day 5: Hungry Caterpillar. She didn't really pay attention, but neither did she fall asleep, which was my goal.

In general Eila is a great eater and a great sleeper, and has a sweet disposition. (In a completely unbiased fashion we can tell she's the best baby ever.) In the hospital she had a really cranky day, which coincided with high bilirubin levels (~13.2 or something). Once that went down we got our Eila back. Last night we had a little more of the inconsolable Eila—she was just hard to settle down (either on her own, or with help). She's better during the day, although she was still a little fussy today. On the plus side I think we are up to ~6 poopy diapers per day and are aiming for more, so hopefully she's figuring that out.

We have tried swaddling her a bit, but haven't been able to successfully keep her arms in. Probably we need to just be a bit firmer with it, but she really seems to like her arms free, and she is strong. We may try this again to see if it helps though ("Happiest Baby on the Block" seems to make a convincing argument that it helps).

Right now I'm at work for a couple of hours to try to catch up on class preparation—I teach Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I can blow off a lot of other work this semester (don't tell my department chair) but not lecturing. Luckily I have taught before and am fairly organized, but there is still a lot of last minute prep I need to do for most of the lectures. Hopefully if taking care of Jill and Eila can get even 10% easier I'll be able to make time for this.

Hopebench