If you’re a big enough dork to weigh your baby 1-3 times a day, you’re a big enough dork to chart their weight gain and post the results on your blog. We got curious because Mr. Griff decided to be completely ravenous all yesterday evening and overnight (ZZzzzzZZZzzzzZZzzz), which is classic growth spurt behavior. He gained 3oz overnight. I can’t wait to hear what the doctor says at his Monday appointment.

To my eye, it looks like he has little 3-4 day plateaus followed by jumps in weight (except the slope is kinda more linear at the end there).

(With apologies to Dick Vitale.)

We had originally planned to use cloth diapers for Griffin, but as with so much we had prepared for his arrival, they were too small for our BOUS (Baby of Unusual Size). We had bought 3 dozen newborn and 1 dozen of the larger prefold diapers, plus a bunch of covers. The newborn diapers turned out to be too small, along with most of the covers, and 12 prefolds is not a sufficient number to diaper a newborn, little pee and poop factories that they are. So we turned the cloth diapers into pee-fountain-aversion devices, and we kept buying the same brand of disposables the hospital had used until our bleeding-heart librul consciences could no longer take the amount of trash we were generating.

We did a little research, and placed an order for gDiapers. gDiapers are a sort of hybrid diaper. The cloth diaper covers are reused, and you have your choice of biodegradable disposable pads (which can be flushed in non-septic systems, composted (pee only), or tossed) or cloth pads. They were out of the cloth pads when we ordered, so we started with the disposable pads.

The “little gPants” consist of a soft outer cotton cover, and a snap-in nylon liner. Both can be machine washed, but the snap-in liner needs to be line dried. The liners dry super fast, so this is not an issue.

The disposable inserts look huge, but you stuff them right into the nylon liner and they fit fine.

The cotton covers are a huge plus, in my opinion. Griffin seems very comfy in them. They’re easier to put on the baby than disposables, and the velcro closures are in the BACK, where the baby can’t undo them (why this isn’t a common feature in diaper covers, I have no idea!). They’re very trim-fitting, unlike traditional cloth diapers, which are very bulky. And they come in great colors and are just so darn cute, I would have no problem dressing him in tshirts and gPants and nothing else during the warm months.

The little “g” logo on the rear cracks me up. It’s like a Griffin monogram!

We’ve been using them for 2 days now, and our main issue has been with pee leaks. To be fair, the disposables leaked a lot as well, and we’re working on fit issues with the gPant and liner to see if we can figure out what’s going on. The pads seem plenty absorbent when there are no leaks, so we think the issue is with how we’re putting the diapers on and the way the liner is fitting around his legs. (There has been the occasional poopsplosion as well, but mostly that affects the nylon liner and not the gPant.)

We really want these to work out because the concept is just so darn cool, and we may even be able to convince Griffin’s daycare to use them. We’re planning to try out the cloth inserts as well, once they’re available again.

Believe it or not, Griffin hit the 4-week mark today.

After 28 days of round-the-clock feeding, changing and rocking, we’re still more or less sane. We think.

As far as we can tell, Griffin is doing great. He’s tipping the scales at 11 pounds now, and he seems to be getting more and more alert and interactive as time goes on. Here’s another baby gym video where it really looks like he’s visually tracking the toys and swatting them with a fair degree of coordination, even though he’s not supposed to be doing this for another couple of months. Maybe we’re just insane sleep-deprived doting parents, but we think it’s pretty cool.

Today was a really good day. Aside from the great weather, a couple of cool things happened.

1.) Griffin got his first bottles from Daddy! I made sure I was nowhere in the vicinity for the event, to avoid any chance Griffin would see or hear me and refuse to accept an impostor (I ran off to take a shower). Griffin took his bottles like a pro and drank all 3oz I’d stored in the fridge (oink oink). He apparently likes the Medela bottles that came with my pump just fine, and there have been no issues with nursing afterwards. So this is very confidence inspiring.

2.) We packed Griffin into the car and headed down to Lowes to browse the garden center. I bought a couple hanging baskets and containers of impatiens for the front porch. Griffin slept through the event.

3.) After this success, because we were feeling brave or stupid (or both), we decided to take Griffin along for our first restaurant meal of any kind since he was born. We chose the El Rodeo near our house, since we had previously noticed that it had high booths that could provide some privacy in the event of a hungry meltdown. And as it was already 1:30 at this point, we figured the restaurant would also be pretty empty in the event of problems. We nervously asked to be seated in a remote corner to avoid bothering other diners in case he got fussy, and prepared for the worst.

Well, he slept through the entire meal in his carseat! I can only assume that because I ate so much Mexican while he was in utero, the mariachi music had a soothing effect. 😉 We were so amazed, we stopped at CookOut for celebratory milkshakes on the way home.

On another topic, I’ve started expanding my repertoire of sea shanties to sing to him when he’s fussy. Here’s his reaction to my rendition of “Blow the Man Down”. Not sure if this is rapt attention or fascinated horror.

I think parents of new babies are required by law to post videos of their little sprouts being cute. 🙂 Here’s Griffin enjoying his new floor gym; the pirate octopus was a gift from his Aunt Robin, and we clipped it to one of the overhead bars for him to enjoy.

Since Griffin’s umbilical cord stump is gone and his new belly button has had a few days to heal up, we were able to give him his first tub bath this evening. He was not amused.

He also pooped all over the towel while we were drying him off. Baby revenge, he haz taken it.

This pretty much sums up our day today. Yowsa.

Having a kid is so educational. For example, I never knew what an umbilical granuloma was until this morning, when we unexpectedly had to take Griffin to the pediatrician to have his treated. (It’s not serious, it just means that he has some icky raw tissue where his umbilical cord stump fell off overnight.) I’m sure Griffin will be providing many more educational opportunities in the near future!

From the “Pictures that will be highly embarrassing when Griffin is 15” Department. 😉

Our little muffin is two weeks old today! And he’s regained his birth weight, and then some!

I’ve found one of the toughest things about breastfeeding to be the self-doubt and worry about whether the baby is getting enough to eat. I got so paranoid about it that we ended up buying a baby scale and doing weigh-ins a couple times a day. (Let no one claim that I am not completely neurotic.) Despite the fact that our very cool pediatrician was happy with Griffin’s progress at his checkups, I kept up the daily tracking to be sure things were going well.

It’s normal for newborns to lose up to 10% of their birth weight in the first few days of life, but ideally they should be back to their birth weight within 2 weeks. Griffin was born at 9lb9oz and was down to a 9lb2oz discharge weight when we left the hospital. (This led one of the oh so helpful nurses to tell me I should consider supplementing with formula because he’s “such a big baby”, but that’s a rant for another time.) He lost even more once we got home (I think the low we measured was 8lb13oz). Breastfed babies can take a little longer to gain because they have to wait for mom’s milk to come in, but once they start gaining, a rate of 5-7oz a week is considered normal. As of this morning, Griffin was at 9lb10.5oz. WOOHOO!

The last two weeks have been really really hard, but I feel pretty great about getting through the cluster feedings and the sleepless nights if this was the end result.

Another thing that’s been weighing on me and Jag is our sick kitty Miranda, who took a decided turn for the worse shortly before Griffin was born. We (mostly Jag) have been spending around an hour and a half each day trying to get her to eat. When you have a newborn in the house, this is not an insignificant amount of time! Jag dragged himself out of bed at 7am after a pretty fussy night on Griffin’s part to take Miranda to the vet for some scheduled oral surgery. Let’s hope she’s feeling a whole lot better by this afternoon.