Last night was another sleepless night with Samantha. She really hates being placed in her cradle at night, and cries (screams, really, until she's red in the face and cannot breathe) within minutes of being laid down, even if she was fast asleep to begin with. But she's more than happy to sleep next to, on top of, or between me and Amy in bed at night -- her face gets this angelic look to it, and she goes right to sleep in apparant bliss. She's also happy enough to sleep in the cradle during the daytime. Go figure. So we just let her sleep on Amy's chest most of the night last night, and she slept for as much as 2 or 3 hours at a time between feedings, which is pretty normal for a one month old.

I'm not sure we want to do this every night, and the day will come when she has to move to the nursery and sleep in her crib, but last night we just had to get some sleep, and that seemed like the most pragmatic solution. Ella was also sleeping on the bed last night, but more or less ignored Samantha. I think she's decided Sam's here to stay and just not all that interesting yet. I expect all that will change as soon as Sam begins to crawl.

While we were up at midnight with her I started rereading "The First Three Years", an outstanding book on child development during the first three years. The author remarked that babies less than 2 or 3 months old don't have much head control, with one exception. When they're angry they show much more control over their heads, and they can propel themselves surprising distances by pushing along with their legs. I guess that means we have a frequently angry child, since Sam does both of these things regularly.

Amy and I gave her a bath today, which she sort of needed. (I promise, there will be no talk of baby poop in this weblog.) She fussed a bit but tolerated it better than I'd expected. At one point she managed to find her mouth with her hand and started sucking her thumb. It's the first time I've seen her do this, though Amy says she's done it before.

I'm just blown away by how quickly she's changing -- she's visibly bigger and heavier than she was just two weeks ago, and shows new behavior every day. Her wakeful and alert periods are getting longer and more frequent, and she spends long minutes just staring into your eyes. I know newborns aren't really capable of much in the way of thought, but it's hard to look into those eyes and not wonder what's going on in there.

My friend Carolyn has offered to fly out from California for a week to help out around the house and let us get a little sleep from time to time. She's going to be between jobs (one of the last people out the door from Excite@Home) and I think she could use the time away from work-related stress as much as we could use the help and the company for a few days. Still, it's an incredibly generous offer, to leave her husband and daughter and fly across the country to try to be useful to us for a week. I'm very fortunate to have such good friends (and to have their husbands and daughters be so understanding). Mark and Jennifer, you're the best.

I continue to be amazed at how strong Samantha is! She's been developing her head control and neck strength for the past week or so, and for the past couple of days she's been lifting her head and turning it from side to side while lying on her stomach. I thought that was something kids didn't do for at least a month, and here she is only 3 weeks old (only 2 days old if you go by due date!). Maybe I'm just being an overly proud father -- I should look up the facts on newborn development again to make sure I'm remembering correctly.

Sam is also trying her damndest to crawl. She scoots along on her belly by pushing her legs out behind her and gripping things with her hands to pull herself forward. Of course, she typically does this while lying on my chest, using tiny but remarkably painful little fistfuls of chest hair as her handholds. I'm going to have to start wearing tee shirts more often, I suppose.

Amy says that Samantha actually pushed herself up into a sitting position today, but I find that hard to believe without seeing it. On the other hand, when she arches her back and cranes her neck she exerts a surprising amount of force in the process. No wonder she kept Amy awake all night in utero ... if she was moving then anything like the way she's moving now, I can understand why Amy was perfectly happy to do the delivery a few weeks early.

Now if we could just get her over the night time crying fits. The sound of a newborn crying cuts right into the brain like a psychic knife, and no matter how much I tell myself that she'll stop and settle down in a few minutes, I always end up getting up to see what's wrong and try to make it better. That's why I'm living on something like 2 hours of sleep a night right now.

I agree with the pediatrician that she probably has a little acid reflux when laying on her back at night -- that seems to be common among newborns, and especially among premature babies. So we'll try raising the head of her cradle mattress, and giving her the infant simethicone drops that Dr. Colpois suggested (Dr. Pangburn is her pediatrician, but they're part of the same practice) to see if they help settle her stomach at night.

Speaking of Dr. Pangburn, he's a gem and so is the entire office. The first couple of days with Samantha we had no idea what to expect or what was normal. Every noise she made at night sounded like gasping for breath and threw me into a fit of worry. (When you've lost a premature child to lung immaturity, you become hypersensitive to anything that sounds like breathing troubles.) Between that and the nighttime crying, we probably called the pediatrician's office three or four times in the first week, always in the middle of the night. But the triage nurses were great, and Dr. Pangburn encouraged us to bring Samantha in to the office if we were concerned about anything at all (which we did), and he never once made us feel silly for our exaggerated concerns. He did reassure us on each visit that she was absolutely fine. I'm even beginning to believe it.

I forgot to mention that I finally got around to making some cd's of Samantha's pictures, along with assorted friends and family members who've come to visit us, flowers she's been sent, and the like. I burned 6 copies for family members who've asked for pictures. I suppose I'm turning into a digital media geek, though I don't see myself ever doing online movie editing with soundtracks. Who has time for that? Still, I suppose if I were to buy another computer today, it would be an iMac. Maybe Apple has a chance after all.

Today is my first day back to work after paternity leave, although I'm working from home most of the time while Amy completes her recovery from the delivery. I'm finding it a little hard to get back into the swing of things after 3 weeks away, but there's a great deal to get done and not a lot of time to do it.

Being exhausted doesn't help either -- last night was another typical night, in which we tried to put Samantha to bed with us at around midnight, she started crying as soon as she was in the cradle, and I sat up with her rocking her and changing her and soothing her back to sleep from 12:30 am to about 3 am, when I finally got to go back to bed. She woke up again at 4:30 am (hungry); Amy took her that time, but between the noise and turning on the lights, I was wide awake as well. Then I woke up again around 7:30 because Ella (the dog) needed to go outside, and after that I never got back to sleep again. So I'm operating on, conservatively speaking, 3 or 4 hours of sleep every day. No wonder I don't feel capable of concentrating on anything.

On the bright side, I think Samantha smiled at me for the first time today, in between fits of crying. She really doesn't like being put down in a cradle or bassinet -- she much prefers being held by her parents. I suppose there will come a day when we'll look back fondly on this, and wish that she still wanted that much of our time and attention :-)

I'm finally getting around to starting a Weblog, following the excellent advice of my friend Leslie Turek. I wish I'd done this three weeks ago when we brought Samantha home from the hospital, but life has been a little hectic since then. It's a shame, because I think I've missed capturing a lot of the little details about her first three weeks of life. I'll try to remember what I can of the time we've spent together, and to keep up a more regular stream of postings from now on.

It's true that having a baby changes everything. Someone told me once that as soon as you hold your child your life undergoes a tectonic shift. I never understood that until Sam was born. She was about four hours old and I was sitting in the rocking chair in Amy's hospital room rocking her, and even though she'd only been in the world for four hours it felt like she had always been a part of our family. It was hard to remember what life was like without her, even though "without her" was only one day earlier, and I finally understood what that person meant. Everything changes in an instant, and there's no way to describe it in words.

Looking back at those first day pictures, it's amazing how different Sam looks today compared to just three weeks ago when she was born. Being three weeks premature, she was not only very small (5 lbs 12 oz at birth, 5 lbs 9 ozs when discharged from the hospital 4 days later), but she was *skinny* too. You can see it in her early baby pictures; she has very little of the baby fat you find on most newborns.

Boy has that changed! She eats like a horse and has been putting on weight quickly. She went from 5 lbs 9 oz on 2/4/2002 to 6 pounds just two days later, then quickly to 6.5 pounds by the time of her one week checkup. At two weeks she was 6 pounds 14 ounces, and I expect that by the time she has her one month checkup later this week she'll be around 8 pounds -- typical weight for a newborn. I guess she's done her catching up. Just in time for her due date, too!