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.