Okay, we're going to try this again. I think I'll take to writing all my log entries in emacs and then pasting them into blogger, though, since I don't plan to waste another large block of time writing only to have blogger throw it away. Hey, my writing may not be Shakespeare, but spare time is a precious commodity right now, and I have none to waste.

I've fallen a little behind on log entries over the past few days, but at least I remembered to make a few notes as interesting things happened. This log entry is based on the events of March 1st, so just pretend it was written then.

March 1st was Samantha's one month visit to the pediatrician. She's still doing great. She continues to gain weight and has reached normal newborn weight or a bit better, at 8 lbs 2 oz today. She's also 20 inches long and has a head that's 36 centimeters in circumference, as if you cared.

Now that she's past her due date they measure her relative to that date; so even though she's been out of the womb for a month, developmentally they consider her a one week old. For a one week old she's pretty advanced, in the 90th percentile for weight, the 70th for length, and the 50th or 60th for head size. She also continues to display remarkable head control and neck, back, and leg strength for her age.

I always enjoy going to see Dr. Pangburn -- he's a great guy, and a lot of fun to talk to. Amy was feeling exhausted this particular day, so I let her sleep late and took Sam to the doctor myself. We had a long rambling conversation about child rearing, attachment parenting, dogs (boxers we have known and loved, and the changing relationship between dogs and kids as the kids get older), and of course my evolutionary theory of parent sleeplessness.

The theory, which is mostly intended as humor, goes like this. Sleep deprivation is known to interefere with long-term memory formation; this is a well-known phenomenon, I believe. The reason this is important is that if women were to remember how painful labor was, or if anyone were to remember how hard the first 3 months with a newborn are, no one would ever be willing to have a second child. Every generation would be at most half the size of the one before it, and the race would quickly dwindle and die out. So nature conspires with newborns to make sure parents are sleep deprived for the first few months, so that their first permanent memories of parenthood are of angelic children who smile sweetly and sleep through the night, and who wouldn't want 2 or 3 of those? Thus does the species perpetate itself.

Dr. Pangburn thought the theory was great. He also repeated his earlier advice about letting her sleep in bed with us if that's what it takes to get her to sleep without a lot of crying. She'll settle down in 3 to 4 months, but in the meantime do whatever works. (You know it's bad when *pediatrician* says you that look tired and you need to get more sleep!)

We tried this the other night, letting her sleep in bed surrounded by her Boppy pillow so we couldn't roll over onto her even if we wanted to. It worked well for Amy, who got more sleep than usual this way, but not so well for me. The problem is that any little noise Samantha makes in her sleep, I'm wide awake and alert for problems. Now imagine how much worse this in when the noises are coming from 6 to 12 inches away rather than from the other side of the room. I don't think I got more than 20 minutes of continuous sleep that night, so this probably isn't a long term solution.

Incidentally, the pediatrician was vastly amused by the fact that I'm the one who's wide awake immediately upon any squeak, gasp, or grunt in the middle of the night. Evidently it's usually the moms who get this gene rather than the dads. Harumph.

Oh, and the pediatrician also said that her smiles are just gas. Conscious social smiles don't start for 4 to 6 weeks after birth, and even though Sam is a month old, the first 3 weeks (the preemie weeks) don't count for this sort of thing, so we've got a ways to go yet before her smiles mean much. Double harumph.