1 Month Birthday!

After one month of sleep deprivation and the repetition of changing diapers and nursing at least every two hours, we looked up and realized it has been a month! Almost coinciding with one month has been a new, wonderfully rewarding stage of smiles, cooing and voice recognition. Not that we haven't enjoyed the early newborn stage of Nolan cuddling on our chest but there's something to be said for a little interaction! Today, I think he actually got bored for the first notable amount of time and it was incentive for me to pull out some toys and get the play mat out of storage.

This post could also be labeled, "for the OCD in me", "good birth control" or, "the inner geek". I am going to go out on a limb here and admit to an OCD tendency that started as a suggestion from the hospital staff and morphed into a slightly neurotic, new parent interest of tracking our "infants activity". I'm pretty certain when the hospital nurse gave us the 1 page (note the italics), infant activity log, that it was to help remind me what side to nurse on or to get a sense of whether we had a normal range of wet/dirty diapers. However, we came home from the hospital and found we both appreciated the log to continue to remind me what side to nurse on, but more than that, to start to see a pattern of sorts in Nolan's schedule and keep up on his healthy amounts of bowel movements.

That said, we really hoped to not be parents who started talking all about their kids dirty diapers, spit up or whatever gross habit of the week they portrayed...so, it is with slight embarrasment mixed with some parental pride, that I present to you, "the log".

Over the course of 30 days (from September 6th, our first day home from the hospital to October 5th), the stats are in. Here are the descriptions to prepare you...for the faint of heart, stop reading now.

Feedings: considered as what Nolan eats in one sitting which accounts for nursing either side, both, or eating from a bottle.

Wet: the amount of pee ridden diapers we've changed, not to mention the times Nolan has attempted or succeeded in peeing on us while being changed.

Stools: the amount of poopy diapers we've changed that have ranged from the early black tarry stage, to a weird mustard yellow, to greenish foulish goo.

Real time stats:

290 feedings or 9.6 feedings on average per day

176 wet diapers or 5.86 wet diapers per day

161 poopy diapers or 5.36 poopy diapers per day

As you can see, Nolan is doing his part to keep us awake, compete for the Common Family prize of enjoying what you eat and filling up the land fills.

One disclaimer: while the feedings stats are completely accurate, there is some margin of error in how many wet/poopy diapers Nolan has had...I would contribute this to welcoming help by grandparents, visitors and even a stranger if they had asked, we would probably let them change a diaper. Despite our (my) nuerotic behavior, I felt it was not fair to expect the same from others.

Lastly, we (I) really had intended to do this up to Nolan's 2 week Dr.'s visit but then I became somewhat fascinated as to what would be a real life portrayal of our first month as parents (not believing the literature could truly be right). At this point, I don't intend to keep track quite so religiously, but it has still proven helpful, so we'll see how long it lasts. I promise not to have documentation for his 18th birthday...

All in all, it's amazing that we have done anything at all this month outside of caring for Nolan!