Waiting For My Real Life To Begin

On the whole, today wasn’t our best day, but it wasn’t all bad by any means. We had a few sessions of sleeping on Daddy’s chest, which are quickly becoming my favorite parts of the day. When I got to the hospital this morning, Emiko was wide awake and looking around, so I got to play around with her a little bit and snap a couple of pictures while she was nice and calm.

  

I picked her up and got to hold her for a bit while Sara got ready for her shower. She was fascinated with my red T-shirt, which I think is the first time she has seen something of that particular color. While she was busy looking around and taking it all in, I recorded a quick video of her for her adoring public.

I swear she understands a lot more of what we’re saying than we think. The way she moved her hand to say goodbye at the end of that video was either cosmic timing, or she got the gist of what I was saying. Whichever one is actually the case, it was pretty awesome.

Much of the day was largely uneventful. We’ve started having to weigh Emi before and after feeding her so we can determine how much milk Sara is producing. To keep the little one going and hopefully help her get into a little bit better routine, She’s being fed every 2-3 hours at this point, and taking in about 30 grams on average at each feeding. When she was weighed today as a naked baby before her bath, we found that she had lost another 50 grams since yesterday. She’s got about 72 grams of buffer room left to lose before she crosses the 10% line and they start supplementing her with milk or formula. The weight loss has slowed significantly, so hopefully it won’t come to that.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I had my first experience with changing Emi’s diaper. I also had my first experience with her throwing up and cleaning it all up. I was afraid I might have some issues with these things, especially the spitting up, because in general bodily fluids activate a strong gag reflex in me. No lie, I gag when people spit. Luckily, it seems the ties of love and family have overcome my aversion to such things, which is certainly better than bad. This is especially good considering I had to change her diapers four times today, as well as cleaning her up both before and after her bath. Speaking of which…

  

I have to admit to being extremely nervous about giving Emi a bath for the first time. I managed to pull it off without too much of a problem, but I found I had a few issues. First, my hands are so big that I can’t control where I’m pouring the water as tightly as I need to. Second, and this was the biggest problem, the height of the large sink used for bathing the babies in the hospital is far too short for me to stand at, and just barely too tall for me to kneel. Because of the awkward height, I had trouble holding Emi’s head the way I was supposed to, which made it more difficult to wash her head and neck.

After about a minute and a half bent at that bad angle, my back started to hurt really bad, and it took all the focus I had to be able to finish what I was doing without haphazardly rushing through it. Thankfully, Emi is very calm while she is in the warm water and doesn’t fuss much at all, which made it a LOT easier than it could have been. She was such a good girl during the whole thing. Well, until it came time to dress her afterward.

  

As soon as I took her out of the water, she started to get fussy. Then the floodgates released and the Babypocalypse began. First, she peed all over the towel we were using to dry her off, and then she started fighting hard while I was trying to dress her. She’s a lot stronger than you would expect for a little girl just barely four days old. It took a Herculean effort to finally get her strapped into a fresh diaper and wrapped up in a clean robe. After I finally got her all squared away, Sara came over to try to calm her down a bit by giving her a finger to pacify her a bit.

  

She might have been all squeaky clean, but you can tell from the look in her eyes she was thinking mean thoughts. After a couple of minutes, she was back to her usual self, and I brought her on back to the room to get her ready for Second Lunch.

We’ve noticed over the last couple of days that there are a few small scratches that have shown up on her face and legs. Her fingernails have started to get a little on the long side, and her lack of manual dexterity is allowing her to scratch herself accidentally. Today, Sara tried to cut her fingernails, but they are still a little soft so she had difficulty cutting them with the clippers. Sara accidentally nicked Emi’s middle finger in the process, and she started complaining immediately. It bled a little bit for a couple of minutes, but otherwise it seems to not be a problem. So, we’ve got one and a half fingers clipped, and we’re going to have to wait for the others to get a little more substantial first.

In more personal news, I’ve apparently gotten the reputation around the hospital as The Singing Daddy. The nursing staff and other families in the maternity wing stop me in the hall now and ask about singing to Emi. It’s a little embarrassing, but at least no one has told me I suck yet, so that’s a plus. On the downside, today I found out that it doesn’t always work, and I can’t always stop Emi from crying. I did all I could today, but there was a short period that she was just inconsolable. She was hungry and I couldn’t provide for her in that capacity, so I was out of luck.

It was the first time I wasn’t able to console her, and it tore me up a bit. I suppose it’s something I have to get used to; I won’t always be able to make everything all better for her. I guess it’s better for me to learn this lesson now rather than later when I get too accustomed to being the superhero dad, but it’s still a hard pill to swallow. I also learned the lesson today that I need to back off and let her be a bit. Sometimes, when she gets herself worked up, she has a hard time starting to feed because she’s wound up so tightly. Sometimes when I reach in to console her, she calms down and starts to eat. Today though, Sara told me to leave her be.

Logically, it makes sense; I won’t always be there when it’s time for her to eat, so she needs to get used to not having me involved. It was really tough for me to sit there a few times today while little Emi was fussing and crying and not step in to try to calm her down. It tears me up to see her upset and I want to make everything all better for her, but sometimes that’s not the best thing to do. I understand that I need to back off a bit sometimes, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Sara’s Dad told me that a father-daughter relationship boils down to one instance of learning to let go after another, and I’m starting even now to realize the truth of those words.

God help me when she hits her teenage years…

There are a couple of other things I wanted to talk about, but it’s getting really late, so it will have to wait for another day. I head back to work again tomorrow, so I’ll be missing my little Emi-chan something fierce. Sara will have her first encounter with bathing Emiko tomorrow, and will have a physical check-up by the doctors on Tuesday. If everything is ok, my girls should be coming home from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, which is when Sara’s mother and sister will be arriving from Indiana. Busy days ahead for the Whitaker clan, it seems. So with that, I leave you all with a picture of Emi practicing her Gangsta pose…

Good night, all. Sweet Dreams, Emi. See you soon.

M