A wonderful couple was willing to babysit Shanna when she was really tiny. The wife commented (I’m not going to get the words verbatim) that she was not easy/hard/difficult… something to that effect. I couldn’t understand what she was talking about! I thought Shanna was very easy! All she needed was 24 hour a day physical contact with me most of that with my nipple in her mouth. It’s not like she had colic or reflux or anything. Fast forward to Calli…
Now I get it. Calli is perfectly happy to take naps lying on the couch by herself. When she wakes up for the night time diaper change after five, six, or eight hours of sleep (I shit you not. She sometimes sleeps for eight hour blocks.) she nurses, gets her diaper changed, then I flip her onto her stomach and rub her back for a minute and she’s right back to sleep without a murmur. The reason I have her sleeping on her stomach is because she is having issues with passing gas. (Uhm. We’ve been eating a lot of cabbage.) On her back she has to kick her legs really hard in order to get the gas out and that often wakes her up but on her stomach she can just fart without a wake up. Much more peaceful for her. She has had enough head control to lift her head up and look around before putting it back down on the other side since birth. It’s neat.
She’s already getting to the point where she’s happy to be held by other people. Ok, sometimes it takes some jouncing, but she’s (almost) six weeks old. I have to jounce her sometimes. When she does get upset it’s pretty invariable that she needs a diaper change. (Though we did have one night where her gas was really upsetting her. The face down on your arm trick solved it.)
She likes to nurse a lot, really hard, and then let go of my nipple and get on with her life. THIS IS SO COOL!!! I’m really happy not having another nurseaholic. She’s already grown out of three month sleepers so I’m very confident she is getting plenty of milk even though she nurses way less often than Shanna did. 🙂
Noah and I are very happy our kids arrived in the order they did. It would be very hard having a kid with as high of touch need as Shanna after having a kid as mellow as Calli. However, it is fucking awesome having a kid as mellow as Calli after Shanna. Which is not to say that in any way we are bitter towards Shanna. I thought everything she did was exactly how it was supposed to be and I didn’t mind. What else did I have to do?
But of course she hates the car. I just have that luck. 🙂
from Debs
*heart*
loved reading this.
hugs to all, keep plenty for yourself
she’ll probably get better with the car when she can be more upright and play with Shanna more. After all since she’s not a nursaholic she won’t be just generally mad that nursies are waaaay over there somewhere.
It took nine months with Shanna. Hysterical screaming the entire time we were in the car. Ugh.
glad Calli is mellow for you in so many ways!
I think most babies can seem “easy” if there’s a match between the parents and the baby 🙂
I felt lucky that our C was pretty mellow about being brought along while A needed me. C spent a lot of time in the wrap carrier while I supervised outdoor play, read stories, took walks…
How does she “hate” the car? The whole time, or just runs out of patience? C would run out of patience before we got home, and the last mile or two were torture.
Best wishes! Look forward to meeting Calli sometime 🙂
*nod* I think that I’ve had a good match with both kids so far. Yay!
She screams the whole time. It’s rather a nightmare.
My nieces are exactly the same way – Bella was pretty high maintenance, and Sophie is a little loaf of mellow chub. I can’t imagine if they were reversed.
with ours arriving two at once, whenever anybody we knew crabbed about how hard it was to have one we used to tell them to shut up.
but…
having two of different ages would probably be a more of challenge than what we went thru (after getting past the preemie stuff and all that). we never had to worry about how to keep an older one occupied while attending the younger.
and neither of ours ever seemed jealous of the other’s time with us. to this day, even.
keep up the good work!
I could have written this. We thought Frogling was SOOOOOO easy! She never cried! (As long as she was in constant physical contact with someone).
Kittens? Not a loiterer when it comes to nursing…nurses, pops off, goes to sleep. Was 9 pounds even at birth, and is closing on 13 now. Sleeps peacefully, with pleasant, polite grunting wakeups to be pottied/changed/nursed, and goes right back to sleep unless she needs to be pottied a few more times (which sometimes happens between 4-5am). Frogling used to need to be bounced/shushed/rocked/swaddled to sleep. Granted Kittens is not quite 7 weeks, and may yet need more, but so far, WAY different. Allows us to put her down in the cradle. Doesn’t need to be full-contact snuggled in bed…in fact, I really don’t need to be in contact with her at all…I can roll over with my back to her and she doesn’t care.
Funny thing is SO many people have said the second is like this, making it seem like it’s a factor of being the second, parents doing things differently. I SWEAR I’m not going things significantly differently, but somehow, sure enough, Kittens is way different.
My “crap, they’re both like this” issue? Hates the bottle. Problematic when I start working again. Frogling used to just sleep the whole time I was gone and be really hungry when I got back. Looks like Kittens better get used to that idea if she’s going to be stubborn, too.