She's fine; we're the ones needing adjustment.
As babies go, Anna is now a typical newborn. Which means that if this were our first baby, we'd be completely freaked out by now. But we happen to know from our vast experience of these matters that it's perfectly normal, for example, for babies to spit up and then sneeze milk through their nostrils.
She slept somewhat better last night. After her 11 o'clock feeding, she seemed more comfortable in the bassinette in the living room than in the co-sleeper by the side of our bed. So I decided to give Ginger some uninterrupted sleep by staying with her in the living room. She's an extremely loud sleeper. (Anna, that is.) The snuffling tends to get somewhat -- shall we say -- "moister" when she spits up. And she also tends to spit up more after a formula feeding, as opposed to a nursing session or a bottle of fortified breastmilk. A few quick "snork snorks" from the bulb aspirator and a quick wipe with a burp cloth, and she's as good as new. I can surgically wield a bulb aspirator at 3 in the morning with perfect detachment and calm, rather than with the kind of sloppy urgency that accompanies a belief that one's daughter is suffocating. This is where being an experienced father really pays dividends, because I remember when Patrick was this age and how terrified I was all the time.
I've told a particular story several times now and it's gotten better with each telling, so I'll give it a try here and the involved parties can try to ruin the parts I've improved from their so-called reality.
As the story goes, some good friends have just delivered their first baby and are being accompanied to the mom and baby wing of the hospital. New dad is pushing the rolling bassinette down the hallway; new mom is being pushed in a wheelchair by a big, burly orderly. The orderly has a shaved head, handlebar mustache and some visible biker tattoos, but seems kindly enough. The rolling bassinette takes the lead and comes up to a low threshold where the linoleum gives way to carpet. New dad eases the front wheels up over the threshold, and then does the same with the back wheels, gingerly lifting the back end of the bassinette so as not to disturb the baby. From behind him, he hears the orderly say, "You know, if they were that fragile, they wouldn't come out the way they do."
Amen, brother. I think maybe this nation is vastly underutilizing the folk wisdom of its biker orderlies.
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