Barnabas Monkeypants

Like most first-time parents, Kristen and I have bought and read countless books, magazines, web sites, and pamphlets (yes, pamphlets!) about having a baby. Some are really good and informative and help out a lot, but others are either a big waste of time or full of information that I, as a worrier, really shouldn’t be reading.

One book I read had an appendix listing the incidence of dozens of different birth defects. That’s real helpful. Another book listed all the different types of rashes you could expect. I’ve been examining Henry thoroughly every evening.

Some more books seem to gloss over things that I deem to be important. For example, diarrhea. You don’t want your baby to get that, but what exactly is diarrhea when EVERY SINGLE BOWEL MOVEMENT LOOKS LIKE DIARRHEA. (A different book answers that question by saying, “You’ll know when you see it.” I still don’t know.)

And others seem to go into detail about things that shouldn’t be an issue. Several books and sites I’ve read have talked about how after the baby is born, not only do the mothers often go through a bit of baby blues, but fathers do as well. Some suffer depression while others have to fight through not being the center of attention any more.

That’s right: for some reason, after their partner has been pregnant for more than 9 months, carrying an ever-growing child, and going through possibly very painful childbirth, the fathers are shocked — SHOCKED — that they’re not the most important person in the family.

This is amazing to me. Men actually are upset that they’ve suddenly dropped in the pecking order? Because what… they need more attention than a newborn? Or they need more help than a first-time mother?

I’ve been more than happy these first few weeks to try and wait on Kristen and Henry hand and foot, and going back to work not only hurts because I won’t be able to see the two of them but also because I won’t be able to get Kristen her lunch or put a load of laundry in the washer or tidy up the living room. I want to help, because while I can do nearly everything for Henry, I wasn’t able to do the most important thing: feed him.

Kristen has the monopoly on that… until now.

Last week, the breast pump came in the mail, and after sterilizing each piece so that they were clean enough to go into surgery, Kristen tried it out. It worked fine on her end, but when it came time for me to feed Henry, he made what we call the Murray Face. The Murray Face is when he looks like he’s the most disgusted person on the planet, like he was just told to “get back to work, Murray, or we’re going to fire your ass.”

On several occasions, I tried to feed him with the bottle. (Always me, never Kristen. While I don’t subscribe to the “nipple confusion” theory, we both agreed that until he gets the hang of it, Henry with go with Kristen for the real thing and me for the plastic forgery.) Each time, I either got the Murray Face or screams not unlike prisoners having their fingernails pulled out. (Well, one other thing would happen: he’d fall asleep in my arms. That’s always okay in my book.)

That is until last night. At around 10:30, Kristen fed him, I changed him, and when I was holding him and trying to rock him back to sleep it was obvious he was still hungry. Not fussy hungry or angry hungry (those are not the good hungries). But a subtle hungry where he’d look up at me and smack his lips a few times. So I sat down on the bed, curled him in my arm, had Kristen hand me the bottle (and then quickly leave the room), and I put the nipple in his mouth.

And he took it.

Now it wasn’t a pretty sight. He was making crazy sucking noises and fell off the nipple a few times and got a bit confused. But he actually took some of the milk (around 1/3 of an ounce) and his Murray Face was limited to when he had had enough and wanted only to fall asleep.

So I put the bottle down, burped him, swayed him back and forth while quietly singing Led Zeppelin, and then put him into his crib where he fell asleep.

This was a momentous occasion. Now we’ll better be able to work in feeding shifts at night, allowing both of us to have more than just 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and I’ll be able to finally be able to feed him.

This means that Kristen will now have more time to do the important things that she’s been unable to: namely the laundry, cooking dinner, cleaning, taking out the cat litter, massaging my feet…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Barnabas, Food, Health, Kristen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.