Two Weeks Down
A friend/coworker Katie reminded me on Wednesday that Allie was 2 weeks old and I happened to have her sleeping on my lap, so I snapped this shot to commemorate.

Things are progressing fast. The feedings have indeed become 10 minutes long (I let her nurse approximately 5 minutes on each breast so one doesn’t get too painfully engorged from being ignored through a feeding) and she is now sleeping 3.5-4.5 hours most stretches before waking in hunger. She’s also up longer in the day; she’ll sit around in her swing and observe things and smile on occasion, or hang out in our arms and watch us carefully. We still have inexplicable crying spells after she’s nursed sometimes and this frustrates her dad, who’ll sigh, “I don’t know…” after he’s tried burping, diaper-changing, and swaddling to her screams. I’ve found that I can usually take her over at times like this and if I could calm her by holding her tightly, she’d doze, but she wants to doze being cuddled, sometimes with a pacifier in place. It’s still the most difficult between 11p-2a, but tonight, Mr. W took her upstairs without me to bed and for the first time in the past 15 nights, I did not hear screaming and crying coming from upstairs that I have to run up for. Note that this is currently her most difficult time slot of 11p-2a. So I get to blog, yay!

Generation Gaps
My mom’s been on me about posting photos of Allie, but not in the way you’d expect. The other day it was, “Stop putting up photos of her naked — she’s a girl!” And then yesterday, she emailed me that she was able to right-click and save photos of Allie on the social networking site, which means that others can do it, too, so I must stop posting photos of her immediately. Ironically, she ended her email the way she ends all her emails these days, by asking for current photos of Allie. I have my social circle and privacy settings on the networking site limited so people who have access to those photos are very controlled. (Good thing she doesn’t know about this blog.) But to avoid further aggravation for my mother, I did what any caring Asian child would do — I removed my mother and anyone who has access to my mother from being able to see all future photos I post. Hey, the demand for Allie’s photos are high and people enjoy seeing my first baby, especially since so few people have seen her in person so far. I’m being a paranoid mom and following the pediatrician’s advice, limiting visits to people who are vaccinated against pertussis and flu (I made my parents get shots) until Allie’s immune system is up and she gets her own vaccinations at 2 months. I don’t care if this makes me anti-social; sick babies land in NICU.

Cousin Jennifer’s Visit and The Great Poopie Incident of 2011
Luckily for us, one such person who’s vaccinated is my cousin Jennifer, who just had her own first baby about 3 months ago. She’s exactly on the same page as I am about infant health. She had offered before Allie was born to give us her leftover newborn-size diapers, as her little girl Alexandra had outgrown that size already. I’d accepted, and now that we’re two weeks into diapering, we’re down to our last few diapers at each of our changing stations. I was considering going to the store, but called her instead yesterday. She happened to be out having lunch with a friend, so she said she’d come over with the diapers. I had last seen her baby Alexandra when she was the same age as Allie is now, but when I saw her yesterday, she had grown! Huge eyes blinked their long cartoon-like lashes at me. They DO grow fast! Jennifer cooed at Allie, “Oh my gosh, she’s so tiny!” What? My nearly 9-pounder? We put the cousins side-by-side and Jennifer thought they’re nearly the same length. I give Mr. W credit for the length; if it were only my genetics, my babies would be nubs.

Aside from rescuing me by bringing a TON of diapers, both newborn and size 1s, my cousin Jennifer also saved me from a potential panic attack. It started with this photo she took for me:

I posted the above photo on the social networking site with the caption: “This was taken moments before The Great Poopie Incident of 2011. Mass panic & scrambling ensued from 4-5p. This photo should be named ‘Joy of Naivete.’ Doing laundry now. =P ” My blog sponsor Mike, father of a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old, must’ve spoken from experience when he commented, “ah, how naive you are to think that THAT was the Great Poopie Incident of 2011. Wait until the Greater Poopie Incident of an hour from now…every hour of every day for the rest of your life.”
Let me explain why I think this IS “the” Great Poopie Incident of 2011.
I was still looking at the photo Jennifer had just taken when Allie let out some long wet-sounding toots. I figured she may be pooping, which she does only slightly more frequently than she used to at 0-2 poopies a day, so I kinda ignored it. Suddenly, Jennifer said, “Oh! Oh! She’s pooping out of her diaper!” Neither Mr. W nor I had ever heard the phrase “pooping out of a diaper” until that day, when Jennifer explained earlier that you know it’s time to go a size up on diapers when the baby “poops out of her current diaper.” And now Allie was demonstrating the term. I watched a wet stain appear in the middle of Allie’s waistline (good thing her umbilical cord came off last week!) and quickly spread until it came out her side and dripped onto my shirt and seeped through that to my jeans. This happened in probably 3 seconds. I grabbed Allie, stood, and went downstairs to Mr. W, calling for him to come help. I’ve never seen the inside of a diaper so saturated with stuff. I was still wiping when suddenly, she went again, oozing yellow mustard-like poop until it overflowed. Of course this was when Mr. W’s daughter came home and she wanted to stand over us and exclaim over how gross it was while gabbing nonstop about her day. Mr. W was trying to keep Allie’s waving hands and feet from dipping into her mess and yelling that I was wiping too slowly, and I was soon running around like a madwoman trying to get another diaper, more wipes, dispose of the dirty diaper and wipes before more stuff oozed out, and finally deciding it was hopeless, I ran around and grabbed her baby tub to give her a second bath this week. I filled it with my hand in the water which must’ve gotten used to the temperature, because when Mr. W dipped his finger in, he exclaimed it was too hot. I cooled it as quickly as I could and as Mr. W placed Allie in the tub, I ran around like a crazy woman again up and down the stairs getting her hooded towels and washcloths, and then she pooped mustard again in the bathtub! My baby was liquifying into poop. Jennifer was upstairs feeding her peaceful little girl, and when I ran back up I would ask her advice on what to do. She said to rinse out the poopy clothes immediately, use a little soap to keep from staining, and then I could wash them with Allie’s regular clothes. I did that while hubby dried and clothed Allie, still in hurried panic mode. She soon left, giving me a sideways hug to avoid the poop stains still on my clothes.
I then did Allie’s laundry and my own, and when I was done, I texted Jennifer, thanking her for the diapers, the visit, and the advice. (She assured me the poop[ies] was normal, wasn’t diarrhea, and was likely a freak incident and not a sign that Allie was growing out of her newborn diapers already.) I realized when things were calmer that if she hadn’t been here when that happened, I may have thought that my baby’s stomach exploded or something. The stuff came out at her waistline, didn’t stop for awhile, and seeped through her diaper, her undershirt, overshirt, my shirt, and my jeans! Given that it’s almost mid-December, I don’t think there’s going to be another 4-pooper incident to beat this as The Great Poopie Incident of 2011.