Two weeks

Dear Noah-bird,

Yesterday you turned two weeks old. It's amazingly long and short of a time.

You've changed a lot already. You seem longer, probably more because your back and neck muscles are stronger and so you don't get hunched up as much - maybe you've adjusted to all the space out here. You love to stretch. When you are waking up, you go through what I call your boot sequence - you make tons of faces: smiling, grumpy, rounded mouth, pouting mouth, eyebrows raised, eyebrows narrowed. I watch them and think of what might in future have you make them deliberately. Then you stretch out your limbs and do what Carl calls baby tai-chi, flinging out your arms and hands and legs and feet, and arching your back and rolling your head. Finally you start to grunt and sometimes coo, and suck on your hands when they happen to come by your mouth. And if no one pays attention eventually you let out a yell.

You dream too, eyes working behind your eyelids. I wonder what you dream of.

You have at least two play periods a day now, where you lie in your playmat bed and stare and stare at the patterns. You can turn on your side by yourself and you roll from side to side, entranced by the colours and black just the right space from your eyes. You also examine the clothes over my breasts whenever you feed, and look at your dad and I if we get the right distance from you. You like your dad's black and white and red Chicago Bulls t-shirt a lot.

This week I learned about fear and how your sister's death carved deep channels in my parenting landscape. You haven't been gaining as fast as we would have liked and for a couple of days there, your mum was whacked out, convinced that something awful was going to happen. I missed some of your feeds and kicks and lookings around, because I was too scared to be really present with you. Finally I took to bed to recover and get my head on straight. I hope in the future when that happens I'll centre faster.

This week you had more baths and went for two walks down the street in the stroller, little ten minute fresh air jaunts, and had an ultrasound and breastfed in public and got a swing and a playmat. You're really too small for the swing still though.

Your dad and I have also discovered that trusting our instincts puts us closer to extreme attachment parenting than we thought. Since feeding you has been the top priority, and not having you burn calories on fussing, we have indulged you shamelessly in your need and desire to be held, to the point of pretty much giving up on the co-sleeper and just arranging our schedules so that you can sleep in our arms or laps around the clock if you like. And you do, especially your dad's arms. In mine you always seem to have a nose out for the breast, and you wake up to suck here and there.

Right now you feed for about an hour, every two hours. You like to linger over your milk, moving from a productive constant sucking for the first half hour to longer rest periods with little sucks in between. But woe to she who removes the breast before you're done. You shriek in protest with your little tongue purple in the middle of your mouth.

While your grandma Judy is here holding you so much has worked okay. She leaves late this week, and then in two weeks your dad goes back to work, so we may have to work on that a bit. But first, gaining weight. Once you are over 8 lbs you're likely to sleep better and longer anyway. With luck that is a little over a month away.

You are extremely loved.