Nico is one month old today and we’re hoping to post photos from his first month really soon.  (The good news is that I’m feeling a lot better now, so I should be able to work on this now.)  In the meantime, I thought I’d make a note of some of his milestones since he’s already changed so much in his first month.

He is still a really mellow and easy-going baby.  But he definitely has his fussy times.  He likes to eat nonstop from 7-11 in the morning and at night, and then he sleeps in long stretches between 11 and 7.  In the morning, this constant feeding is no problem because I have tons of milk.  But at night, supplies run low and he gets impatient!  It takes me about an hour to replenish, and that seems like an eternity to him.  The solution?  I pump in the middle of the night and/or in the morning and then we feed him a couple ounces of that pumped milk when he starts fussing at night.

He screamed - and when I say screamed, I mean SCREAMED - for 3 hours straight on Monday night.  As we took turns trying to figure out what was wrong by scanning our parenting books, we both came to the conclusion that he was exhibiting textbook signs of colic.  Yikes!  We were scared that this might continue for the next 2 or 3 months, but so far it was an isolated event.  Phew!  I really feel for parents of colicky babies — that night was very stressful and I can only imagine how hard it would be to deal with that every day.

Our friends, Hussein and Nashua, loaned us Zakariyya’s old swing.  They said it was a lifesaver for them and they offered it to us the day after Nico’s colic episode.  We gratefully accepted it and he loves it!  It helps a lot with extending the time between the evening feedings.

Last night he was quite fussy and wouldn’t go to sleep (for the first time ever).  We noticed that he was extra awake and alert and looking at everything as though he was seeing it with new eyes.  Today we read our Wonder Weeks book (which gives information about developmental milestones that often lead to predictable days or weeks of fussiness) and it turns out that around 5 weeks (but as early as 4 weeks) babies’ 5 senses develop and they suddenly perceive everything really differently.  It was amazing to actually be able to see this happen.  When he’s been awake today his eyes have darted around much more instead of staying fixed on an object.  And he is smiling even more than before — he seems to like being able to see (and feel / smell / hear / taste) in this new way.

I’m anxiously awaiting his first laugh.  He gives us huge wide-mouthed grins when we tickle him or make funny faces, so hopefully his first laugh is right around the corner.  I’m very glad to have such a smiley baby!

He’s going to start losing some of his instinctual behaviors soon, which makes me sad.  I think the first ones to go will be his grasping reflex and his ability to roll over.  But his complex brain will soon take over for his animal brain on these things and he’ll be able to do the same things and much more once that happens.  We’ve really enjoyed watching all of his reflexive behaviors in this first month — from the rooting reflex to the climbing reflex to following objects with his eyes and turning his head toward sounds.

So all is going really well in our new-parent world.  Nico has just about outgrown his newborn clothes already and we’re guessing that he weighs over 10 pounds now.  He makes it fun to be a parent and we look forward to seeing what month 2 has in store for us.  Photos are available here.