Dadding, s2e4: An update on the baby
Posted on 13 May 2020
I haven’t written these every week but I’m going to try to get back into the habit. There’s lots happening that I could talk about: the ongoing coronavirus crisis, coping with Luke (our 3-year-old), making hard decisions about whether and when to go back to work; but for this post I thought I’d focus on baby Robin.
Robin is, by and large, a good-natured baby who doesn’t cry very much. As a result, he often gets left on his own in the corner of the room to lie there and watch the world go by, while we struggle with domestic chores, or getting Luke to sit on the potty. During the first month or so, he also wasn’t very interactive: he would wake for feeds and nappy changes and sleep most of the rest of the time, and his immature eyes weren’t capable of seeing very much.
That has started changing recently. He’s started smiling, which is was a real milestone for us. The feeling when a baby smiles at you with a huge, gummy grin is something close to euphoria: maybe much of the rest of our life is pretty substandard right now but those smiles go a long way towards making up for it.
Robin is also spending quite a bit more time awake and just watching and listening. He’ll sit in his bouncy chair and watch you eat your lunch or dinner with a wide-eyed look of wonder. Or you’ll put him in the pram, where previously he would fall asleep as soon as you started pushing him along, and instead find he’s looking you straight in the eye with the slightly uncanny stare of a baby as you’re walking along (babies blink about 5–10 times less often than adults).
He’s started making more noises than just crying, too: the little coos, burbles and even prototypical giggles are a joy to hear. Sonia sometimes describes them as “practising his vowel sounds”.
His muscles are getting stronger: we can see him getting better able to hold up his head, and we give him semi-regular “tummy time” where he lies on his front and exercises muscles in his arms, legs and neck trying to have a look around.
Most recently, we took him for his 8-week injections and checkup. This was the first time he was measured since birth, and we had it confirmed that he is enormous! We knew this already, of course, but we looked his measurements up on the charts afterward and he’s above 98th centile for both weight and length.
He’s still much less interactive than Luke, and he can’t get up to nearly so much mischief, so it’s easy to find our focus so frequently drawn away from Robin. I’m writing this post while sitting at the top of the stairs just outside Luke’s door, trying to bring him some comfort because although it’s past his bedtime, he’s not very sleepy. This is just one of the many ways Luke steals our attention away.
But it’s been nice to make some time to reflect on our youngest family member and to think about all the progress he’s making.