Charlie Angel

I know there is no better way to tempt fate than to brag about your child to the internet. However, I figure that if Charlie were a fussy baby then I would be complaining about it. Since he is so good, it is only fair that I talk about that too. Kyle and I fully admit that we have had absolutely nothing to do with this. Charlie just happened to be born an angel. He is just so darn good we keep looking at each other and saying, "How did we get so lucky?" I know things can change, but we can always say that he was an angel for at least the first two months of his life.

Charlie wakes up between 7-8am. He has a little bit of trouble taking a full morning nap, but we can't compain about that since he has been such a good sleeper the night before. Sometimes he will wake up only 45 mintues into his nap but once we pick him up he will just look around contentedly in our arms until it is time for his next feed.

He takes about 45 minutes to drink his bottle and burp. Afterwards we put him in his baby chair or let him kick around on the changing table or on our bed. Usually he is working on a little something for us during this time. We have learned to not change him until he lets out a distinctive high pitched scream. That seems to be his signal to us that he is ready to be changed. Through trial and error we have discovered that if you open the diaper any time before that you might see the pooping in action.

At exactly an hour after he wakes up he starts to get fussy. During the day we swaddle him in a blanket and at night we do a tighter swaddle in a Snug and Tug. He loves being swaddled and always calms down a bit after we do it. From that point on he might cry a little bit, but it is a distincive tired cry. A variety of tricks (swaying, patting, shushing, a pacifier, or a hearbeat sound) all help calm him down. And by an hour and a half after he originally woke up, he is back asleep again. Then we usually have about two hours free because he normally goes 3-4 hours between feedings.

At about 6pm he has his last bottle of the day and then he sleeps until midnight. Kyle takes that shift while I sleep and then I take the 3am shift. Charlie wakes up again about 7am and Kyle feeds him and then we start the day again.

Kyle and Charlie getting a little cat nap after breakfast this morning.


What is so wonderful about Charlie is that when he cries, there is a reason. As soon as we can figure out the reason (change his dirty diaper, warm him up, feed him) he will stop crying.


All of this explains why throughout the day I keep saying to him, "You are an angel. You are just such an angel." And he gives me a blank stare in return.




***A note to all pregnant women out there. I was recently discussing the definition of 'time between feeds' with another new mom and we both agreed that we had a complete misunderstanding about that before we had a baby. I always thought, "Oh, they said their baby goes two hours between feeds so that means the mom is getting to sleep for two hours." No, that is definitely not the case. What it means is that if the baby starts feeding at 3pm and takes an hour to eat then they will want to eat again by 5pm. This means the mom only gets one hour of sleep if she is lucky and the baby doesn't cry, need a bath, have a really dirty diaper or just doesn't sleep for that next hour before they want to feed again.