So this weekend was a busy one for us! For one, we continued with our mission to get Nikos sleeping in his crib at night-- and it's working! The second night was a little rough, but last night (the third night) was pretty good! He only woke up to eat at around 1am and then slept until 5am. I think he's gradually becoming more comfortable in his crib, which is a good thing. This afternoon, I even tried putting him down for a nap while he was still "drowsy-but-awake," like all the baby books say I should. When I peeked in on him ten minutes later, he was totally asleep. And he has stayed that way for 2 hours now! I'M SO HAPPY!! Not only did I get a lot of my online Christmas shopping done, but I could see that the little guy was so very tired and desperately in need of a nap. So now everyone is happy!
Part of the reason he's so tired, I think, is that he had such a long day yesterday. We drove up to Orange County so that he could receive his 40-Day Blessing, a tradition in the Greek Orthodox Church. Basically, a baby and its mother are not allowed into the church until 40 days after the birth, and then the priest performs a short ceremony to welcome the baby and re-welcome the mother. It takes place after the normal Sunday service, so we got there and had to wait in the entryway until everyone was gone. Then the priest came out and performed the blessing, which took about 5 minutes total. So why, then, was Nikos so tired? Let me tell you about our drive that morning!
The problem with breastfeeding is that you can't (legally or safely) do it while riding in a car. So I defrosted some of the milk I've been storing up and prepared a bottle, thinking I could feed him while he was in his car seat. Well, he was NOT HAPPY about that, and I could hear him swallowing a lot of air. Of course, I couldn't successfully burp him without taking him out of his car seat, and he started screaming (presumably because of some massive air bubble I could do nothing about). So I asked Gus to pull over, and he decided to stop for gas, since we'd need to refuel at some point, anyway. I burped the kiddo, but nothing happened. Then I thought I smelled poop, so I figured I'd take a look in his diaper while we were stopped. I opened the back of the car, laid him down on his changing pad, and saw that there was only a teeny-tiny amount of poop-- generally meaning that the mother lode isn't far behind. So I left the diaper on, but unfastened. Meanwhile, Gus had started filling the gas tank and was helping by getting the wipes out of the diaper bag. ALL OF A SUDDEN, the gas overflowed and started spraying all over the place!!!!! Gus managed to grab the nozzle and shut it off without getting too much on himself (in his nice church clothes). I turned back to look at Nikos, and he had managed to fill his diaper AND do some serious spit-up in a split second. I changed him and wiped the spit-up off his face while Gus went to tell the manager about the problem with the pump. He (Nikos, not Gus!) was crying, so I picked him up and put his head against mine... Only to realize that he had spit-up all over the side of his HEAD, not just his face! So I got spit-up on my face and in my hair. It was truly a fine moment. Truly.
Anyway... the blessing went well, as did our ride back home. He had to have another bottle, which I had brought with me in a cooler, but we stopped to burp him and had no problems. He slept most of the way home! Once we got home, though, my book club members arrived for our meeting, and he was once again surrounded by people. And if that wasn't enough, Gus took him to our friend Tony's house to meet his family, once our meeting was underway. So he met a LOT of people yesterday, and managed to do so without too much crying. I'd say that's a pretty big accomplishment!
And, for the record: using a manual breast pump in the back seat of the car while on the freeway is NOT FUN. Though it is an excellent arm workout. Nonetheless, I went out and bought the cigarette-lighter power adaptor for my pump today. Hallelujah!
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