Spencer

“Everyone should have kids. They are the greatest joy in the world. But they are also terrorists. You’ll realize this as soon as they are born, and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.”
— Ray Romano

Thankfully, Spencer is getting the hang of falling back to sleep in the night after eating.  However, the lack of sleep is taking its toll.

I was talking to a friend who asked about Spencer’s birth.  She thought my water had broken on its own.  I said that it hadn’t, and I was induced.  She said something like, “I know you were going to be induced on Tuesday, but you had Spencer on Monday!”

Her certainty over Spencer’s birth story caused my foggy brain to start second guessing everything I thought I knew about his birth.  Did my water in fact break on its own?  Was I induced?  Did I show up at the hospital on the wrong day?  Why didn’t anyone tell me?  Maybe I didn’t even give birth at all and the past three weeks have all been an elaborate exercise in delusions and imaginations!

Then I realized my friend had a baby two months ago meaning she is probably feeling the effects of no sleep just as much or more so than I am.   Thus, I’m pretty sure I was induced and I did have a baby, and he was born on a Tuesday as we had planned all along.

Anyone want to back me up on this?

Spencer had his two-week checkup on Wednesday.

He weighed 7 pounds 10 ounces putting him in the 18th percentile for weight.

He was a whopping 19 inches long which translates to the third percentile for height.

At two-weeks old he is almost exactly the size of Brooke and Caroline when they were born.

This kid’s got some growing to do!

Spencer hasn’t been the greatest eater.  I was getting so frustrated with him.  One day I happened to notice that Spencer takes after his uncle, Ben.  Unfortunately, Spencer had a butt tongue meaning he had a tight frenulum (the tissue that connects the underside of your tongue to the bottom of your mouth) which was restricting how far he could move his tongue.  I suspected this was making it difficult for him to properly latch on during feedings.

You may have noticed I used the past tense in that paragraph.  Yes, Spencer had a butt tongue…but doesn’t anymore.  I reported my suspicions to the pediatrician and he confirmed that Spencer’s frenulum did seem a little tight.  He said he could clip it in the hopes that that would solve our feeding troubles.  I gave the okay and the next thing we knew Spencer was pinned down to the table with hands and instruments invading his mouth.

The procedure was no big deal.  The doctor took scissors and snipped the little tissue back a bit.  Spencer screamed for a second but was fine once I got to hold him again.  Tough kid.  Then Spencer started moving his tongue in ways I’d never seen before.  I mean, he licked his lips!  Hooray for tongue range of motion!

Preliminary results are showing that this procedure has helped Spencer eat more efficiently.  Hooray again!

Good-bye butt tongue and good riddance.

Don’t you hate it when a family has a new baby, posts one measly picture of the baby on their blog, and then doesn’t blog again for over a week?

Me too.

Here are some more shots of our little guy.  He’s a perfect angel when the sun is up, sleeping soundly through practically every minute of the day.  Once the sun sets, it’s a different story.  He gets restless and grunty and only sleeps in 15-minute increments.  I forgive him every morning, though, because he is seven pounds of heaven.  I can’t get enough of cuddling his tiny little body.

Contrary to how this picture looks, Spencer really does have two hands.

Kisses from Caroline.

It was a rough time for both me and Spencer this morning.  We had to do our unfortunate duty for our son so he wouldn’t get picked on in gym class.  If Abraham could survive at 99 years old under an unpracticed hand and dull knife then our son would rock at one day old.  He probably got a premortal briefing about this so he probably was expecting.  He barely even cried.

I managed to maintain consciousness.  I’m a habitual breath holder which may have contributed to my light-headedness because by the time the rabbi-doctor was done with the removal I needed to sit down.

I don’t know why the hospital hasn’t given me my right of passage t-shirt yet and Spencer’s consolatory onesie.  The shirts probably wouldn’t be worn by anybody aside from redneck families.

Rebecca’s note:  Dallas came back into the room rolling Spencer’s bassinet looking as pale as a ghost.  When the doctor who performed the circumcision came into the room to talk to me, he assured me that Spencer did great and Dallas…well…he could learn a thing or two from Spencer’s sturdy disposition under medical pressure.