Hmm, let me try to give an idea… OK, the baby sleeps in a bassinet by the foot of our bed. When she gets hungry, she starts waking up, whining, and moving her head around and opening & closing her mouth, working her lips, windmilling her arms, etc. This is called “Rooting” and it means she’s hungry. So, when it’s determined that she’s hungry, I have to turn on the light, put her on the changing table, & check her diaper. If the diaper’s dirty, of course change it. 9 times out of 10 it IS dirty. Not necessarily with poo; sometimes it is thick & heavy with just urine. These diapers are a marvel of engineering: Sometimes the only way to tell if it’s wet is that it is thicker and weighs more! They do a marvelous job of absorbing lots of liquid. Yes, the inside is moist, but only an IDIOT shoves their hand down there to check!!
So, once the diaper’s been changed (Which may also constitute a change of wardrobe), by now the baby is bawling if she’s real hungry, and Mommy has woken up. Mommy (Hongmei) has it the worst. SHe lays in bed all day, trying to sleep between feedings, and her mother and I do 90% of the diaper changes. So, once that baby is clean, we hand her over to mommy for feeding. While she’s feeding, it’s peaceful. Then, she needs burped.
If, after feeding, the baby begins to immediately cry again, it means she’s STILL HUNGRY. you can try to have her breast feed again, unless it’s the middle of the night, in which case I must go to the kitchen and prepare a bottle of milk or formula. This takes about 5-10 min, all the while the baby is probably crying with Hongmei in the bedroom. So, get the bottle to the baby, burp her, then MAYBE she will be sleepy enough to go back to sleep. If so, you must hold her in your arms for about 15-45 minutes to take care of the residual burps. If you try to put the baby back in the bassinet immediately after feeding you will probably get her with some nasty burpage that results in HICCUPS which will last 30 min – 1 hour. Baby cannot sleep if she has the hiccups, so you want to AVOID hiccups. Either way after a heavy feeding she will have stomach / digestive noises going “Blurp, blurb” inside her tiny little belly and she will grunt, grimace, whine, and make noises like somebody trying to take a crap.
That’s if she is TIRED and sleepy. There are periods of the day, around noon, and around 1am-3am, where she is wide awake, not tired, and actively looking around and listening to things. During this time, she may or may not enjoy laying by herself. If she does not, then you must hold her for the entire 2-4 hours she is awake. Thankfully, she is very easily distracted by this swing that my friend let us borrow that plays a water noise and has flashy lights in a glowing orb above her. She will stare at it cutefully for a very long time.
In our room there is a rocking chair where I’ve put my laptop in front of; and this is how i’ve spent the past 3 nights, keeping an eye on the clock, because you have to feed the baby at most every 3 hours.
