Irene’s Baby Journal – Week 2
Lúa sleeps most of the time but she is happy and alert when she is awake, which tells me she is healthy and taking enough milk.
For the first few days, she didn’t latch properly, her mouth didn’t open enough and she was hurting my nipples, which were not far back enough in her little mouth.
I’ve called my good midwife friend, Krishinda, who is an expert in breastfeeding and she told me to place Lúa in the physiological position (with me lying on my back and the baby on top of me, with her head in between my breasts) for every feed.
We did what she suggested and I could see the improvements but she would still only open her mouth slightly.
Krishinda recommends craniosacral therapy. I called the only practitioner I could find online but when I talked to them, they told me they were out of the country. Then I called everyone I knew in the area to see if they could help me.
We’ve finally managed to find a wonderful professional who has offered to see her privately before he opens his clinic, so we can be more relaxed. One of Lúa’s neck muscles is a bit stiff and it hurts her when she’s in certain positions. That’s why one of my nipples still hurts, even after trying the physiological position with every feed. The therapist taught us how to do the exercises to help ease her muscle spasm.
This has a lot to do with the position she was in, inside the womb.
Baby Journal – Baby’s poop
Lúa’s pooping is quite irregular. Some days she poops three times a day and then she goes a couple of days without pooping. Usually, this is normal because, at this age, a baby’s digestive system is quite immature. Also, breast milk hardly has any residue.
As long as your baby wakes up every few hours, is alert, and feeds well, it should be okay. Babies’ well-being is determined by how alert they are when they’re awake. Don’t worry too much about baby’s pooping habits if he is alert and well otherwise.
On the other hand, if your baby sleeps too much, hardly wakes up and, when he does, he’s sleepy and feeds very little, that’s a baby who is not eating well and you need to seek help asap.
Baby’s sight
At 2 weeks of age, babies see perfectly but only what’s close to their faces. Babies are born extremely shortsighted. They just need to see their mother’s face when she’s feeding or their carers’ faces when they’re holding them close. As they cannot defend themselves or do anything about what’s far away, their distance sight is not yet well developed.
Zoé, the carer of the family, has taken a very active role in her little sister’s care. She changes her nappy and keeps her company when she can. She’s the family’s ambassador outside of the home as, when the house bell rings, 9 times out of 10 it’s for her.
The children in the neighborhood are really looking forward to meeting Lúa but they also know we need to rest and they’ll be able to meet her when it’s the right time. However, it’s beautiful the impact a baby has on each person whose life she enters.
We took Lúa outside when she was a few days old. All the children who were outside started running towards us. We could hear them shouting ‘Lúa is here, she’s out, I’m going to meet her’; it’s just the human way of celebrating a new baby. Like in The Lion King movie, when they presented Simba, we felt we were presenting our baby to the community.
Zoé came outside the fastest. Finally, after all these days of telling her friends about her new baby sister, they were finally going to meet her and she would present her to them.
‘Can I hold her, mamá?’
‘Of course, you can’.
And there, she does the honors of presenting Lúa to our community. A proud big sister and big mamá and papá seeing them together.
For your reference, here’s a link to Baby Week By Week: 2 Week Old Baby | Your Baby’s Development.
