Saturday, December 3, 2011

Eat, Poop, Sleep

Most of you probably do not know that I was in a movie with Julia Roberts.

Alright, that might be overstating my role a bit. But, it is true. When the cast and crew of Eat, Pray, Love was in India filming for the Indian portion of the book, some of the teachers at my school were recruited to join in as extras for the crowd scenes. So, during the Connecticut wedding scene in the movie (which was, oddly enough, filmed in Delhi), you can see me for a few brief seconds.

Tomorrow, Cedric and Ezra will be three weeks old and life has been as great as a movie. Although, it is a movie of a different title all together.  Do you see where this is going? So, without writing a novel, I will give you a bit of a description about the three most important things in our boys lives right now. Eat, poop and sleep!

Eat: The biggest thing in our lives right now is bottle feeding. With late-term preemies (ours were born at 36w3d), being on a feeding schedule is mandatory. When they first came home from the hospital, Ezra was on a two-hour feeding cycle, which did NOT work for him at all. He was so tired after his 30 minute feeds that he would not be able to eat for the next feed and his intake kept getting lower and lower. So, we changed him over to a three hour cycle and he started consuming more formula at every bottle. Cedric is our little alarm clock. He usually wakes up hungry within 10 minutes (before, or after if we're running a bit late) of the three hour mark. He is quite prodigious at letting the world know when he is hungry.

Poop: As soon as our boys got home from the hospital, we switched to cloth diapers. Our reasons for doing this are economical, medical and environmental. Economically, diapers are quite expensive here in India, and diapers for small babies (4-8 lbs) are not available. So, when were in the US in the summer, we stocked up on G-Diapers, which is an initial investment of about $250. But, they will probably paid for themselves by the time our boys are 8 weeks old. The environmental impact of using diapers is huge, and especially in India, where proper waste disposal doesn't happen, we wanted to live our beliefs about the environment. Using cloth diapers has been a lot of fun (yep, I said fun), and it has worked REALLY well for our boys. We also have been using this recipe to make our own wipes with the hypo-allergenic baby soap we use for bath time. You won't be finding any trace of diaper rash on our C or E's little bums!

Sleep: Being on a three-hour feeding cycle really dictates the sleeping schedule. Our boys eat at 3-6-9-12 AM/PM.  During the daytime hours, we change nappies and enjoy finding things to stare at and do stretches and try to stay awake for as long as possible after feedings during the day. Then, the boys fall asleep until the next feeding. At night, both boys are bout 85% at eating and then going right back to sleep. Having this kind of schedule has been such a major help to us as parents. We know when we're going to need to get up in the night and we can make a plan (Douglas at 12 AM and 6 AM, Chad at 3 AM, or vice-versa). The schedule has made our babies very happy, and has made me be able to go back to work this week and not feel like a walking zombie!

Beyond all the eating, pooping and sleeping, there is a whole lot of love going on at our house. We love cuddling and playing with the boys (as much as they can "play"). Also, our friends and colleagues have surrounded us with a big blanket of love and we feel so supported as new parents. We are so thankful for these last 20 days.

Much love to everyone!
Douglas 

3 comments:

  1. I loved this. And I'm seriously thinking about cloth diapers. Thanks for the confirmation that it all goes well. Now go get some sleep. :-) Hi Cedric and Ezra!

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  2. It sounds like you guys are doing great! Don't you love all of the cuddling?

    I am glad the gdiapers are working for you. We have them too, but our cloth inserts have been delayed since I tried to go cheap and order them on etsy. The disposable gdiaper refills have outperformed huggies, pampers and seventh generation diapers! I can't wait to try the cloth inserts!

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  3. Doug, GO FOR IT! Cloth diapering is great.

    Stacey, I am loving the cuddle time. We just had our friend bring us a moby back from the US and it is my new favorite thing. We took a walk yesterday and Ezra (even at 4 lbs) was snuggled safely inside while we walked Jyoti. Great fun! Love the pics of your two, and hope everything is going well!

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