Be Careful What You Wish For

Please don't hate me or throw anything at the screen for what I am about to say...



Baby doesn't cry.



Sure, she makes noise. She squawks and grunts but she doesn't yell and scream. Instead of crying to get our attention, she'll squawk a few times, getting louder if we're not reacting as quickly as she wants. Now, normally, this would be the stuff of dreams, the hope and prayer of every mother.

But I gotta say, it ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Let me explain: she doesn't cry. Nearly every time I went to check on her after she'd been asleep for a while, she'd be laying in her crib, wide awake and looking around, but not making a noise. Since she wasn't crying, I didn't know she was hungry and she slept sooooo much. At her two-week appointment, she hadn't gained any weight since leaving the hospital. Also, there's some confusion as to how much she really weighed when she was born. Since she wasn't breathing all that well, there were lots of hands and other oxygen-related paraphernalia when they weighed her. She might not have weighed as much as 7 pounds 8 ounces, like it's listed on her paperwork. We do know that when we left the hospital, she was 6 pounds and 15 ounces. That's quite a drop. So when we met with the doctor for her check-up, he sees her birth weight and her current weight. "Freak-out" doesn't quite fit his reaction. Let's try "really, really concerned to the point where he gives me his I-am-extremely-disappointed-in-you look." Yeah, that's a better description. I was given a checklist of things to try to get her to eat more. Since she is such a sleepy baby, keeping her awake long enough or ever trying to wake her up was a nearly hopeless process. Basically, any time she's awake, we were supposed to be feeding her. So we try it. The following week, she's gained four ounces. Two weeks after that, she's crossed the 8 pound mark. And guess what? She's not sleeping as much and is eating a lot more. Turns out she was so sleepy because she was hungry. Go figure.

Baby still doesn't cry (unless I'm in the shower and don't hear her crying until after I finished shaving my legs and using that special conditioner that has to stay in my hair for a long time). We have to use a timer to see if it's time for her to eat because she won't tell us. I wonder if this is just a taste of what she'll be like as a teenager and we can't get her to say more than two words to anyone.