it hardly seems like it’s been a week already, or only a week. The time doesn’t fly, it blurs. (Oh yes, and I’m typing this one handed while Daphne sucks on a boob, so who knows the typos I’ll have.)

“It’ll get better,” is such lovely, generic advice. “It’ll get different,” perhaps. We thought we were getting into the “better” stage. After one of the later feedings (sometime between 8 and 10pm), Jason will take Daphne, and try to keep her… well, awake or asleep doesn’t matter – away from me for three to four hours. Sine he doesn’t lactate anyway, I take the feedings and try to keep her quiet – or I’ll head out of the room – so he can get nearly a full night of sleep. (We have a co-sleeper attached to our bed, so if she’s cooperative, I don’t have to get out of bed to feed her. It’s got the potential to be absolutely wonderful, and some nights, it has been.) This has worked twice.

But then there were two nights of incessant crying. Ok, it’s not fair to call it incessant, because she’d stop if you did something – changed positions or holds or a new movement patter – but then she’d start again. For hours. The first time she did this, after three hours, I just headed upstairs (after staying downstairs to try to let Jason sleep) and said “Your turn. I’m done.” It’s so very frustrating to figure out what an infant wants, and when you think you know (hey, she’s rooting, and making those mouth movements and that little cry/whine she gives when she’s hungry, she must be hungry!) but you’re wrong – well, at least, it’s not right (no, no, my stomach is unhappy, and I just wanted a nipple to suck on until I’m too unhappy for that and try to rip your boob off your body). These are the times you don’t want to, but you’re too tired, and you take that stern voice to your baby in a hopelessly futile way “What? What do you want? I know you don’t want food, you’ve been bouncing back and forth boob to boob without really eating.”

You try the advice – the 5 S’s: swaddling (but oh god is she squirmy, and just roots more and continues to make stink faces after being swaddled), sidelying (honestly, despite all the advice against it, she often gets to sleep – propped appropriately – on her side, particularly in the cosleeper; she’s much happier there), shh’ing (works great, until you stop longer than the length of time it takes to get a breath for your next shh), swaying (well, find the right rhythmic movement, and be prepared to change it every five minutes as she changes her mind about what she wants), and sucking (oh, the great debate! pacifier, finger, nipple-confusion, latch problems… it’s a can of worms I tell ya!). You try the gripe water. You try walking. Everything that works only works for a little while and you’re back to squre one, never having gotten a sleeping baby. Which, I have to add, is 10 times worse at night, when it’s dark, than during the middle of the day.

I continue to be very thankful for our doula, Kate, as she’s continued to offer us advice, which we try, with varying success, but gives us *something* to try doing. I realize this was probably partially our doing, the crying stints, as we hadn’t really been burping her – I had understood breastfed babies to need less burping and she seemed to be perfectly happy to be put down after eating. Well, either I was wrong, things change, or both. Burping a baby, however, is one other thing “they” don’t say a damn thing about. I don’t think it’s fundamentally any easier than breastfeeding, though it’s certainly a lot less painful (for the parent, definitely). Daphne, at least, has very little interest in burping, and if you keep her in the “over the shoulder burp” position too long, she starts rooting for food and bobbing her head – which makes keeping her from falling sideways tricky. We’re working on a good technique for us, but she still isn’t a big burper.

The other suspicion I had was something I consumed bothered her. At the moment, there is a sebaceous cyst on the back of my neck. It’s been there for nearly a year, but we didn’t do anything for it during the pregnancy because we wanted to wait until she was born. But about a week and a half after delivery, when I’m still in no state of mind to take care of anything but the immediate, either the cyst or a hair follicle right next to it became inflammed. Think almost ping-pong ball sized bump of painful inflammation approximately an inch away from your spine half way down your neck. Since side (or stomach) sleeping doesn’t work with freshly lactating boobs (mine, anyway – another thing they don’t tell you – you might not get to choose your sleeping positions after birth either!), it makes sleeping on your back less than comfortable. After much this and that, a doctor put me on antibiotics for it – a questionable move, but one of the options. It was the next night that she started going unhappy. Of course, it was also the same night I had my first post-baby spicy curry. And my first cup of green tea.

Only in hindsight can I say that there’s a chance it’s the curry (based on a similar, but not so bad stint, after I had leftovers for breakfast a day later), but it might also be the antibiotics (which, for the first time in my life, I stopped very early on). So, now I get to try to figure out what I’m eating that might bother her, and try to avoid it before I know what it is so that we don’t go through this again.

In theory, in three weeks, things get better. I’m keeping my fingers and toes cross and knocking on wood.

the first two weeks have been hard. everyone knows that being a first time parent is hard. everyone knows that newborns are hard. everyone says that you’ll be sleep deprived, and worn out. but I just don’t feel like the experience is adequately conveyed. maybe, like childbirth, the memory dims with time. we probably would never have sustained enough births for population growth if the memory stayed clear.

the first two days aren’t so bad. granted, I was exhausted from being up for 48 hours, in labor for 36, and having lost lots of blood. but Daphne was tired too. and there was no milk for her to get, just enough colostrum to give her the energy to practice feeding. and so Jason and I could sleep. maybe not long stretches, since we had to wake her evey two to three hours, but sleep none the less. sure, both is us learning to breastfeeding was hard, and it took less than a day to start getting thrashed nipples that had a lovely, nasty, bruise line righ along the top. sure, working with the doula for three hours to try to improve the latch from a little girl who doesn’t like openin her mouth terribly wide was frustrating beyond belief. (if I can’t get this to work, how am I going to feed my baby?!) and sure, not everyone has this instant “all the love in the world” attachment to their baby. but it was doable. and, at this point, stuck in bed as I was, thanking the doula for having suggested to swallow modesty and wear depends for a few days, Jason had the harder task of the two if us – make food, clean dishes, clean clothing, keep shoving food at me, takig the baby between feedings so I could sleep, and so on.

the midwives came over on day four for her checkup, weighing her and doing the PKU test. she was down 10oz, but that wasn’t worrying. my milk was in as of the night before, and she seemed to be feeding relatively well, outside if the difficulty of her trying to sleep through her feedings. so, keep her awake as much as possible during a feeding, they said. hah! we already worked on this one withthe doula. at some point, usually 5-10 min into a feeding, Daphne just didn’t care if you jostled her (gently), tickled her feet, flapped her hands, pinched her back, stroke her neck, blow in her face, or just about anything. keep her awake indeed. after the battle that was just getting her to open her mouth wide enough, instead of squirming her rather strong head and neck everywhere away from the nipple, this was another feeding fight I didn’t want. add to that the worry about her not pooping for the 36hours after my milk came in as her digestive system got working.

but with Jason helping to latch her on while laying on me side, and Jasons parents coming to help out around the house, things were a little easier. her ten day appointment showed she had only regained half of what she lost, so we needed to keep trying to make sure she didn’t go more than three hours between feedings. and by herself, she didn’t go longer than that. then she started cluster feeding. and wouldn’t go more than two hours between feeds. was she getting enough? we thougt so because it seemed like my firehose supply (which only makes feeding harder when she rips herself off the breast after her first incredibly powerful suck unleashes a waterfall in her mouth) was plenty. but we weren’t sure. and I was getting less and less sleep as she woke every two hours at night, leaving me at most an hour and a half of napping in between, and did the same during the day, when it was even harder to nap, despite adding curtains in front of the blinds to make the bedroom even darker.

but then came real cluster feedings. three instances of five to seven hours, over the course of three days, where she ditched her “feed me every two hours” and wouldn’t go longer than 15minutes between nursings. the sleep deprivation from too-short naps escalated, and I became clear that the sleep deprivation, coupled with the continued paid of feeding – particularly the hour of burning breast pain after feeding her from an unrelieved letdown – was leading to my nearly nightly meltdowns of just crying without any particular reason. clearly, the hormone shift contributes to this problem, but somehow, getting just enough sleep is what I need to not actually have hot tears suddenly streaming down my eyes.

the days like these make me wonder how I can last until “it gets better at six weeks”. or how parents can survive if it lasts six months. sleep cycles require at least an hour and a half just to get to the first cycle of REM sleep, and getting at least some nonREM sleep after that is important to avoid sleep deprivation. without it, you become nonfunctional. I couldn’t answer Jasons questions about having chicken or steak for dinner. I couldn’t answe if we should swaddled her one way or another. I couldn’t form the thoughts to make a decision.

maybe all babies aren’t like this, but we still seem to have q relatively easy baby. and it’s hard to fight over keeping her awake, hard to fight through the pain – the searing, toe-curling pain – of learning breastfeeding and getting it well established and dealing with the first few ungodly powerful sucks that feel like your nipples are being ripped off with a pair of clamps, hard to deal with the unrelentless demands for your food, and really hard to deal with trying to function under physiologically nonfunctionable situations.

don’t get me wrong; I know that it will be worth it in the end. but every strain-you-to-your-limits experience will make you wonder just how much you can endure, and how you can possibly endure it.

Announcing Daphne Anastasia Berry.
Born May 3 ae 9:43am at 8lbs, 0.5oz and 21in long.

This is a long, play by play account o my labor and delivery. Its not a flowery, wasnt my birth awesome, sort of thing, even though im quite happy with how things went. If you’re not sure if the full, real details of labor are for you, you might want to stop now.

While Jason put his guess in at baby Berry being a few days past my due date, I maintained that she’d come early – sometime between the 1st and the 7th. So I wasn’t surprised when my mucus plug started to come out 10pm Saturday, May 1st. Of course, I realized that this might just be a random coincidence, but I had been experiencing sporadic, non-progressing, little tiny contractions (I don’t think they were Braxton-Hicks, but they might have been) the week previous. Sure enough, starting with the mucus plug coming out, they became more frequent. By midnight, I was sure labor was starting.

Jason had already gone to bed, but I found the contractions a bit too much to sleep through, so I wandered around the house and spent some time elsewhere. I was timing them and they started out around five minutes apart and lasting about half a minute. They certainly weren’t huge, but they also weren’t little contractions that I could talk through. Around 4:30, I pulled Jason into the party, finding that it was easiest to try to rest against his back and have him time the contractions (thank goodness for phone apps!).

We called the doula (Kate) and the midwives (Val) around 6 or 7 in the morning, letting them know what was going on. Contractions at this point were fairly consistently around three and a half to five minutes apart, and were definitely work to get through. I had been hoping that, after all this time, I was going to make some progress, but no – with the daylight came the stall. The contractions didn’t get much farther apart (averaging five minutes apart and half a minute long), but did stall out around six minutes apart. Despite the fact that it sounded completely ridiculous, I tried to take the advice of both Val and Kate from our second call of the day (at which point I told Val “I certainly hope to get to the birth center before midnight tonight – but I don’t think she’ll be born until tomorrow.”) and get some rest between contractions. I may have got in a total of 2 hours of little tiny naps during the day while resting on the couch, walking around between contractions (including around the block – spurring our neighbor to ask if I needed a ride to the hospital).

Unfortunately, the evening and the walking did not bring a lot of change to the contractions. Despite them continuing to hover in the 3-4 minutes apart, 45 seconds a piece range, and getting stronger in intensity throughout the day, both Jason and I knew this was a very, very slow, almost stalled progression. By Sunday night, not knowing how in the world it would work, both logistically at 39 weeks, and with the contractions at the same time, I told Jason it was his turn to help – we were going to have sex. (Insert appropriate Jupiter joke of your choice here. 🙂 )

Sure enough, things started picking up shortly thereafter. The contractions didn’t really get all that much closer together (maybe by half a minute?), and only a bit longer (now about 50-60 seconds) (actually, the first one we timed after having sex was 83, then 79, then 70, then consistently around 60), but it was clear from how they were shaping up, and how I was acting, that they were more productive. Unfortunately, more productive means more painful, and it had become clear during the afternoon that I would be experiencing back labor for a while.

At some point – probably around 10:30pm Sunday night, I was hit with uncontrollable shivers (as though I was very cold), crying, and practically hyperventilating. I knew it wasn’t transition, but for some reason, I got hit with a big adrenaline surge. As I was feeling quite cold, however, and it was clear something was progressing, I made my way downstairs to ride out contractions in front of our fireplace, sitting cross legged on the floor, rocking front to back, on one side of a footstool and squeezing Jason’s hands as he faced me on the other side. He continued to time contractions and by 11pm it certainly seemed like something was changing. It’s hard to say how we knew – the contractions were getting not a lot closer together – 2 to 3 minutes rather than 3 to 4 – but it was pretty obvious that I was getting less able to cope and there was a quantitative shift in the quality of them, even though I hadn’t been able to talk through them for quite a while, or really talk well between them either.

Jason sez – I thought the timing of the contractions at this point in the evening was strange. After we had sex, Tiffany spent the next half hour of contractions in bed, lying on her side – and during that time they were consistently 4.5-6 minutes apart, but lasting 60 or more seconds. This was certainly indicative of progress to me. However, as soon as we went downstairs (and to a sitting position) the contractions went back to 30-45 seconds long and 2-4 minutes apart. I was worried that this might have meant that labor was stalling again, but although the timing was varying in an unexpected fashion, these contractions were clearly more serious than the ones from the day before; and after Val heard Tiffany go through 5 of them in 10 minutes, she was ready for us to head in to the birth center.

At this time, we called Kate and Val back, and though we were expressing our uncertainty, given the pattern of labor over the previous day, Val decided that we should meet at the birth center at midnight. And, sure enough, we got there a few minutes before midnight. Kate met us there – though I’m certainly not sure when she actually arrived. I do remember the car ride being less unpleasant than I had heard – it wasn’t fun by any means, and quick turns made for horrid back pain, but it wasn’t the most horrid thing ever. And when we arrived, I recall stumbling along with my eyes mostly closed, holding tightly on to Jason, as I walked in the door and down the hall, hearing Val say “well, the good news is that we won’t be sending you home tonight”. Here kicked in the inner mental snarky dialog, as the only thing my brain could think in response was “no shit!”. The inner snark was a trend that continued, only rarely being said outloud.

We set up in room 3, and I resumed my cross legged position on the floor, squeezing either Kate’s hands or Jason’s, depending on who was available. I recall the midwives take my vitals, but I really am not sure what other hustle and bustle was setting out.

Things kind of turn into a blur from here. The midwives wanted me to rest, and I wanted me to rest, so I spent some time in bed on my side, with Jason on the other side, doing whatever I could to breath and squeeze the life out of his hands. Apparently, the midwives often came to check on me when I got up to go to the bathroom, with everyone shocked that I was up when I needed to be getting some rest. Lying on my side on the bed became far too excruciating, however, as it made the back pain all the worse.

At some point, I got into the tub by myself, and found that it helped momentarily, but it was also very difficult to get my hips comfortable. The back labor seemed to make my hips incredibly sore when they did just about anything. I did stay in for a while, though, because I had been getting quite shivery and cold again, and being in the tub, with a towel draped over my back and water being poured over it kept me warm enough to avoid shivering. Shivering made the contractions physically worse, and mentally significantly worse. Of course, getting out of the tub to go to the bathroom was tricky if I wanted to avoid getting colder! Sometime around here they checked to see how much progress I had (after asking if I wanted to check) and the process of checking itself was surprisingly uncomfortable, and there is something disheartening about hearing that you’re 3-4cm more than 26 hours after labor started! Everyone was very positive about it, though, and very reassuring.

(Jason says – there’s a six hour gap here in the story. I would attempt to fill it in, but it would sound like contractions here, contractions there… contractions everywhere! 🙂 )

During the course of the next few hours there was some walking up and down the hall. I was hanging on to Jason while Kate was somewhere around us reminding me to make productive sounds. (Lesson learned, moaning through many, many hours of contractions makes your mouth very dry!) She would occasionally give suggestions on different things – like hanging both arms off Jason rather than one arm on his neck and one pushing down on his forearm, or swaying my hips – and it was fascinating to be aware, at the time, that my brain could either say “no, that’s a silly idea” or just go and do it, even if I never said a word (well, maybe sometimes NO!).

I also found myself on the birth stool at some point, so Val could check on how things were going, and we decided to break my bag as it was practically bulging out already. (and she was now 7+ cm dilated) It would be too easy to say that labor got harder from there – it had been hard all along – but I think doing this helped progression occur more quickly.

We tried getting back into the tub, and I tried continuing to take Kate’s advice and keep my eyes open and focused outward, rather than inward on the pain. I’ve often used inward focus for severe pain before, but Kate could see this wasn’t working. It was mentally VERY difficult to transition to keeping my eyes open during a contraction, and I’m not sure if it was the outward focus (usually staring at something very hard – the pattern on the terry cloth towel on the side of the tub, or into Jason’s left eye when we were back on the bed) or if it was the effort at keeping the focus outward, but it helped me “hold on” a little better.

We tried the tub again, with Jason in there for me to rest against between contractions, and it continued to be very difficult to find any relief. I recall, after one short break where my hips felt unbearably sore, and a contraction with ever increasing pressure occurred, I had the hardest time coping – I was even aware I was flailing around in the tub as Kate was trying to coax me back into a useful pattern. This wasn’t the first time that I felt that things were beyond me. The relentless nature of the contractions, the back pain, and the unending pressure made me think more than once that I couldn’t keep doing this. But I found that the effort of even trying to say that was too much. And when the idea of having to be transferred to get relief crossed my mind, knowing the option was there, I could only think of the pain that would happen DURING the transfer – getting in the car, driving, etc. And by the time that thought had happened, I was at the end of a contraction, and drained of everything until the next one.

Eventually, I even suggested getting out of the tub and laying on the bed. I was exhausted and – though I didn’t know it – was getting some sleep between contractions. My body knew the bed could offer rest, but the contractions were intolerable on the bed, and after two or three contractions, I practically lept out of the bed, no idea where I was going but having to get away from the back pain. (I think this is where Kate suggested we try a TENS, which we both had with us, but I was so focused on just not being where I was I couldn’t think of what else we could do.)

We tried the shower, but my hips were so incredibly sore that it was impossible to get comfortable. While in there, the asked if I had been getting the urge to push, and I noticed that I had – but it was this very, very slight suggestion of a push. I went with it, but again, very very slightly. Seemed to be appropriate, even though I had no real idea if what I felt is what they meant. I ended up on the birth stool again. I didn’t like the birth stool – the seat pan was too wide, it was slightly too high for my feet to comfortably reach the floor, but it was better than any of the other alternatives. So I stayed there, with Jason behind me for support, and Kate in front for a hand to squeeze and the reminder to breathe productively. The increasing pressure – and in this case, it felt like it was all directed right onto the rectum, creating an incredibly unpleasant, unsettling sensation – was scary, and it was tempting to try to go away from it, but they kept reminding me to go with the pressure (as they had been for the past few hours), and that was so important. When the urge to push actually came, there was a sudden revelation of “oh my god, there’s nothing else I can do here”.

Around that time, Val had “gone in to check” where things were, and found a very small anterior cervical lip that she helped push out of the way. She kept her hands there while that was moving, and having something to push against was exactly what I needed. It made it clear HOW to make progress and WHERE to move the baby. It was so much better than just the pressure on the rectum, even though it was incredibly difficult as well. There was, however, no stopping the pushing – even if I had to breath in the middle of a push, I couldn’t really!

It took about 33 minutes to push her out, a time I had no appreciation for – it was just one push after another. (Jason sez – the time between contractions actually got a lot longer in the pushing stages) It was certainly disconcerting to feel her head resting there between pushes. The crowning stage was almost too much, but everything that had come before it wasn’t an option either, so it wasn’t a matter of not doing it, it was how to best get it done so it was DONE! The stretching wasn’t too bad, or so I thought, until I could feel the full stretch. It was a sensation layered over top of the others that stood out quite brightly. And it caused me to scream pretty much at the top of my voice at, according to Jason, octaves he wasn’t sure I could hit. Everyone in the room was telling me to try to relax into it, but at that point, the scream almost felt like a battlecry – I was going to do this no matter what! Oddly enough, the rest of the pushes were much easier to do without making any noises.

There was a pause when the head was out – and as I’m pretty sure I could feel her nose pressing into already tight places, I was happy to have her head out. They discovered her shoulders were slightly stuck – not dystocia, but just a little caught funny since her head had rotated oddly in order to line up in the pelvis – and one of the midwives (that was Suzanne, one of the student midwives) had to try to “pry her” back and forth, while half still in me, to loosen the shoulders. (Suzanne was trying to shift the shoulders with the contractions, in order to get them free. At this point the baby was still active enough that she mistook some baby wiggling for a contraction, and started to try to shift them, only to realize that it wasn’t really a contraction, just a very active baby!) I didn’t like the sensation one bit, but once she got her shoulder around, she came out right away, in a push or two, and was handed up to me, purplish, bloody, and clearly tired. I rubbed her belly to get her attention (she didn’t want to breathe immediately) and she rewarded us with a lovely cry.

They clamped the cord fairly quickly, and asked to give me a shot of pit, as I had lost a LOT of blood with the delivery. The placenta came out almost right away, and it was almost a relief! I found myself soon in bed, with her on my stomach. She tried climbing up and rooting around, but looked a little too tired to get her head in just the right spot. They did some work pressing hard on my abdomen (oh my wasn’t that uncomfortable!) and we worked on getting the baby to nurse (which she did one side great!). Eventually, Val came over to stitch me up (I had a couple of small tears) while Jason held the baby. Fortunately, the lidocaine shot worked great, and I could hardly feel the stitching, just the tug of the thread.

About an hour and a half after the birth, they did the newborn exam, and went to help me to the bathroom while that happened. The exam got cut short, however, as – on the way to the bathroom – I got light headed, sat down on one of the benches, started to lose my hearing, and passed out. I found myself next aware of lying on the bed. I was only out for five seconds or so, but I was definitely quite light headed and not going anywhere any time soon. So, the next few hours were spent in bed, as they tried to make sure I got plenty of food and drink.

There was a catch, though – I still hadn’t gone to the bathroom. At some point, I noted that I really had to go. But couldn’t. We tried many things, but they didn’t really want me to get up and walk anywhere. They even tried wheeling me over to the tub on a chair. (And let’s just say that the suggestion of trying the birth stool, next to the bed, was not what I wanted to hear. Didn’t work anyway.) So, we tried a catheter, which was rather painful and couldn’t be gotten in. An hour later, after trying a couple of other things, I practically begged for them to try again – never in my life had I been so relieved to hear that, due to some misleading anatomy details, they had been trying to catheterize my clitoris, and my urethra was in a slightly different spot. Things like this are surprisingly happy news after you’ve given birth and after you haven’t peed in hours. So they drained 1500cc of urine! And bam, my uterus had space to contract back down! It’s humored me that, after all that, there could be so much pleasure in just getting to pee. And we all need that really humorous bit of a birth story.

They left us to sleep for a while, to make sure I continued to eat and drink, and to make sure that I had plenty of help if I was going to stand to head to the toilet. Eventually, they finished the newborn exam – she was 21 inches long, and weighed 8lbs 0.5oz, beating every single person’s guess immediately before she was put on the scale by more than a pound! As Suzanne recorded the newborn info, she asked us “what’s her name?”, and Jason and I looked at each other, still not havig named her, and seemed to agree on the same name of our short list (of two) – Daphne Anastasia Berry. And then there was little to do but wait until I felt steady enough to be upright. So, it wasn’t until about 6pm, after taking part in a take-out run to a local thai restaurant, that Jason packed our stuff up, put Daphne in the car seat and in the car, and I was lead out, into a glorious cool rain, by everyone.

The past few days since Daphne has been home, have been interesting. Without any milk yet, she pretty much just ate and slept. She has been a pretty good sleeper, not terribly disturbed by any noises, and generally alright with however she’s put down – but she does prefer being swaddled. Unfortunately, feeding didn’t continue to go so well, and there was clearly some variety of latch issue, as you could see bruised lines running up and down my nipples. And it continued to be quite uncomfortable. Fortunately, Kate came over and helped us troubleshoot the feeding. But we waited until Wednesday to have her over, and I can only say that I wish I had called sooner, and not even gone through the day and a half of letting Daphne continue the bad habits of not opening her mouth wide enough to establish a good latch. (And it showed us how dad’s can help with breastfeeding – the way that works best for us at the moment is side-lying, with Jason putting Daphne in place. And practicing this is definitely helping her learn what a good latch is like.) But even if feeding started to get easier, waking a sleep loving baby every two hours to feed (which is a great place to fall asleep) is quite challenging!

In the past two days since my milk has come in, she’s been more awake (though not for long periods of time) and more active. (This is a good thing, and a bad thing! 🙂 ) I didn’t know until this afternoon, however, that sometimes the transition to real breast milk is difficult on a baby’s digestive system, and I am hoping that the fussing of the past day and a half will pass as her digestion gets used to milk. Then I can stop saying that I’m really, *really* looking forward to seeing a poopy diaper. 🙂 And now that the milk is in, and her 2 day checkup didn’t show too much weight loss, we have transitioned her to four hour intervals at night (well, on demand, but not waiting more than four hours if she hasn’t woken to feed). This means I finally know how long between feeds she wants to go, which is the sort of trivial souding, but oh-so-valuable information that is starting to make up our lives.

– Tangy Tiffany, Jupiter Jason and Delectable Daphne

Pics!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarnalberry/sets/72157623869318279/