Now That Katie is Here...from Jon
Katie is finally here.  Rather, Katie has been here for a while and we are just now getting a handle on things.  Katie's parents have finally gotten to the point where they can accomplish a few more things in a day's work than just taking care of the family.

It reminds me of way back when we were first investigating the whole tubal reversal thing.  Rebecca was checking out the support groups online and noticed that while there were plenty of women posting that were trying to conceive following a reversal, there weren't very many posting who had been successful.  She took this as a sign that maybe it was difficult to get pregnant following the reversal.  Trying to put her mind at ease, I suggested that maybe the women who were successful didn't have time to post because they had their hands full with babies.  Little did I realize how right I was.

We are pretty much past that Twilight Zone period where the days are one continuous blur of feeding Katie and trying to get a little sleep.  Our blurry period was blurrier than most, though, since Katie was not a breastfeeding champ.  We did a fair amount of consulting with the breastfeeding folks at the hospital, as well as with a family friend who is a lactation consultant.  The general concensus was that Rebecca should feed Katie every 2 hours until her milk supply came in real good.  On the surface that seems like it would be something of a challenge.  The reality is that it was more on the order of Mission:  Impossible!  The problem was that Katie would take about an hour to eat.  If you figure 15 or 20 minutes for getting her situated to eat and then getting her back to sleep and getting yourself back to sleep, it boils down to only sleeping 30 minutes at a time.  We had a long, realistic talk about it and came to the conclusion that if we did it that way, we would be squaring off with kitchen knives for a royal battle in a few days' time. 

We decided to go with Rebecca pumping and me feeding Katie with a bottle.  She gets breast milk and we supplement with formula.  My feeding Katie while Rebecca pumps every night has led to Katie being a complete Daddy's Girl.  For a while, she wouldn't sleep at all unless she was in the crook of my arm.  Of course, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think this was awesome or that I didn't encourage it.  Now Katie only sleeps with Dad an hour or so at night, and it's much more for Dad's benefit than hers.  Sleeping in close proximity to her keeps my raging paranoia of SIDS fairly under control, which of course is a good thing.  It also lets me take most of the load of getting up with her off of Rebecca.  While my wife will surely not appreciate this, it is a fact that she can be pretty mean if she doesn't get enough sleep.  I do fairly well on less sleep thanks to my days in the Army, so it only makes sense for the person best suited to the task to be the one who does it.  It's not always a walk in the park, but it works out pretty well.

Katie is a nice and chubby baby, but it has lead me to a whole new level of anxiety.  It has always been a matter of some concern about what a little girl fathered by me would look like.  The genes in my side of the family are invincible.  Childhood pictures of me, Jacob and my father, apart from photographic quality, are indestinguishable.  The idea of my daughter looking like me is more than I can bear.  Just look at the picture page and you'll see why I am anxious.  God only knows what came over Rebecca to be interested in me.  Part of me is still waiting for her to snap out of it.  When Katie was born she was a little skinny baby, but now she is quite plump.  I think she looks like her mother, less now that she is a nice and chubby baby.  But once she is all grown up, I think she'll look like Mom.