That sucks

Or rather, it likes to suck.

Stella says that Amy really likes to suckle, such as after she's done drinking—and when Stella tries to put her breast away, Amy will complain and will want to lick or suck for a bit.

She's also been crying a bit the past day or two, possibly from stomach complaints, but maybe also from other things—and sucking on something (a finger, for example) will get her to quiet down.

Stella just tried to nurse her but she says Amy is just suckling, not actually drinking.

She said she's considering getting a dummy (pacifier) for her since she seems to like sucking so much, and it calms her down—but I'm not such a fan of them. Among the things I've heard is that it may impair or change the development of their jaw shape and that it may cause them to drink less since they're satisfying part of their need to suck on something that doesn't provide nutrition, so they'll drink less well at the breast. I've also heard that it might cause them to have difficulties nursing at the breast due to the different shapes, and that at least for the first weeks of life, one should avoid using a dummy.

But having her cry the whole time is not fun, either, and giving her the breast when she's not hungry seems a bit... hm... not exactly a waste of time, but something like that. Having her occupied might also help while changing nappies, which she occasionally protests loudly over.

Any advice or experience?

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After visiting Bettina, she said that she doesn't think dummies are so reprehensible, and that it may be preferable to letting her scream all the time. (She also said that in the course of our parenting, we'll have to make compromises with our "standards" many times when we find out that things aren't as cut-and-dried as that.)

She also pointed out that while Amy might enjoy just sucking on the breast all day long, the nipples won't hold up to that for too long, and then just nursing would be a chore—which would also be an undesirable state of things.

She also said that maybe we should just wait and see how things turn out—for example, when her daughter switched from dummy to thumb, it only lasted for a week and a half, and had they known that, they could have been a lot more calm about it.

Random memory

At one point in my youth, I though it would be a good idea to memorise the powers of two up to 2¹⁶ = 65536.

It's occasionally come in handy in programming, and I've learned a few more since then, e.g. 2¹⁸ = 262144 (256K, number of colours in the VGA palette, six bits each for R G B), 2²⁰ = 1'048'576 (number of bytes in a megabyte), or 2²⁴ = 16'777'216 (number of HTML colours, for example).

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, for those of you for whom the year starts tonight!

Growing, growing, grone - sold to that gentleman in the raincoat for €42!

Amy's been feeding just about every half-hour for the past three hours. I wonder whether this is preparation for the growth spurt which the midwife said comes at around the 10-day mark (which would be tomorrow).

Incidentally, when the midwife was here today to check up on Stella, she was impressed by how well she can sit, despite the episiotomy; the area is still swollen a bit but she seems to be healing well.

Still, it gets annoying and just a bit old to have her yammer every so often. I wonder what this night will be like.