Early Days

As a first-time parent, you really don't know at all what you're doing. For example, on our first night home with Josie, she screamed hysterically. We couldn't understand it at all, given that at the hospital they claimed she was a perfectly behaved infant and that was all we saw of her until we got her home. Come to find out later - we had effectively been STARVING her, continuing to follow portion restrictions for her formula that the hospital had given us in error. They assumed we were using formula and breast milk. So that first night, we were giving her about half of what she needed.

One tactic that helped us cope with the strangely frequent schedule of an newborn was recording the time of every little thing, along with a few notes to hopefully help us track her health. After the realization of what we'd done our first night, we may have gone a little overboard on the detail.

Note the mis-ordered dates and times.
The first days are no cake walk, kids.

When we met with the pediatrician for the first time, it came out how closely we were tracking her ins and outs. "You're recording every diaper?" he asked, eyebrows raised. "Good luck with that."

In the above photo, we start to get into a rhythm, tasks aligning to times and relaxing enough to lose some track of days.

About ten days after we got her home, we felt we had the hang of Josephine. Stopping the journaling wasn't a choice - it just happened as our baby began to feel more like ours (and less like some strange, tiny, invading infidel).