Feeding the baby

I have been giving Gabriel the bottle almost every evening for the last two weeks. It is wonderful that I am finally able to feed my boy, too. In retrospect it was fairly easy go get Gabriel to drink from a plastic nipple, though I did worry for a while that he would refuse it. Walking around with the crying baby to calm him down, teasing his lips with the nipple, and not giving in finally did the trick.

Now, Gabriel starts making sucking motions when he sees the bottle, which is nice. However, he is tired in the evening which dramatically shortens his attention span and his ability to endure discomfort. Thus, if he's not extremely hungry, he keeps looking around while trying to drink, or he cries because of hunger and tiredness instead of drinking, so that I have to walk around with him to keep him sufficiently calm.
At any rate, feeding Gabriel seems to have quite an effect. At 3.5 months, Gabriel weighs between 6.9 and 7 kilograms and is about 66 cm tall, which puts him into the 75th percentile for weight, and 95th percentile for height (US statistics). I'm glad his weight isn't in the 95th percentile, too.

Wednesday, I have spent my first evening alone with Gabriel, since Michelle went to take a class on autism. I am glad she is able to start making contacts. While having a baby with you tends to make start talking to you, their questions are most often limited to age ("Il n'est pas vieux, non?"), sex, and name, and in a place where parties seem to mostly start around 9pm, it's hard for young parents to hang out. Fortunately, there are also local associations for young parents, where Michelle can meet people other than me and Gabriel.
Wednesday night taught me that I will be able to take care of Gabriel next week, too, when Michelle is going to be absent for two evenings - Gabriel did everything a baby his age can do to make a parent's life difficult except peeing all over me. Not on purpose, though, and when he was lying on the changing table for the second time (he usually poos about once every 2-3 days, not twice on a single evening) with a diaper so full of abysmally stinking poo that it had overflown, soiling his entire back, he was so happy and cute that I couldn't feel bad about the mess. Just a bit tired, maybe.
Michelle told me that I wasn't allowed to share a picture of a full diaper with you. All of you who don't know, or don't remember what it is like, I therefore have to invite to come here and experience the other side of feeding the baby for yourself.