Week 45 - Weight

Big news this week as we are already holding our head up at just 1 week!

Betsy loves her new sister.

Early on during my master's degree, one of our professors taught us something valuable about practical animal science research. Many of us over-complicate our research and forget about the big picture. We come up with all of these fancy parameters to measure and lose track of the obvious, or the measurements of long-term consequence. But the most valuable and important tool in his opinion was the scale. With the scale we can determine if an animal is gaining, maintaining or losing weight. And weight is linked to an animal's health, metabolic status, energy balance, and genetic worth. This isn't to say that other smaller parameters aren't of value for modes of action with research, but just to say that the scale is instrumental in the base layer of quantification, the big picture measurement to determine what is really happening in the life and health of the animal.

My little Spartan, despite her mother's misgivings.

But as a dad, all bets are off. And hard is it is, I needed for the scale not to be the primary determinant of success in the first weeks of life for our new baby girl. Hannah struggled with her weight for the first week or so, losing and then finally leveling off. By the end of this week, I am feeling like we might be on our way out now that the weight has started into the plateau. When we visited the doctor, they confirmed what I already knew to be true. She was alert, happy, passing plenty of diaper-fodder, but not putting on any weight, just going down. Everything was ok, but we just needed to keep on keeping on. So cheers to that - we will continue to be chilled out parents.

Hannah after her first bath. So cute!

Bathing was our big learning process this week, but just like running any brand new assay, you just need to have everything you will use laid out in front of you and ready to go. Ideally, she is declothed, wet down gently, soaped and rinsed and being toweled off as quickly as possible. But once the water hits her, it doesn't matter what the temperature is - she is going to squirm and doesn't like it. We were also trying to do this on a spongy flower which a family friend gave us, so we did it up on the countertop. Sponge didn't probably work as well as we hoped, so we basically bathed our baby right out on the kitchen countertop with a cozy cushion leaking water everywhere. Top this off with a happy little tinkle, and I'm pretty sure there are people who would never eat at our house again if they knew what went down in there. Good news is, it was just one of "life's bleachable moments". Our first bath didn't go quite smoothly, but I think we'll get the hang of it. At least she didn't cry too much.

With time at home, got the flags hung in time for the 4th!

View from our bedroom with the sunrise. Late night, but she let us sleep in a bit.

I love holding our little baby girl. She is so trusting.

Otherwise, our first full week of parenthood has been going well. We have been getting acceptable amounts of sleep, and I have been working from home for the most part. Period 2 died again, but we are back on the road towards getting it knocked out of the way. Meanwhile, electrical failures are the new frustration at work. Our lab has a collection of great equipment, but it is all worthless when a power surge blows fuses and causes adjustment fluctuations when nobody has changed the switches. Gremlins indeed, no, we have more power fluxes in my fermenter room than a horror movie. It is good to be back to work, and trying to make progress, and it is even better that the team pulled together so well while I've been out. But I long to be home as soon as I get on the road to work, and struggling with this equipment and the unknown ghost of power problems. It's going to be a long road to finish this PhD, now that she is here with us. I love learning and working in this research environment, but I love being home with her in my arms. Our place is so peaceful this year with the sheep grazing the pasture.