My daughter Oaklyn was born on January 31st of this year and I swear at that exact moment life began moving faster than ever before. Today she is officially 6 months old. Now I'm not one to celebrate half birthdays, but it seems like it's pretty much a mandatory thing when you have an infant.
Somehow I managed to thwart any attempt of having an actual party even though that was never my true intention. Really it wasn't, but I will say I'm relieved that my girlfriend didn't push the envelope because I would have given in immediately. As a Dad how do you say no to your child and their Mother? That's right you don't.
Another pretty cool milestone happened this weekend as well when my daughter said, "Dada" for the first time. Thankfully there were multiple people in the room that were able to confirm that is what I heard. Her mother and I were having a friendly coaching competition to see who could get her to say their name first so it looks like I get to take the "W". Actually that whole competition thing was probably made up in my head. Anyhow being the curious research driven guy I am I had to dive deeper to see if this is the norm. Here is what I found.
Linguistic experts continue to debate whether Ds are harder to say than Ms but Heather Goad, a professor at MacGill University, is firmly in the Daddy camp. She states Ds are more difficult to pronounce because of the tongue gesture required. The reason Mama usually follows Dada is that she is not the first person a baby sees as being separate from them. When mothers are the primary attachment, babies are still quite fused to them well into their first year of life. The first separation they see from themself is to their father. Dada is usually the first person they identify outside of the mother and baby bond. - Deborah MacNamara
It seems like my daughter is hitting a new milestone each week now and I'm sure that has something to do with the feeling that time is moving faster. I'm constantly reminding my girlfriend and I to live in the moment and avoid looking too far into the future. Doing so would only speed things up even more and we want to make sure to enjoy her being this small because it won't last forever.
While visiting home a few weeks ago we came across this baby picture of me (left) when digging through some old photos. I think there is a pretty strong resemblance between my daughter and I. What do you think?
Not everything was baby giggles and play time this weekend. Sunday afternoon as our weekend was coming to a close all of a sudden my daughter began screaming at the top of her lungs. She is normally a very content baby and rarely cries so when she does you know something is up.
My Dad ears which are very in tune at this stage of the game sensed this was a real cry and not one of those show me attention cries. My first instinct due to previous experience was to check her diaper as I suspected she may have just had an episode of the acidic poops. Yes you read that correctly. The first time this happened when she was around 3 months I was left scratching my head too.
Acid diaper rash occurs when for one reason or another your baby’s poop becomes acidic in pH and literally burns the skin. 😢
Sure enough I was right. Definitely one of those occasions when I didn't want to be. We pulled her diaper off and her poor little skin was already inflamed and bright red. Unfortunately, this happens the instant her bowel movement touches her skin so there is no such thing as reacting fast enough. We cleaned her up and applied some diaper rash cream, but the damage had been done. She cried inconsolably for the next few minutes until she finally tired herself out and fell asleep.
My girlfriend is a Kindergarten teacher who had the summer off so she recently returned back to work, which means my daughter is back in daycare. All parents know what follows is your little one getting sick and sure enough my daughter came home with a runny nose after her first day back. We believe this to be the culprit responsible for her acidic episodes as her body is attempting to pass the bug.
I'm happy to report that she slept through the majority of the night and had no more issues with her little bum. She was back to her usual self this morning as I woke up to her rolling around cooing and smiling at me once we made eye contact. 😍
