Ryan Rindlisbacher

On March 22, 2012, my sister had her fourth baby. Amy has three girls and they were told early on that this would be another one. When Amy had her next ultrasound, they discovered that they had spoken too soon! Amy’s husband Steve is so excited. And so are the rest of them!

It is hard being away from family when big things happen. Luckily, Paul was able to work out his schedule so he could be home and that I could go and spend some time with Amy and help out a bit.

Amy has really, really great newborns.

Ryan is on the perfect schedule. Sleeps 4-6 hours at night, eats and goes right back to sleep. Then he wakes up in the morning, eats again and then just hangs out, wide awake, just chilling.

Then he goes back to eating and sleeping, with one more awake period in the afternoon, and then off to bed for the night.

He cried every time we changed his diaper. For one minute. That’s it. I think in the four days I was at Amy’s house, there were only two times when he was crying crying. Except for soaking everything around him while he’s getting his diaper changed, he’s as close to the perfect newborn as you can get.

Funny how, even though he was really good, I felt some of those old feelings of worry over being in charge of a newborn. One afternoon, Amy went up to take a quick power nap and I started working on dinner. No sooner had she left than Ryan started to whimper. Deep inside there was a slight sense of panic that started to flare. I shouldn’t have worried though because it really was just a whimper and he was fine and I was able to finish what I was doing.

This was a completely different experience than the last time I was in charge of a newborn, make that two newborns. I may not be fully recovered yet.

I am happy that he has been such a great newborn. We all know that babies move rapidly through the early stages of life. Soon Ryan will be on to the next phase and the next milestone and that will bring all new experiences. But for this moment, it’s a wonderful stage!