Grunty McGrunterson

Our son is a grunter - all day and all night...  well maybe not that bad, but when you hear him grunting constantly unless he is held for many minutes at a time (we don't let it get beyond minutes, we pick him up pretty quickly), it feel like all day and all night.  Remember when I said he's a noisy sleeper?  I have learned that the noisy sleeping has to do with the grunting.  Many times when I get out of bed to go to the nursery because I think he's awake and wanting to eat (even if he ate 10 minutes prior), he'll be sound asleep just grunting.  I'm starting to learn the difference between grunting/sleeping and waking up to eat.

The grunting started around two weeks.  I noticed that whenever he was trying to pass gas or poop that he was grunting.  I checked with my friends with kids to make sure it was normal and did some searches of online forums as well.  Turns out that it has something to do with a newborn being uncoordinated in their reflexes for pooping.  The best article I found about it was here.  There were many anecdotal stories from parents on forums, too, that said that it goes away at anywhere from 6 weeks - 4 months.  As long as it's normal, I don't necessarily care when it goes away.  I think we may even figure out a way to sleep through it...  though who knows.

And just for a visual reference of what he looks like - see below... If you could see the time stamps on these two photos, you'd see they were seriously within a minute and a half.  It just comes out of nowhere.  But isn't he cute, even when he's grunting!!

"Hey there... I'm just chillin' out in my favorite swing, nothing is wrong"

One more thing to notice about these pictures is that you can see none of his actual outfit.  He likes to spit up, and when he eats too much, likes to spit up a lot.  So whenever he's hanging out in his swing or on mommy or daddy, despite the cute outfit he's wearing, you can only see the bib and the burp cloth.  I promise though, he is wearing a cute outfit underneath!

"It's less than a minute later and time to grunt!!  I may look like I'm crying but it's just lots of grunting, I promise."