I've mentioned that the baby is extremely easy to deal with, among other things it's because she actually burps herself. Lately a little after feedings she has started to cry and ask for food. At least that's what me and Erkki thought. She puts hands in her mouth and it's immediately followed by a short cry. We always assumed it means "I am VERY hungry" but then why won't she eat. Yesterday evening I googled the problem and found out that many babies use the same sign to signal both hunger and trapped air. Apparently the baby was doing her best to tell us, "burp me NOW!
". Any efforts to burp her had far been only randomly successful. Well, it appears we can no longer get by without this skill. I watched YouTube videos how to burp a newborn and started experimenting. I think I got the trick because our baby is now much more happy.You've probably noticed that each time I have some problem here I solve it with Google. Google is the greatest tool of all times! It beats a call to the doctor any day. I get one tip from a doctor and ten tips from Google. I have to pick which tip to use and usually I end up trying all the reasonable ones. Since doctors are often so narrow minded I actually trust widespread Internet advice over the advice of licenced physicians. Mhh... When I can't figure something out I ask Erkki and then consult the Internet, when Erkki can't figure something out he asks me and then consults the Internet. This means my baby is already half raised by the Internet. What a good start for ultimate geekdom!!!!!!
But sometimes a good post-soviet doctor advice beats all the western world safe advice.
In the first week my baby fell asleep soon after starting to eat. Google advice (forums, parenting websites, etc) said that I should strip her to only diapers before feedings so she feels slightly cold and less sleepy. Then I read I should change the diaper before feedings to wake her up properly. I also read I should use damp cloth to wipe her face during feedings to keep her awake. I tried all those! The baby barely opened her eyes for the diaper change, she happily fell asleep in only her diaper and she didn't even consider waking up when someone was wiping her face with cold damp cloth. So I mentioned it to my family doctor who used to specialize in pediatrics. My doctor said, "when she falls asleep, carefully squeeze her nostrils shut. She will wake up and continue to eat." Nice advice from a doctor! 
Obstruct her breathing, that will help. Well... It did help! It was the only thing that really woke her up. I only used it a few times because the baby hated it, but it did the trick.But this bring us to the second problem - my baby isn't that sleepy anymore! So far the baby always fell asleep without delay. All we had to do was to lay her in bed and cover her with a blanket. It appears that time has gone. At least twice a day she is unable to fall asleep when she wants to. She's too sleepy to play or communicate with us but when we put her in bed she gets frustrated and starts to cry. We have to keep her calm and rock her to sleep. Sometimes it takes a couple of minutes but sometimes it takes over an hour of trying to feed her, changing her diaper many times, calming her down for a moment and starting from the beginning.
So now we have even more things to consider when the kid needs help - hunger, diaper, boredom, blocked nostrils (only when not blocked by me!), burp, sleepy. The last is the most difficult because it can be detected only through a method of exclusion. On the bright side of things our baby is experimenting with sounds. I am sure she will soon learn to signal her needs better with sounds other than crying.
Fortunately the baby doesn't hate us. I found a nice thought on the Internet yesterday: an infant isn't a moody teenager. She doesn't judge parents when they make a mistake. A baby is just learning it all with the parents. So when our baby needs to be burped and we help her she is just happy to be helped, she doesn't hold a grudge for all the times we didn't realize that's what she needs.
Baby is still a puzzle - there's problems to be solved and hints to help parents solve them. Difficulty is increased gradually and new variables are added. There is also a fail-penalty involved.
Once you ignore a problem, the alarm goes on and all hints stop; or in other words, if you fail to fix one problem, the baby will start to cry and she is unable to show any hints clearly. So any others problems that arise during this time will be very difficult to notice. That's why it's very important to react to a baby's crying without delay. This keeps the puzzle manageable and everyone is a little happier. Especially the neighbours at nighttime. 
There would be no point in playing without pleasure. When you play the puzzle game well and get many points you get to see your kid do funny happy faces, you see her trying to figure out why the curtain looks different when it's nighttime, you see her trying to hold her head up high (and almost succeeding), you see her looking at you with huge friendly eyes and the meaningful look in her eyes just makes you forget all the times she was ever unhappy.
You can't help but smile at her and if you're lucky she will smile right back at you.
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