Jonathan Daniel Hagen was delivered into the world on Friday, July 23, at 1:02 PM. At 8 lbs., 0.5 oz., even our famous California governor must admit that Jonathan is certainly no "girlie man". In fact, Magda's father has already given Jonathan the nickname of "Bufalo" for his tough rugged physique.

The delivery via a planned caesarian was more far less stressful than our first delivery, which was also caesarian but was originally planned to be induced. After all the horror stories we hear about natural deliveries, it's a wonder why all deliveries aren't by caesarian these days. The anesthesiologist thought that we already knew the sex of the baby, so we anti-climatically found out that Jonathan was a boy from his casual announcement, "Here he is". His mistake in protocol was understood differently later, when the lead doctor approached him and said "Welcome aboard", thereby letting us know that it was his first day on the job. Thankfully we didn't know that earlier, or we would have been even more nervous than we were!

Alison has responded extremely well to the new addition in her parent's lives, and has even been eager to help with the baby. She often wants to help feed the baby (tricky when he's breastfeeding), change the baby and, especially, wake the baby up in the morning. Jonathan seems to sleep better during the day than the nights, so it is tough to determine if Magda is deliriously happy or just deliriously sleepy.

In Daddy's opinion, Jonathan seems to have Magda's hair, eyes and even nose. Many people disagree, though, and think that he looks more like Daddy. His hair is darker than Alison's hair, but still a little lighter and redder than Magda's. Like Alison at her birth, Jonathan already has more hair than Daddy. He also seems to be looking more like Alison as the days go by, as you might be able to see from the bottom pictures.

First Four Months

Indeed, when Jonathan was born we were hoping that Jonathan's colic wouldn't be as bad as Alison's. The good news was that Jonathan's colic was not as bad as Alison's. The bad news was that he had Gastroesophageal reflux (GER) and food allergies which took several months to diagnose and several more months to treat. Until everything was diagnosed and treated, Jonathan slept as little as six hours each day and sometimes his longest sleep of the day was as little as two hours. Being on "Jonathan Watch" sometimes meant getting almost no sleep at all, since he often woke up about as soon as you got the courage to put him down. During the worst months, mommy and daddy would take turns on Jonathan Watch for half the night just so that we were both assured of at least a couple of hours of sleep.

For Jonathan's first ten weeks, Jonathan would cry during the day unless he was held, and at around 7:00 PM his colic would kick in so that he would cry non-stop for three to four hours during the evening. Fortunately, though, it was "only" three to four hours, as opposed to the seven to eight hours that Alison used to cry. Unfortunately, driving him around in the car did not calm him down, so all that we could do was carry him around the house and wait for it to end. Since we had been through it before, we knew that the colic would eventually go away and sure enough it was gone by about the eleventh week.

However, the worst culprit for the first ten weeks of Jonathan's life were his food allergies, which is what was causing him to cry unless he was held. We concluded pretty early that he was allergic to milk, but replacing his milk-based formula with a soy-based formula only helped a little. Next, we suspected the breast milk and we severely restricted Magda's diet for several weeks. We eventually had Magda practically on a liquid diet, but we still saw no improvement - in fact, he seemed to be getting worse. Next, we suspected GER for the first time but the GER medicine didn't help. Things got progressively tougher until the tenth week, when we finally took milk and soy out of Jonathan's formula and the crying during the day improved almost immediately.

Getting rid of the colic and the food allergies were a big step, and Jonathan's crying improved quite a bit by the end of the third month. We thought that we would simply see steady progress as he grew bigger and stronger. In the beginning of the fourth month, though, the progress at night stopped and he began to get worse again. By the end of the fourth month, Jonathan was generally happy during the day but his nights were as bad as they were for the first ten weeks and his naps were often as short as 20 minutes. We were hopeful that the doctors would be able to help, and happily we received some help in January.