Whew. These last few days have been just a little bit crazy. I’m not sure what we’ve done, but I know we haven’t had time for anything 🙂 Keeping a tiny being alive sure does take a lot of time and energy, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m just glad some day I’ll be able to sleep again. Man I miss sleep.
Overall, things are still going well. Let’s see, Ellie is still doing great. She turned one month old this weekend which is crazy! I wanted to do the cute one month photo thing, but I didn’t. I took a few on my camera, but they were too big to, and I don’t have time to go up to my computer to resize them, so those will have to wait for another day. Until then:
She’s definitely acting more than negative one month old though. She’s starting to get a little more awake/fussy – especially between 9pm and 4am. I don’t get more than 15 minutes of sleep at a time through then – maybe an hour if I’m lucky. That’s hard. I was used to getting up every few hours to pump while she was at the hospital, but at least I got to go back to sleep then. Oh well. She also has had some constipation issues since coming home but she seems to be working through those now, thank goodness.
Her new trick for the past couple of nights is eating on a 3-4 hour schedule during the day, and a 2 hour schedule at night. That makes it so we pretty much change her, feed her, hold her for a bit so her tummy settles, pump, and do it again. I’m hoping she grows out of that soon too 😉 But look at how cute she is, how can you say no to this face?
One thing I will say is it’s really nice to be able to do things on our schedule and without others hovering all the time. Now if she’s fussing too long, I just pick her up. And I’m still amazed at how much easier it is to move her without wires attached. She’s also a cuddle monster, so I think she appreciates the extra hugs.
Ellie had her first at home bath last night! Even though she’s had other baths, and some that we’ve been present for, this is the first one that went how I imagined it. She didn’t scream like she did in the hospital, so I assume we were doing something right 🙂 Here she is in her cute towel:
We went to the Dr today for her ‘you just came home from the hospital’ checkup and according to their scale, she’s up to 6 lbs 8 oz!!!!! Now, the scale could very well be different than the one at the hospital, but still, dang. We’ll stop fortifying her milk now with extra calories (as she’s plenty big) and make sure she’s still gaining weight at a regular pace. We have a home nurse coming to visit once a week too for the first few weeks to do things like weight checks and make sure we’re doing well (since she’s a preemie) so we won’t have to go to the Dr all the time. Look at how long she is!
So yeah, things are good. I’m looking forward to trying to nap a little more this week (we’re pretty much done now fixing her room and doing the other things we’ve been waiting to do.) I’ll try to keep updates as much as I can.
And finally, we had our first tornado warning today (yay summer!) so here’s Ellie and Clark ‘huddled’ in the basement waiting it out (I’m so paranoid now):
I’m convinced that most babies are born thinking day is night and night is day. I think it’s because they’re lulled to sleep during the day while they’re in your belly. Anyhow, it takes a little bit, but then they figure it out! They still wake up at night, but at least go to sleep in between wakings. I hope you’re able to get in some good napping!
Sounds like typical first days at home with new baby. You need to sleep whenever she does day or night. She is so darned cut. Can’t wait until you are settled in good so I can get a peek . Love to all three of you. Grandma Barb