Our second child, our son, was born on his due date, Friday, September 23rd at 7:06am. He weighed 8 lbs 2 oz and was 20 inches long. His older sister, who is 2 and 9 months old, had been doing a great job with the adjustment. There are highs and lows but overall, this is a beautiful time.
My Precious will be 2 months old on Sunday. The 2nd month really flew by! My husband went back to work after 6 weeks off, and today marks the end of our 3rd week with him gone during the day.
I think one of the biggest surprises to me is how quickly that seems to have had an impact on their relationship. Where she spent many cozy hours in his arms before and took a bottle from him pretty readily, now she often fights the bottle feeding and cries until she’s back in my arms. That’s not to say he can’t soothe her but there have been times when it became clear to me that there was something to the idea that what she wanted was to be back in my arms.
Thank goodness he was home with us for the first month to develop a strong bond with her and many lasting memories. I am sure that as time goes on, and we get through the exclusive breastfeeding stage, she will be more and more comforted by him again.
It also worries me because I plan to return to work, part-time, in 4 weeks. So far I’ve left her with a sitter just once for almost 2 hours to go to the doctor. The idea of leaving her with others, strangers at that, for full days is scary, especially seeing as how she is acting when it’s her loving father!
This weekend she will meet her Grandpa (my dad) for the first time, and then next weekend I plan to leave her with my husband while I go ice skating before the rink closes for the season. So that should be several hours and will be a good test for us both.
It’s hard to believe but I’ve been a mommy for 5 weeks now. Our little girl turned a month old last Sunday!
I am completely loving motherhood so far. This little girl is so precious. That word comes to mind so often in thinking of her that I think it will be an appropriate blog name for her. So, here is a picture of our Precious:
We are truly lucky to have her in our family.
I was thinking about ways to describe our first month, and how we are adjusting to life as a new family. I’ve been using an app (Feed Baby Pro) to track a lot of her days, and its been helpful in identifying patterns and learning what to expect. So I decided to share our first month in numbers:
Daily hours of sleep: 13
Daily hours of feeding: 5
Daily feeds: 22
Oz of breastmilk pumped: 40
Bottles fed: 9
Oz of formula fed: 0
Diapers changed: ~300
Pounds gained: 4
And a bit about what we’ve been doing:
Times Precious and I left the apartment together: 5
Total times I left the apartment: 8
Dr visits: 2
Walks with stroller: 0 (too cold and she was too small for bunting)
Car rides: 2 (to visit her grandma and back)
Dinners out with baby in wrap: 2
Classes/support groups attended: 2 (breastfeeding and babywearing)
Times breastfed in public: 1
Extended family met: 4
Visits from friends: 3
Friends met: 5 adults and 3 children
I’d add the number of cries and exhausted nights and tired days and smiles and laughs and warm fuzzies and general cute moments, but I haven’t been able to count those!
We are so in love with our daughter. There are so many things to love!
We love her adorable face, with daddy’s head shape and eyes and my nose and lips, with skin more like daddy’s and hair a mix of the blond he had at birth and the strawberry brown that I had, with this adorable round torso and my long strong legs.
We love her smell and the sounds she makes when she is sleeping or making an effort to get to something (usually food).
We love the way she looks around quietly when she is awake, sharing at the lights or the window or the edge of the dark curtains on the white wall.
We love taking care of her, learning more every day about how to meet her needs and make her comfortable, watching her grow and change even in these early days which are all about sleep time, feeding, and just a little bit of alert time.
We love the way she smiles already, not only in her sleep but also sometimes with her eyes open, signaling she is feeling content and well.
In short, we love her and everything she brings to our very lucky family.
A Cat Nap 