DD Kimball Road: The First Month

I am sorry that this post comes two weeks late. We went on a little trip and then when I went to finish the post, blogger completely messed up and all my work was deleted!

I cannot believe that our little girl has been in our lives for a month! It is true what they say about not blinking because they truly grow right before your eyes at warp speed! Here's what been going on for the first month!

Our first week home was relatively easy, but just figuring out her, her needs and our new roles as parents. We came home sleep deprived (who doesn't) and had an interesting first night. D had gone to rest and my M.I.L. was holding Emma. I asked him to set an alarm at midnight just in case I fell asleep so that I could feed her. At 12:15 I woke up in the chair and Emma was asleep with my M.I.L. We said goodnight to her and I went in the room. I asked D to wake up the baby while I went and got some water. He looked at me and said "wake who?" I told him the baby and he replied "what baby?" Pure exhaustion mixed with low blood sugar doesn't work for my hubby. My hormones caused me to break into tears and he woke up and realized what he was saying. Later that same night.....around 4am I finished feeding her and asked D to change her diaper, to which he replied "I just did!" Again half asleep and not realizing that it had been over two hours. Needless to say our first night home was very interesting and comical now. He felt really bad and now when he's a little loopy I tell him to test! We had our first Dr's appointment with an all clear for jaundice, yay!, but we lost 9% of weight from our birth weight. My milk came in the next day and we were able to go back up half of what was lost. Whew! We celebrated Emma's first holiday and first bath all at once on Independence Day. We had an epic mommy and daddy fail. We gave her the bath on the kitchen counter, directly under an a/c vent! Mistake one. Then in the bedroom we dried her off and put lotion on her under a full blast ceiling fan! Mistake two. Needless to say our little girl was cold and really upset! We learned our lesson quickly! But after that she was content and happy on the boob. She's been an alert baby since day one with awesome head control!

Week two was a continuation of the learning curve for mommy, daddy and baby. Figuring out her cues and learning all about breastfeeding. We went up to visit my parents and Papa got to officially meet her! It was a relaxing weekend but we started to have some interesting stools which we cause for some concern and a lot of googling, more on that later. We just soaked her in and enjoyed every minute of her.

Week three. After our check up, the doctor determined that miss Emma may have a dairy intolerance. I was asked to remove all dairy from my diet, which is so hard because milk protein is in everything! After a couple of days things were back to normal, until I made the epic error of eating a chocolate cookie. Back to having the bad poo's. Sigh. Weight gain was not where I would have liked to see it, so we kicked into feeding and eating focus all week. She also had a growth spurt during this week so all she wanted to do was eat anyways. I don't think I showered until someone got home everyday this week. Man is it difficult to try and get a newborn on a schedule. We worked on tummy time, our neck control and started to really love to look at lights. She also started to smile in recognition of things.

Week four was more of the same things. I went shopping and looked through everything in our house to determine what I can and cannot eat. Sandwich bread was the big shocker there, as was salami. We went to the doctor's again and it was determined that she does have a dairy intolerance. She can outgrow it, but it could take anywhere from 4 months to a year to do so. We haven antacid that we give her if her tummy seems upset, but really all that needs to be done is for me to watch my diet. It's pretty strict and difficult, but its not something that I cant do. She is getting so big, and as you can see is starting to hold up her head really well! Our hair also started to fall out! *Tears!* But I know its only temporary and it will grow back.

Monthly Stats:
Weight: 7 lbs 12 oz (14%)

Height: 21 in (per hospital measurement 77%)

Head: 14.25 in (56%)

Eat: We are exclusively breastfeeding and we are doing it on demand. I was told to limit her to 20 minutes on each side, but I didn't feel that was working well for her so I decided to let her go until she is done on one side and offer the other. We had some latching issues at the beginning that caused me some nipple rawness, but I got a nipple shield and it helped to heal her up. Now we don't have any problems and she latches like a champ! I have a breast pump, but I haven't started to use it yet. We feed every two to three hours during the day. Overnight we get one lump that lasts from three to four hours.

Sleep: We haven't set a schedule yet, although I need to start. I think that sleeping in various swings, or in peoples arms either makes her not get a deep sleep, or she is a night owl because without fail every night at 11PM she is wide awake and wanting to look at the lights. Our first couple of weeks was really good, but we seem to be in this cycle. Hopefully I can get her on a nap schedule and try and get those overnight spans to be a little longer. We get a good span from 1AM to about 4AM. We found out quickly that rocking her in the recliner and white noise from either our box fan or the bathroom fan helps to put her to sleep. We also swaddler her to help keep her sleep. We discovered that she hates to have her arms swaddled. I woke up one morning to discover her arm out through the bottom of the swaddle and pushed the blanket up over her face. Thank goodness it was a thin muslin blanket, but we don't swaddle her arms anymore!

Diapers: We are loving on the Huggies little snugglers. We are still using diapers from my baby shower and have only had to buy one package because we didn't bring enough to my parents house....oopsies. We like the snugglers because they do the job without adding a lot of bulk and have only had one "accident" thusfar and it was minimal. We also learned quickly to turn off our ceiling fan while changing her or else we will have more laundry to do. We downloaded the Sprout app for recording input and output, which is also a great way to keep track of how many diapers we have gone through.....a whopping 358 in 6 weeks!

Milestones:
Bringing her home: July 2nd (1 day old)

First Bath: July 4th (3 days old)

First holiday: Independence Day (3 days old)

Held up head: July 11th (1 week old)

Lost belly button: (8 days old)

First Walk: (2 weeks old)

First Smile: (3 weeks old)

Here are some photos from her first month!