Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas



Merry Christmas from us to you!  We are so grateful for this time of year where we can think about the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  We are so grateful for the blessing we have been given to have Lucy and to therefore have a small glimpse into the love that Heavenly Father must have for us to give us His Son as our Savior.  






Thursday, December 13, 2012

Three Months

 



Three Month Stats:

Head Circumference: 15 something
Length: 25 something
Weight: 13.15 or something

So no Pediatrician appointment this month, these are approximations from our visit to the GI doctor a few weeks ago.  They didn't give me a print out, thus the super accurate numbers :)

Speaking of GI doctors, he said that it was in fact a milk allergy.  Apparently there is a type of Milk Protein allergy that is not able to be tested for and that looking at her symptoms, that is what she had. So we had to put her on Nutramigen formula for seven days while her and I took a probiotic daily.  Hypoallergenic formula is both crazy expensive and super smelly; the stuff smells like cat food so I can't imagine it tastes all that great.  But after struggling to take the first bottle, she ate like a champ the rest of the time.

So for a week I had the worst of both worlds because I was cleaning bottles and pumping breast milk so I was happy when the week was up.  Then we went back to nursing and taking the probiotics daily.  She is still her happy and chunky self, so as long as that stays the same there shouldn't be a problem.  Worse case, she grows out of it by the time she is one.  We follow up with the GI doctor on Tuesday.  



Lucy's Loves:


  • Eating.  When she was on the bottles she would get a very serious look on her face and hold the bottle with one or both hands while she pounded it down.
  • Staring at the fan or light and talking/singing to them
  • Talking to her bunny mobile in the morning
  • Eating her fists/attempting to suck her thumb.  She has almost got it down!
  • Smiling and laughing at us
  • Pulling her hair, sometimes really hard
  • Yelling (not crying) when she is done laying in her crib
  • Taking short naps, yelling at us (see above), smiling when she sees us, then wanting us to hold her in her room so she can finish sleeping :)
  • Drooling and spitting up.  We go through a lot of clothes and burp clothes in our house.
  • Wiggling; I am pretty sure she never stops moving, even in her sleep. She starts at one end of the bed and by morning she is somewhere completely different.  And she is usually pretty quiet about it.  Either that or we have ghosts, but I'm betting on the wiggling.
  • Looking at everything in sight.  She insists on being held facing out if she is awake.  I have to be pretty quick when we switch sides for nursing otherwise she gets distracted.
  • Getting so strong and being able to kind of sit in the Bumbo
  • Looking at herself in the mirror
  • Getting better at putting herself to sleep
  • Sleeping all night long




Top 5 things people say about Lucy when they see her:

5. How old is she? (I respond) then they say "Wow, that's a big baby!"
4. Look at those blue eyes!
3. Wow, she is so alert!  She just looks at everything.
2. She is such a good baby!
1. I love her hair!







This little girl makes us so happy!

Friday, November 16, 2012

Two Months

Man where does the time go? Lucy is already 2 months old and we are not sure when she got so big! 
2 Days
1 Month
2 Months

Two Month Stats:

Head Circumference: 15.6 (68.0 percentile)
Length: 24.25 in (96.0 percentile)
weight: 13.6 lbs (94.7 percentile)

Highlights of this Month:
  • Sleeping longer at night, only waking up once to eat at night
  • More smiling and cooing happening!
  • Getting into more of a routine, although Sunday's and Wednesday's are harder days for keeping that routine
  • Started sleeping in her crib in her room instead of the bassinet in our room
  • Started rolling over from her belly to her back, a few times
  • Getting chunkier and longer everyday!
  • Celebrating her first Halloween
  • Cracking the 45 minute nap code (some days)
  • Still having a happy and easy going baby as she gets bigger
  • What we thought is the beginning of laughing
  • Going in to get her from her crib in the middle of the night or morning and finding she has wiggled herself sideways :)

Eating her arm during tummy time
Fat and Happy!

Sick of Mom singing about everything we do
Such a cutie!

Not so great moments:
  • The first time Mommy was gone when it was time to eat and there was not enough milk defrosted= one stressed Daddy and one sad baby
  • Taking only 45 minute naps, waking up tired and cranky.
  •  Finding blood in her stool
  • Having to hold her down for a blood test.  It took them 10 minutes to finally hit a vein and get blood out!  Both of us were crying, I just wasn't screaming like her (although I wanted to!)
  • Cutting out ALL dairy for a few days while we thought it was a milk allergy
  • Finding out it wasn't a milk allergy but may have been a virus
  • Having all of the virus tests come back negative and not knowing why this is still happening
  • Getting referred to a GI Specialist and not being able to go until December 
  • Getting the first round of immunizations
We already have to discuss modesty.  Check out that cleavage!
Working hard building those muscles

More Looking at the fan
Semi Smile

Smiles for the fan only!

The Hair...at it's craziest
Hanging out with Daddy, getting some snuggles in


Things we have learned about Lucy:
  • She loves to look around.  She wants to see everything.  Things she especially enjoys staring at are the fan (not even a moving fan, just the plain old fan), picture frames, the light in the kitchen and our giant clock on the wall.  For a while there, she wouldn't smile at us necessarily but if she could see the fan, she would start to smile. 
  • Her hair is crazy!  It sticks straight up no matter what we do.  We brush it after bath time, which sometimes gets it to stay down some in the front, but eventually, it ends up sticking straight up.  We just call her our little punk rocker!
  •  She is not a huge tummy time fan.  Probably because she spits up a lot every time we do it.  But even though she doesn't like it, she will do it for 5 minutes if we make her.  I am pretty sure she learned to roll over so she could get out of it.
  • She gets tired almost exactly 1 hour after she wakes up from any nap.  It is like clockwork.  Sometimes we can get her to stretch to an hour and 15 minutes or an hour and a half, but that is usually only first thing in the morning.  She will yawn really big when she is ready for a nap.  We usually wait for the third yawn and then go to put her down.  She is out usually within 2 minutes. 
  • She likes to have a pacifier when she is sleepy, but that is really the only time she uses it.  
  • She still likes to find her hair, but now especially she will grab a big chunk of it with her left hand and tug on it.  She does this especially when she is sleepy or while nursing.
  • She is very aware of the humidifer that we use in her room for white noise.  She will be asleep and I will open her door and pull up the blinds and she will stay asleep.  But as soon as I turn off the humidifier her eyes pop open and she looks around.
  • Richard's contribution: She likes to poop sitting up and while you rub her belly.  
  • She is still a very calm and quiet baby.  She really only cries when she is tired, hungry, or wants to be held up or out so she can see things.  Oh and when she has to get shots!
  • We love her more every single day and just when we think she can't get any cuter, so goes and outdoes herself! 

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Fall Family Fun




I feel like I missed most of fall, trying to stay inside with my newborn.  Between being sleep deprived and super focused on taking care of Lucy, I hardly noticed anything else going on around me.  I remember driving to church one Sunday and realizing that the leaves had changed colors and were falling and I had no idea when that had happened!  After seeing this, I was determined not to miss anymore of my favorite season. 

So we decided to take Lucy on our first family adventure.  At a park close to our house, they do a program called “Hayrides and Hotdogs” every Thursday in October.  You get to roast a hot dog over a fire for dinner.  They have games, hayrides and the kids are encouraged to dress up in their costumes.  We thought that we would go this route this year instead of taking a 1 month old to the local orchard that is 30 minutes from our house.  Next year we will be hitting up Tanner’s Orchard for sure.  But for a fun little family date night with our new little baby, the park was perfect.  So we dressed little miss up in her cute little bunny costume and headed over.  She slept the whole time, so I am sure she enjoyed it!  Here’s to starting new family traditions!
 

Thursday, November 1, 2012

One Month

2 Days Old- Leaving the hospital
1 month old




So don’t mind the fact that my baby will actually be 8 weeks tomorrow.  Here are some things about her at one month. 

Her stats:
Weight: 10lbs 12oz (89.7 percentile)
Length: 22.835 inches (95.9 percentile)
Head Circumference: 14.567 (49.0 percentile)

Week One: A pretty eventful week
(this part is really for me to remember everything, so it may be boring to every one else)
We brought her home from the hospital on Sunday the 9th.  She did not sleep for longer than 10-15 minute stretches those first two nights and screamed for a good portion of those nights!  Richard and I were both more than a little worried about what was in store for us.  She also was not eating very well, so that was not helping the sleeping situation.  She went to the doctor at 4 days old and had lost 9% of her body weight and was down to 7lbs 7 oz.  He wanted us to supplement with formula and come back the next day to weigh her again.  In addition to telling us this, he mentioned just about every single terrifying situation of how we could unwittingly kill our child with the preface “I don’t mean to scare you, but…”, so that was super reassuring.
  
So naturally, I having had no sleep, and having hormones surging through my body was a nervous wreck and couldn’t stop crying because I was starving my child to death.  I set up an appointment with the lactation consultant for the following day (through my sobbing on the phone).  After hanging up with the lactation consultant, I tried nursing her again.  I was trying not to cry through it when I heard an unfamiliar sound; she was swallowing.  She had finally figured it out.  Apparently it just took giving her a bottle for her to figure out that if she sucked, she would get food.

I found that as the day progressed and it got closer to night, the knot in my stomach got bigger and bigger.  Richard was going back to work the next day, so he was sleeping in the basement that night.  I was going to be on my own with her and I was terrified at the prospect of another sleepless night.  But with a little food in her stomach, she managed to sleep!  And she slept for about 3 hours before I had to wake her up to eat.  I felt like a new person the next day because I had actually gotten a few hours of sleep.  She was weighed again, and was up to 7.11lbs; 4 ounces in a day!  We went to the lactation consultant and she latched on, ate, and showed no signs of the bumbling mess that we were just 24 hours earlier.  So of course I looked like an idiot, but oh well, she was eating now. 

She was now eating and sleeping pretty well for a newborn. She was weighed again on Friday and was up to 8.1 lbs.  But apparently she had developed thrush at some point that week, and luckily my friend managed to see it and explain what it was to me so that I could show the doctor.  So we got to swab her mouth with Nystatin 4 times a day for 10 days.
Lucy with Grandpa A
Week 2:
Richard’s parents made the long drive to us so that we could bless her on Sunday, at just a week old.   Then by Tuesday, all of the parents were gone, Richard was at work, and it was just me and her.  I was glad to be able to figure out some of the parenting thing without everyone watching me, but I was also nervous at the prospect of actually taking care of her with no one else watching me.  Let's be honest, I was just making everything up as I went.  But we survived and slowly started to figure each other out.  At the doctor, she still had thrush so we continued with another 10 day cycle of medicine. She weighed 9.1 lbs.
After the first bath

Week 3:
We started to get somewhat of a schedule this week.  We dealt with the first bout of congestion.  She went back to the doctor for her “2 week"  checkup and was up to 9.11 lbs.  She had her 3 week growth spurt and the first round of baby acne. 
We like to play with her hair after bath time

Week 4:
The first week since she was born that we didn’t go to the pediatrician at all!  She started sleeping longer stretches at night and I felt like I didn’t need to set an alarm to wake her up to eat by this point seeming that she was gaining weight well.  Her weigh in was 10.12lbs (that's right, she gained over a pound in 10 days!)
Preaching to those in her dreams


        Things we have learned about Lucy so far







  • She likes to suck on anything, but especially her hands and a pacifier.  She has tried repeatedly to suck her thumb ever since she was born.
  • She has figured out that she has hair and that she can grab it.  She likes to grab it while she is asleep, if she is not swaddled.
  • She loves to wiggle.   That is why we have to swaddle her to sleep at night and during naps. Otherwise she punches herself in the face…a lot.
  • She is very alert, especially for a newborn.  She will watch everything.
  • She pees, either on us, her old diaper, or her new diaper nearly every time we change her.  Something about that air hitting her reminds her she still has some left in her bladder.  Most of the time it just pools, but sometimes there is enough force behind it that it can actually shoot up (mind you, not as high as a boy, but still).
  • She is a really easy going baby and does not cry very often.  We think she is the best baby ever made!
  • She gets cuter every single day. It's a fact.


Sunday, October 28, 2012

This too shall pass

In my bedroom, I have this canvas with these words on them: This too Shall Pass.  I know a lot of people use this in a way to say that trials will be overcome but also, less often, it can be used to mean that moments or precious experiences will not last forever.  I have used it both ways for sure.  That is why at the bottom of the canvas I made sure I had the words: be present.  Making sure that you enjoy life today instead of waiting for something else to come along.  Be happy now.
I thought about it as we struggled to have children.  I thought about it when Richard and I went on spontaneous trips to get ice cream.  I thought about it as I laid down for a Sunday nap.  I thought about it as I sat in my quiet house, reading a book or making a craft or using my time however I wanted to.
I thought about it as I sat in the waiting room of the Doctor’s office, waiting to have an ultrasound where I would hear the first heartbeat, even though it was my fourth pregnancy.   I thought about it as I felt a little baby wiggling inside my belly. I thought about it as I massaged the big knots that formed from where I had my progesterone injections every week.  I thought about it as I slept in on Saturday morning, with Richard next to me, just a week before my due date.  
I thought about it as I was having strong contractions for three days before my water finally broke.  I looked at that canvas as I saw my baby’s umbilical cord fall off and I wanted to start crying because it meant that she was getting bigger already.  I look at it in the middle of the night, when I am trying to keep Lucy, and myself, awake as she nurses.  And as I rock her back to sleep and she stares up at me before drifting off to sleep, and I sing to her about Heavenly Father answering prayers.  Because He does, and I want to make sure she knows that she is one of those answers.