The past month had been the most amazing and exhausting month of my life, and I can imagine it has been much the same for her – she’s pretty new to the earth!
I’m still amazed by how much she changes and learns each day, and am trying to treasure each moment I have with her at this tiny age, even though I look forward to the day she can sleep through the night! Never before has anything been so worth being such a home body or going without so much sleep. She is such a joy to have in our lives!
I thought I would give you some updates on her development and achievements.
Sleep:
I’ve been reading up on infant wake time and the Secrets of the Baby Whisperer book says she should be awake somewhere between 50 to 75 minutes between naps, including feeding and diaper changes and that it’s good to follow an Eat, Activity, Sleep, You(meaning mommy time) routine, which, if she’s on a 3 hour cycle, would give me around an hour and a half each nap to get stuff done. Does that happen? No. Most of the time she averages just over 2 hours between feedings, however this doesn’t mean she is getting anywhere near there in sleep! She seems to be so awake a lot of the time, and I struggle to get her down to sleep as she just wants to cuddle and watch the world. And because she’s already awake and near mama, anytime she starts getting an inkling of hunger, she’ll want to eat again, even if it hasn’t been 2-3 hours. Slowly this is changing though, and I’m working to pay closer attention to her sleep cues and try doing some sleep training to help her learn to self soothe and put herself to sleep for nap time so that I can put her down after eating and activity time and have her either drift off to sleep or watch the sunlight dance on the ceiling (a favourite activity) if that’s what she’d like to do.
Growth:
Emily was 6lbs 11oz when she was born, and at our appointment on Thursday (3.5 weeks) she was up to 8lbs 8oz. What a champ! The midwives think she might be up to 10lbs by our final appointment with then (next Thursday), and I can’t even imagine it. I think being with her each day I don’t see the growth as much as other people, although I definitely see the changes in how her diapers and clothing fit! We’re transitioning her to size 1 (Pampers) diapers as the newborn diapers are getting pretty tight and leaky, particularly around her cute chubby thighs. They are supposed to go up to 10 lbs, and we’ve got 20 or 30 left of them, so I may use them when I’m at home and changing her frequently. The size 1 diapers look so huge on her and give her big diaper butt, but it’s nice not having to worry that they’ll leak pee out the top when she’s lying down!
They haven’t measured her length recently, so I’ll have to pull out the tape measure for her next weekly photo.
Play Time:
We’re still learning on this one. She enjoys her tummy time and she’ll stare at lights and her stuffed animals (and the picture frames on the wall behind the couch) and stay entertained for short periods of time, but she really likes interacting with people more. I’m hoping sometime soon she’ll start enjoying her swing more for entertainment, so I can put her in there while I’m cooking dinner or folding laundry, especially as her naps start decreasing and wakefulness increases. She loves staring at herself in the mirror that is attached to the headrest behind her car seat – not a surprise, her mama loves to spend hours staring at her beautiful little face too!
New Skills and Achievements:
Our girl has got great neck control! In her first week of life she was able to lift and turn her head from one side to the other during tummy time with us. And now when you’ve got her up to your shoulder and she’s awake, she can’t stand to have her head resting against you – she needs to have it up and (shakily still) looking around at everything.
She’s also starting to smile at mama! I’ll have to try and capture it sometime with the camera. I’m learning that it is really difficult to get all the photos you want of your kids when there’s just one of you. I don’t think there’s been a photo of me and Emily together since her first week! We might have to go back to the mirror photos that were helpful when I was pregnant.
Emily’s 1st Month Album
1 comment:
Wow! A month already - that is so hard to believe.
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