our sweet pea at 6 weeks

 

Saturday marked 6 quick first weeks in the life of Emily (and me as a new mama).  In spite of everyone’s warnings and advice, those weeks have been packed with trips and visits and activities - especially the first week while Craig was still here - and it’s all left me a little exhausted!

Luckily Em has started sleeping better and although she is a very alert little girl and wants to hang out with mom most of the day, when she naps she goes down for long, predictable sleeps (most of the time).  Gas and tummy troubles have still been an issue for her, but we’ve come up with some creative solutions to help her with the pain as she still refuses any gripe water or gas drops.  One of the best tricks for her is just to lie her down on her change pad; maybe it’s the firmness or the action of her pants and diapers coming off, but she’s a tootin’ machine on there!  Here are her ‘gas legs’ at work, making it hard for mommy to change her bum:

She is so precious and I can definitely see little glimpses of her personality starting to show.  I’m not sure if it’s because I dress her in too much green, or maybe she looks like a boy (I don’t think so- I think she has really delicate girlie features!), but people always ask in stores if she’s a boy, so I’ve taken to making sure there’s always something distinctly pink on her or with her in the car seat.  I think people are just remarkably unobservant though.

1 week

 

6 weeks

As of last Thursday (technically 5wks, 5d) Emily weighed in at 9lbs 9oz and was 23 inches long.  Her head when she was born was 35.5cm in diameter, and its now measuring 39cm.  The first four weeks she was averaging almost 2oz a day in weight gain, but since that time it’s slowed down to just over an oz a day.  Still a great gainer!  As I mentioned, over the past week or so we’ve gotten a better handle on ways to help calm her gas, so I think she’s spending less time wanting to comfort suck to cope with the pain and that’s caused her to start gaining weight a little slower.  And is causing a lot of leakage for me as my body adjusts again.

I’ve been using the weight gain calculator on the www.kellymom.com website, a and it says that at up until 17 weeks, they should be gaining an average of 5-7oz per week and about an inch per month, and she is by far surpassing both of those!Here’s what it spit out at me:

Age in weeks       Weight           Oz gained per week
.7                                 6lbs 7oz        
1.4                               7lbs                   12.9
3.7                              8lbs 8oz           10.4
5.7                              9lbs 9oz           8.5

Bath time is an almost nightly occurrence around here as we try and establish a good bed time routine.  Emily LOVES taking baths.  If she is having a lot of gas or is just not wanting to go down to sleep, I can always trust a nice warm bath to make her sleepy.

One last update from the past few weeks has been the beautiful little smiles that have been fluttering across her face.  She is ticklish along her rib cage like her Daddy and at the lightest touches on her lips and nose.

 

One last great development for Emily is the first inklings that she is starting to be able to self soothe.  On a couple of occasions she has fallen asleep without needing to be rocked or held, including falling asleep in her swing.  I had to leave the vacuum running in the room she was in to induce the swing sleep, but it was still a great step!  Hopefully she’ll soon begin going down for naps and sleep without much fuss.

With this being the six week mark, it also marked an important appointment for myself as well.  The midwife checked me out and the stitches from my tear have completely healed and I got the all clear to begin exercising.  Now I just need to find the motivation and energy!  With every advance Em makes in her sleep habits, I get a little more time each day that I can devote to ‘me time’ beyond the personal hygiene and household tasks that are pretty top of the list.  Hopefully I’ll learn to make some of that ‘me time’ more sleep time as I’ve been finding myself with some insomnia some nights after she’s gone to bed.  Probably because that’s when the hubby and I MIGHT have the chance to do some emailing back and forth while he’s in the office in the morning over there.

What an amazing first six weeks of her life.  Motherhood is everything I dreamt it would be and so much more (both good and bad) and I’m excited to see what the next 6 weeks will bring.