One Month

Allie turned one month old!  The actual day was last Wednesday, but I haven't had time to blog much lately. I also don't have those plain onesies that most people use for monthly pictures, so we're just going with the regular sleepers with the sticker on ;)

It's been a whirlwind month.  I really don't know how four (coming up on five) weeks have gone by already.  Crazy!

This week Allie became kind of a fussy baby.  She always had that evening fussiness, but lately I feel like if she's awake it's hard to keep her happy and she's very quick to melt down and cry.  She really wants to be held ALL.THE.TIME. if she's awake, which makes getting anything done pretty tough, and she also doesn't nap that much during the day unless I take her out somewhere, which usually causes her to fall asleep in the car seat and then she'll stay asleep for a while, especially if there's ambient noise.  This actually works out good for lunches out, but there's no way I'd try it in the evening for dinners out yet.

Mornings are her happiest time and she's easiest to please then.  She kind of gets more grumpy and fussy as the day goes on.

Lately she wants to eat a lot more often and a lot more at each feeding.  For a while I went by what the pediatrician initially recommended and fed her every three hours, even waiting til it was exactly three hours til I would feed her, but now I'm more flexible because she seems to want to eat closer to every two hours, sometimes even more often than that.  She also eats a lot!  I also stopped waking her up to feed her unless it's been a really long time.  The irony is that as soon as I stopped waking her up at night to feed her, she decided she wants to eat about every three hours at night anyway, so letting her sleep til hungry didn't really change anything.

We still have her sleeping in the bassinet of the Pack N Play with white noise and either bottom half swaddled in a muslin blanket or a Halo Sleep Sack (arms must be free or she freaks out).  My husband is more than ready to get her in the crib, but I'm not ready for that yet.  She's had a couple naps in the crib that went okay, so I think we'll try and continue with that a little more and then eventually try full nights in the crib.  Right now I like having her in the room to check on and feed easily when she wakes up.  She typically goes to bed around 9-10pm, is up at about 1am, up again at 4am, sometimes maybe one other time a night.  Aside from the occasional hellish night, she's a pretty good sleeper and I can't really complain.

Allie is still wearing some newborn stuff, but also 0-3 month clothing.  She's still in newborn diapers, but I'm thinking not for much longer.  Size one diapers fit, but seem kinda big on her, so she's kind of in between the sizes.

Allie had two bottles this week and it went well.  Greg gave her the first one and I gave her one a few days later.  She didn't seem to care and liked the bottle fine but was also fine with breast feeding at the next feeding both times.

I'm happy that she can eat either way.  Right now I'm not that comfortable with the idea of breast feeding in public, so I'm happy I can bring a pumped bottle of milk for her if I want to when I have her out for a while.  Really it's not the public part of it as much as it is that we both make a huge mess when I breast feed her.  I tend to leak/spray her because of my over supply and she tends to leak milk out of her mouth when eating, so it's a miracle if both of us aren't soaked in milk when a feeding is over.  I just can't figure out how I would neatly breast feed her in public, even if I was more comfortable with the idea.  I'd have to bring outfit changes for both of us!

As I mentioned, Allie does well for lunches out (she sleeps through them), which is good for me, because I've gotten stir crazy at home and like making lunch plans a couple times a week if I can.  She has had a bunch of "play dates" with my friends and their babies, and slept through them.  I keep telling her other babies aren't going to want to hang out with her if she doesn't participate more ;)

Allie's Likes:

-Listening to voices
-pacifiers (still the Wubbanub, also the Avent ones)
-Being in clothing
-Sleeping in the car seat
-Being held
-EATING
-Movement
-White noise/hair dryer

Dislikes:
-Being in the car seat until we go somewhere
-Not being held
-Diaper changes
-Baths (still not loving those)

It worked out okay that this post was delayed, because she had her one month check-up with the Pediatrician today and we got some stats on her.  Her weight was up to about 9 lbs.  For percentiles: her head is in the 70s, length in the 50s, and weight in the 30s.  The Pediatrician said all of these were good numbers and she was happy with how much she's eating and gaining, because the progression on her graphs looked normal from where she started.  So all is well with her health.  She got her second Hepatitis B shot today, which was sad :(

As for me at one month out?  I'm good.  I feel like I'm gaining more confidence as a mother, and also starting to feel more like my pre-pregnant self again at the same time.

I've now had some days with Greg gone, when I'm totally on my own, and it's tough to not have him here.  I probably do most of the baby holding and handling when he's here anyway, but it's still nice to have him here if I need him and I definitely use him to hold her a lot for those little tasks like just washing my hands, getting dressed, that sort of thing.  I can do it myself and use baby holding devices, but it's just nice to have someone to hand her to if they are here.

The other day I came down in the morning and Allie was hysterically crying, I was in pajamas, and we had landscapers in our front yard.  Clyde needed to go out, but I could not do it with everything going on.  I waited a half hour so I could feed Allie and throw on some clothes and by that time Clyde had peed in the house, which NEVER happens.  I felt so bad, but he was justified since it had probably been like twelve hours or so, and was not able to give him attention.  I'm working on balancing it all.  It's not easy.

I thought I'd be a better napper once I had a baby, but I'm still pretty terrible at it.  For one thing, Allie doesn't nap very consistently herself, she could be out minutes or hours, it's hard to predict.  Secondly, like I said, she likes to be held all the time and therefore often wakes up when I put her down somewhere and hope she'll continue sleeping.  I guess I could try to nap while holding her, but that sort of freaks me out.  Also, often when she's asleep, it's like the one time of day I'm not tired enough to sleep.

I'm working on trying to talk to Allie more.  I don't know that I've ever been one of those people who is naturally good with kids and I am used to being in the house alone a lot, so I really have to consciously try to talk to Allie and use the "baby" voice, which doesn't come naturally to me.  I know she's at an age where she likes hearing my voice and she actually does seem to respond to it when I do it (calms down, looks at me), so I try to do it.  I'm also singing to her some at night and she seems to like that.

Physically, I feel almost normal.  I may try running soon if I actually have any time to do it.  I'm definitely good with walking long distances now and I'm about 7 lbs above my pre-pregancy weight at this point, so I feel like that's not bad at all, especially for my only form of exercise being walking.  I mainly just have a nice muffin top going and bigger boobs.

So that's where we are at about 4-5 weeks out!