Lily is 2 months old!

2 month update

OH hi. I'm 2 months old!

1 month

1 Week

Stats:
Weight: 11 pounds 9 ounces, 75th percentile
Height: 21 1/2 inches 51st percentile

At one month she was 8 pounds 11 ounces and 20 1/2 inches.

Sleep: 

We are down to 1 to 2 night wakings! She falls asleep for the night around 7:30-8PM and will wake up between 12-2 and again around 4-5, and goes back to sleep until 7:30 AM. Right after she hit the 2 month mark she has had 2 nights where she only woke up once! 

Is has been difficult to get her to nap longer than 30 minutes at a time for a while, but this seems to be changing. She takes 2 30 minute naps in the morning, a longer afternoon nap (anywhere from 1 to 2 hours) and another short cat nap around 4 PM. 

I cut coffee out of my diet completely and it seems to be helping her naps. Bye for now coffee. I miss you dearly. :*(



Feeding:  We are still doing a combination of breast feeding and formula feeding. It is working for all of us. I had a period where I almost went back to exclusive breast feeding, then I had a painful nipple relapse, so we are back to doing both. I don't know how long we will keep this up. Taking it one month at a time!

Clothing and diaper size:

She is still in the 0 to 3 month clothes. I think she will be ready for the next size at 3 months. 

We are on the size one diapers. She will probably be ready to switch to the bigger size at 3 months as well. 

Activity: She smiles sometimes and is starting to coo. She will stare at your face at mimic your mouth movements. As many have heard, she rolled over from tummy to back at 5 1/2 weeks! I have a video and everything. She doesn't consistently do it, but she has done it several times since. She is one strong girl! She likes to lay on her activity mat and stare at the brightly colored toys. She has started to feel things instead of keeping her hands in little fists all the time. She especially likes touching skin.


Favorites: sleeping in the rock n play still, being bounced, sitting upright on laps and staring at the computer screen (probably not the best, but she is our baby, after all) her panda toy ( thanks Aunt Alison and Uncle Sean!), drinking all the milks, farting on everyone

8 weeks

Dislikes: having her nosed cleaned out, face wiped, the process of getting swaddled (but still likes being swaddled), tummy time

Lily has been super, super congested for like 2 weeks now. I use saline nose drops and the nosefrida to suck out all the baby snot. Nosefrida is gross, but effective, and I guarantee you won't care at all if it means you don't have to hear your baby cough and struggle with breathing. Poor thing :( I highly recommend using it!

We also give Lily some infant probiotic every day to help keep her regular and happy. Though they say it is OK for baby not to poop for several days at a time, it makes Lily uncomfortable but this helps :) 

We had a great time at Aunt Alison's birthday party. Happy Birthday!

 

What great dads!

One month old!

Sorry this is a little late..

Wow! Already one month old!

Stats:

She was born at 7 pounds 11 ounces but ended up dropping to 7 lbs 1 ounce by 6 days old. Somewhere around 19 1/2 to 20 inches long.

At one month she is 8 pounds 11 ounces and 20 1/2 inches.
She 


Sleep: 

On an average night she sleeps for about 2 1/2 hours and eats for about 30 minutes. She usually goes right back to sleep, but can be difficult to put down for the initial night time "nap". A typical night will be like this..

8-9PM- Feeding and coercing into sleep.
12AM-12:40- Feeding
Around 2 or 3AM- Feeding
Around 5 or 6AM- Feeding

After this, for the rest of the day, she generally sleeps for up to an hour and 1/2

Feeding: She generally eats about 3 ounces every 3 hours. We are doing a combination of breast feeding, pumped bottle feeding and supplementing with formula. At first I wanted to go hard core with just breastfeeding, but after weeks of cracked and bleeding nipples etc, I gave myself a break and decided supplementation is fine. I am much happier now, and she still gets mostly breast milk each day. She is fine going back and forth with bottle and boob. 


Clothing and diaper size:

Right around the 1 month mark (a little after) she started to outgrow her newborn clothes! We are officially in the 0-3 months. We have a lot more fun clothes for this age, so I am enjoying it :)

She is still in newborn diapers, as they go up to 10 pounds.

Activity: She has started making eye contact and being awake for longer stretches where she just looks around, amazed and confused by everything. This doesn't last long, but is more frequent than before.

Favorites: sleeping in the rock n play, being walked, being bounced, being held, music, eating, of course, eating her hands, spitting up on mommy and daddy, and waiting to poop until after a diaper change. Oh, and to going from total rage screaming to completely passed out in literally a second. Last time she did this, it was so funny I had to keep myself from laughing so as not to wake her with my shaking, laughing body.

Dislikes: changing clothes, having your umbilical cord cleaned, sponge baths, being burped when you'd rather be eating, hiccups

Her umbilical cord came off at 3 and 1/2 weeks! By the pediatrician's recommendation we cleaned it with alcohol a couple times a day and it still took weeks.. But we are happy it is off because we were finally able to give her real baths!

A lot of new things at the 1 month mark!

We transitioned her from the rock n play in sleeping in our room to her crib at night. For the most part she does pretty well, but I think she still prefers the rock n play. The rock n play is not really a recommended way for babies to sleep at night, but you do what you need to do to sleep :P

Lily broke out in serious baby acne, and it is getting a bit better but still there. It has even spread to her chest :( Kyle and I both had baby acne, so we know where she gets it!

Fun firsts..


First bath:

We alternate taking baths with her, while the other washes her. It is a great bonding experience, and she seems very content!

First walk:

We haven't gone on as many walks as I would like as it always seems to be WAY too windy every time I have the energy. But she does fine on walks, as well as car rides. Hopefully we will increase our walks soon.


First Dinner Party!

What a fancy strawberry. She had a great time with Kaitlyn and Natalie! 

Newborn photo shoot (2 weeks):

She was totally awake the entire time!

Lily enjoys spending time with her family, and she is lucky to get to spend a lot of time with everyone!
Side note: I am enjoying putting her in silly, ridiculous things :) So cute! Sorry Lily ;)

Lily's birth story: Part 2

Lily's birth story: Part 2

Once lily was born she immediately went to the warming bed, where she spent about 20 minutes. In a normal situation, they place baby directly onto the mothers chest for skin to skin bonding called "the golden hour". Unfortunately due to complications we never got our bonding time.

In NICU right after birth

Firstly, Lily swallowed a lot of meconium and amniotic fluid at birth, which was causing some breathing issues.

During this time they stitched up my 2nd degree tear and gave me several shots to stop my slight hemorrhaging. I passed the placenta fairly quickly, and they proceeded the uncomfortable massaging of my belly to help pass some blood clots.  After some time passed they let me hold Lily for about a minute before taking her to the NICU, which Kyle was allowed to follow her to. I was in kind of a daze for all of this and it took some time to process everything.


Kyle comes back and tells me that she needs to be on oxygen for the time being and that someone from the NICU will be coming to speak with us soon.

The nurse practitioner comes and says they heard a heart murmur, and she requires further tests to make sure she doesn't have a serious heart complication. She is also something called CUMS positive, which is where my  O positive blood was attacking her B negative blood. This means that when my blood cells die in her body, they can cause biliruben, which can cause jaundice. For about 1 agonizing hour we have to wait to find out if Lily has a serious problem or not.

She comes back and tells us it is nothing serious, though it is something strange. Her heart is perfectly healthy, but is on the right side instead and the left. This is great and weird news. So one thing down, 2 others to go. It takes her half a day and she is able to breath without any support. At this point she is still hooked up to several wires and machines, including a feeding tube that she continually pulls out, and 2 separate sets of UV lights. She is still being monitored, so I am not able to attempt breast feeding yet, though we get to hold her now that her oxygen levels are OK.

First bonding time with baby

I have a lactation consultant come and she brings a medical grade double pump so i can start trying to get my supply to come in. Late that night they inform us that I can start attempting breast feeding. We have mixed results, and I am only making colostrum at this point. Normally this would be fine, but they need to pump her with extra fluids to help the jaundice, so my colostrum is not enough on its own. We have a fabulous NICU nurse, Kelly, who is very helpful and supportive.  From about 10 PM on we wake up every 3 hours, walk to the NICU so I can attempt to breastfeed, then pump for 15 minutes after that. The next day, Sunday, they tell me that as soon as I can feed Lily enough to meet the jaundice needs she will be able to come to our room. I have a rather unhelpful daytime NICU nurse who basically says I can't breastfeed with my "flat nipples" and need to use a nipple shield,  something Lily is not really able to nurse with as we discovered the night before. Finally we get to meet with the NICU lactation consultant who is quickly able to get lily latched like a pro without nipple shields or any other devices. Take that, flat nipple nurse!


 We soon discover that the nurses have no decision making power, and often don't know the answers to our questions on how and when baby gets out. This would be fine if they admitted this. Instead they offer vague answers that lean on the cautious and pessimistic side. The NICU doctor is the only one who makes decisions, and they are only there once a day to do rounds and decide things. If we want to talk to them directly we often have to get lucky enough to stop by the NICU when they are there. Pretty frustrating stuff. 

Another day and night go by with baby in NICU. The next day Lily is finally released to stay in our room with us, but we are not able to leave because they still want to monitor her feeding and bilirubin levels.

First outfit, a couple hours before she is released to our room

Finally in the room with us, yay!

 We agree to supplement with bottles until my milk is at a satisfactory level for the doctors. Finally the next morning they come to check baby's bilirubin levels at 4 AM, but we have to wait until 11 AM to get the results. The nurse says it is very slightly higher, and according to her, this could make us have to stay longer. We know at this point to not take the nurses opinions too seriously. She also chastises us for over feeding baby, though they had been pushing us to provide her enough food... Um what?

The doctor finally gets to us at about 1 PM. She says that Lily's jaundice is fine, but we will have to stay because they are not sure we can feed her enough, and they want to monitor her another day. Thanks to no sleep, hormones, and being genuinely upset, I burst into tears. The doctor says "oh you seem upset". Yes! We are upset! We show her the chart that we had been feeding her plenty, willing to supplement if need be, and that we had just been reprimanded for overfeeding, not underfeeding! Well doctor doesn't want us to be be unhappy, and says we can go home.

A 3 hour check out process later, we are in the car with our baby girl. We checked into the hospital at 3 pm Friday, December 27th and checked out 4 pm Tuesday Dec. 31st. 

Going home!

So a four day hospital stay in all. Might sound short, but it felt like an eternity! We know a lot of babies stay in NICU longer than lily did, but we were still unprepared for the heartbreak and exhaustion of the situation. It was one of the most physically and emotionally difficult experiences of both of our lives, and baby was kept longer than she needed to be. In the end she never actually had jaundice, just the possibility of it. We had several great nurses and several not so great nurses, and dealt with a lot of hospital red tape. We had a fabulous new years eve with our baby at home, and at the end of the day we have a healthy, thriving baby girl. And that's all that matters :).

Soon to Come: Lily's 1 month update!

Lily's Birth Story: Part 1

Lily's birth story: Part one

Lily was born on December 28th at 6:17 AM. She was 7 pounds 11 ounces and 20.5 inches long.
Her due date was January 2nd, so she was born at 39 weeks and 1 day.

The morning of December 27th I had my weekly doctor visit to see how pregnancy was coming along. I had not changed since the week before, and was 2 cm dilated and 75% effaced.  Not too exciting.

Afterwards I went to the grocery store and got home about 1:30. I brought groceries inside, and before putting anything away had to pee like most pregnant women before I could finish anything else. Annnnd that is when my water broke. I felt a tiny pop and gush, but wasn't sure if I was just still peeing, as peeing gets pretty weird near the end of pregnancy. After some attempts at moving and realizing that the water was still coming out in little gushes, I determined my water had indeed broke. I called Kyle who was at work and he came straight home.

We headed to the hospital and arrived at about 3:00. I wasn't sure if I was having contractions because my cramps were so mild.  Triage determined my water had broke and I was 3 cm dilated, and we got set up in our labor/delivery room soon after. About 30 minutes into Beauty and the Beast and around my contractions really picked up.  I was checked and was at 4 cm.  By 6 PM my contractions were already 2 min. apart and, to me, excruciating. My plan had been to do it without an epidural, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Each contraction made me feel like I was going to vomit, which did happen with one of the contractions, and I was having difficulty breathing through contractions and was unwilling to move, let alone try different laboring positions. Kyle and I discussed it and decided I might be having a very fast labor. Maybe it was already getting close? We asked to check dilation at 6:30 and I was 4 and 1/2 dilated. Only 1/2 dilated after 2 hours of hard labor and close contractions. I looked at Kyle and said that I did not want to go through this for possibly 10+ hours more.

Give me that epidural! After about another hour the epidural was in and oh the relief! We decided to get some rest. After about 2 hours of sleep, and around 10 I started to feel the contractions again and they got worse and worse, almost to the point they were without the epidural. The nurse said that maybe i was almost ready to push and that is why the pain was more intense. They checked me and I was an 8 and 1/2. The anesthesiologist put something into my IV to help, but it did nothing. They asked if I wanted the epidural redone, as it might slow down labor at this point, or if I wanted to stick it out and push soon. I said that at this point I was so exhausted and in pain that I wouldn't have the energy to push. Give me the epidural...again.  Turns out the epidural was   4 cm out of place. After being redone, pain went away again and we were able to sleep from about 11:30 to 3AM.

I was checked again and was 9 and 1/2, but was starting a low fever that was slowly climbing. I was put on Tylenol and antibiotics and my fever went down. Soon after they decided that because of the fever that it was time to start pushing. At first i was not able to feel much of anything, and was not effective at pushing, but over time the medicine faded and i began to feel what i was doing. Pushing took 2 hours. At this point I could mostly feel what was happening.  I would describe pushing as hard work for sure, but it wasn't painful until the last 10 or so minutes, the actual delivery part. Wow, that hurts! But finally Lily was born.  The cord was wrapped around her neck once, which the doctor handled so quickly before she was fully out that Kyle hardly realized what happened. What a great doctor :)

All in all labor and delivery went great and we feel really good about our experience. The hard part that we didn't anticipate was right after lily was born, NICU time, and our stay in the hospital. I will post all of this soon in Lily's birth story, part 2.