Wednesday, April 30, 2014

8 Weeks

The theme of this week was getting out of the house: we took Audra in for a visit to my work, then to my final postpartum visit with the midwives, I took her to Mommy & Me yoga, and then we ate out and went shopping several times.

Audra did very well at my work - she was awake and calm for the first 45 minutes or so while everyone gathered 'round to ooh and aah at her, and then slept in Ryan's arms while I met with my manager to confirm my schedule over the next couple of weeks as I return to work. We then had to head straight over to the birth center for my last appointment with the midwives. By their scale, Audra is now up to 14lbs even :) They checked us over and said she looked great and I looked great, and just like that, our time under their care is now over. I'm taking it harder this time, and I'm not sure if it's because this is our last baby or because I bonded so closely with my midwives and the birth center experience as a whole (given that I was also there on a weekly basis for pre-natal yoga, and I met our doula through the center), but I'm pretty sad that I'll be saying good-bye to all the wonderful people there soon enough.

In the meantime, I'm trying to go to Mommy & Me yoga for the next few weeks until I return to work. My pre-natal instructor is doing that class too, so it was so good to see her again, as well as some of the other mamas that I got to know during the pre-natal classes, and my old Bradley instructor from my pregnancy with Josie :) So we went to one class so far, and Audra basically slept through the whole thing except for the last 15 minutes or so, waking up in time for a diaper change, nursing, and then final relaxation pose :) Unfortunately, although she did awesome in the car on the way there, she cried really hard most of the drive back home :(

The sleep update for this week is that Audra actually slept on her own for a bit most mornings after I got up. She is napping slightly better now, insofar as she is actually napping again. However, except for a couple of exceptionally sleepy days, she still is needing more assistance to get asleep and stay asleep than she did before the last couple of weeks. So pretty much every nap was either on me or in the carrier, and we even planned some leisurely trips to Wal-mart and Lowes so we could get some shopping done while she napped in the carrier.  At least she seems to be doing better with noise during her naps, and so she was able to tolerate sleeping on me while I was in the living room with Josie running around, which is preferable to me being secluded in a bedroom for most of the weekend.
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After reminiscing about some of our more difficult nights with Josie and feeling lucky that we hadn't had any of the same with Audra since her first couple of nights... she had a difficult night getting to sleep, where it took about four hours before she finally fell asleep around 1:30am :-\ On the other end of the spectrum, though, Audra also had her longest stretch of sleep yet this week, going just over 7 hours before waking me up to nurse. Of course, I wasn't able to enjoy this beautiful, uninterrupted stretch of sleep, since I woke up once to pump, twice because of a painful crick in my neck, once because of a tickle in my throat (and I managed to spill water all over my pillow when I tried to take a sip of water to relieve it), and once because of a bad dream. Sigh.

Audra laughed again in her sleep, but no awake laughing quite yet. She is also mostly out of her 0-3 month clothes already, the overachiever ;) She seems to be more aware of things now, and will zero in on me when I walk past her or say her name. She has also been much more fussy while nursing lately, so I'm thinking it may be a side-effect of her doing better with taking a bottle and/or that she's working on some developmental stuff. She's supposed to be starting to recognize patterns now, which includes physical patterns like kicking and flailing... and given the amount of kicking she did last night, it's a definite possibility that she's working on that now.
[Some kicking]

Miscellaneous cuteness:
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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

7 Weeks

This week was pretty good, despite the continuation of Audra's disinterest in sleeping ;) I'm also feeling almost entirely back to normal emotionally and physically, which I've realized in part since I'm talking/obsessing about Audra's sleep less (yes, despite written evidence to the contrary!).

It seems pretty clear to us that Audra is working on stuff developmentally, given the difficulty she's having napping, how alert she is during the day now, and how she seems to have lost her single-minded focus to nurse at every given moment. In fact, she's actually gone over two hours now during the day before she's needed to nurse again! :) At night, she's also spaced out the feedings more, still going about 5 hours before waking up the first time, but now going a bit longer before waking up the next time - sometimes only an hour still, but sometimes 3+. And she's also more content being awake after waking from her naps without eating first, rather than only directly after nursing. But while she is most likely to take a nap in the mornings, the rest of the day is usually spent wearing her if we have any hope of her napping... and even then, a lot of the time now she looks like this instead of asleep:
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After a couple of false starts (apparently I can sleep through my alarm quite well, just not Ryan's), I finally started pumping overnight. This is in part because I finally sat down to figure out how much more paid time off I have, and the answer was... not much. Like, a lot less than I thought, to the point that we couldn't justify me taking it unpaid as we originally planned. So after a flurry of emails with my work over the past week, the new plan is for me to start working a few hours a week starting now and going until my PTO runs out, going in the hole for another 20 hours, and then doing a couple of half days before returning full-time on May 14. Audra will be 10 weeks old then, so it's still a couple of weeks fewer than I had planned to take off, but at least it's better than having to go back over a month early, which is what it would have been without this workaround (as it turns out, company policy wouldn't let me use all of my PTO/go in the hole unless I came back from leave first). So given that I'll be heading back to work sooner than planned, I needed to get pumping so we could start Audra on bottles and so I'd have something to send to daycare with her on the first day. Ryan gave her her first bottle last week, and she wasn't really a fan, so we'll also need to give her more opportunities to practice over the next few weeks.
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Since Audra will be going to the same in-home daycare that Josie went to, we know more what to expect and what to try to prepare her for. We're trying to make the transition as easy on her as we can, so we realized we needed to work with her on bottles and getting her used to a swing or bouncy seat more (also since that's likely what she'll be put to sleep in at first at daycare), and that's why we're doing the two half days to start to see if that helps too. We also went to visit daycare this week, which made me feel even better about Audra starting daycare (and me going back to work). Audra charmed everyone by being super good for the couple of hours we were there, crying just when she woke from her nap and pooped, with lots of smiles and cooing aside from that.

And that's pretty much the story with Audra: she's not one for napping, but she's been a relatively easy and content baby. She mainly just cries if she needs to poop or if she's overtired, and she's usually quite happy being awake for far longer than she probably should be as long as someone is holding her. She can usually go at least 20 minutes in the swing or on her playmat before she starts fussing, and she's quick to sweetly nestle her head under my chin when I rescue her from said swing or playmat :) I'm hopeful she'll be laughing soon too, since she laughed in her sleep a couple of days ago :) And I'm also hopeful that we've stumbled upon a way to make car rides more tolerable - she has been crying less frequently in the car lately, but when she does get going, it's at levels that are borderline eardrum rupturing. But although she was starting to fuss a bit before we even got back in the car today, I opened her window and she didn't make a sound the entire 10-minute drive home, so hopefully that wasn't just a fluke :)
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We hosted Easter dinner and the egg hunt again this year, which was a lot of fun. Audra did great, and it was wonderful to have so many hands eager to hold her throughout the day :)
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Miscellaneous cuteness:
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Thursday, April 17, 2014

March

Obviously the big news from last month was Audra's birth :) I'm going to attempt to keep the weekly updates focused on Audra, though, with these monthly updates focused on Josie but also for the family as a whole, since I'm planning to do a year of weekly posts for Audra and then eventually convert them to a book as I did with Josie. Can't have accusations of being unfair right from the start ;)

Josie is doing very well so far in her new role as a big sister. I was just hoping she wouldn't be super jealous, and she has far surpassed that, and instead she is always asking where Audra is, helping us change her diaper or feed her (and encouraging her by yelling, "Eat, baby, eat!"), and being extremely diligent about making sure Audra is covered with a blanket. Always. I suspect the jealousy will come later once they have to share toys, but she seems to be fine with sharing Ryan and me so far. She had a random crying fit once when Ryan dropped her off at school, told us she didn't want to go to school a few times, and has asked (or tried) to sleep in bed with us too, but so far that seems to be the extent of her reaction to the new family dynamic. She also has been quite supportive to me, although I don't really want my 2-year-old to have to prop me up too :-\ But there have been a few times where I've started crying from being overwhelmed or frustrated (with loud noises/chaos being a bit of a trigger for me, so it tends to happen when Josie is around), and she's patted me on the arm, given me a hug, and said, "It's ok, Mommy. It's ok." And then yelled at Ryan to give me the baby. It's very, very sweet, but I'm also trying to stay calmer in front of her since I don't want this to be a scary time for her, or for her to associate my frustration and crying with Audra.
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We've been trying hard to make sure Josie is getting enough attention, and to that end, our families have really helped us out, with frequent visits and fun outings for Josie. It still hurts me to not get to spend as much time with Josie as I would like, but I'm usually able to get a few minutes one-on-one with her each day, and I know that things will continue evolving and we'll eventually find a balance that works. Truth be told, it actually hurts me a bit too just to see how well she seems to be doing without all the attention I was paying her before - I thought she would be more upset by that, but she instead just seems to seek out the attention or interactions with me as she needs it. She'll come find me (and Audra) to say hi when she gets home from school, and will come snuggle up to me when she needs to recharge, and only on the rare occasion has she tried to pull me away from Audra to read to her or something. So yes, my attention is apparently not as important to her as I thought it was, but that's a much better outcome than her trying desperately to spend time with me that I don't have to give her at the moment, so that's probably a good thing right now :)
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[My view most nights - baby on my lap and Josie right next to me]
Josie also did very well during Audra's birth. Since we were planning a homebirth and thought it would be quite likely that Josie would be there for at least part of labor/delivery, we tried to prepare her for it as much as we could so it wouldn't be some traumatic, bewildering experience for her. So she understood the general process, and since she got home an hour before Audra was born, she had a good time hanging out with all of us in the sun room until our midwife asked for her to be taken out of the room while I was pushing and then again after I delivered the placenta (which is when things went a little haywire). Beyond that, Josie was unruffled during delivery, and a little subdued but still fine coming back in to meet Audra for the first time. She also did very well with a room full of EMTs, asking their names and chatting with them while she ate her dinner :) She did cry out for Ryan as he left to meet me at the hospital though, which was a bit unusual for her. My mom stayed with us for a week and a half (so just before Audra was born and then about a week afterward), which was a wonderful help for us, and Ryan also went back home the second night to do dinner and bed-time with Josie since that was the longest we had ever been away from her.
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In other news, Josie's language skills have really improved this month. She's speaking more clearly, correcting some of the things that she had been saying her own special way (e.g., "banana" is now "bamana" at least, rather than just "mana"; "what doing" is slowly being replaced with "what are you doing"), and has been initiating conversations more rather than mainly just responding to questions. So she'll tell us a fine story about all of the things she did at school that day (most probably not true), and I loved watching her brain churn away to come up with a workaround when she wanted more apricots. She's not that familiar with them, so since she didn't know the word for them, she just said she wanted to open the closet (i.e., pantry) and get more. Before, she likely would have just cried ;) Josie has also been putting in requests for activities lately, so just about every day for a while, she'd ask to go swimming (complete with doggy paddling hand motions), and now she's moved on to asking to go grocery shopping every day after school.

Josie also seems to be enjoying one of the side effects of Ryan and I being on leave: Ryan's cooking, since we're not eating leftovers from his work right now. We've eaten so well the last few weeks, and Josie has even asked for seconds - and sometimes thirds - of her dinner. We'll also give her some fruit if she has tried everything on her plate, so one night she had almost two full plates of mussels, okra, and rice, and then two clementines afterwards. Her stomach is a bottomless pit sometimes ;)

Miscellaneous cuteness:

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[Josie takes good care of her baby doll]
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[Even Josie's spiders are happy] IMG_1107
[Hat parade at school - just minus the hat]
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[And there's the hat now too]
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014

6 Weeks

As it turns out, what's harder than taking care of a newborn (and toddler) is taking care of a newborn (and toddler) while sick. Ryan and I have been sick all week with a nasty cold, and Audra is having a bit of congestion still too. I'm having some difficulty trying to hold things together while dealing with the frustration and misery of being sick, and given some stuff Audra is going through now too, this was not an easy week - although there were some bright spots to it.

Audra continues to be more awake and alert, content to be up for over two hours... although the reason I know this is because she also is having some problems napping at the moment. Before, she had been awake maybe a couple of hours total throughout the day, and then awake most of the evening. But then this week, she just started struggling with naps, popping back awake after a couple minutes of sleep or just not falling asleep when she normally does to begin with (i.e., after nursing). She handles that quite well earlier in the day, but by evening, she's been an overtired, hysterical mess. At least her night-time sleep hasn't really suffered too much (yet). I start nursing her down just after 9pm, and she usually falls asleep and wakes right back up a few times, and sometimes nurses again a half hour after she first fell asleep, but then is usually asleep for the night by 10pm. She wakes 1-2 times overnight to eat (with the first wakeup between 1:30-4am), and then inevitably wakes up for the day around 7:30am when I try to sneak out to eat breakfast and see Josie off to school.

Audra also seems to be able to sleep through more overnight, which is good since I'm going to need to start pumping overnight soon, and we haven't started putting her in the crib at night yet (both were waiting until we were a bit healthier so we could feasibly deal with some interrupted sleep better). So she's slept through me getting up to try to clear out my nose (turns out I can't sleep if I can't breathe), shifting all over the place, dropping things, and coughing. So much coughing. Her sleep cycles also appear to have increased from 30 to 45 minutes, which is only exciting (to me) since it's evidence of her sleep maturing on its own. Since this is what our "strategy" is basically banking on (waiting for her sleep to mature on its own to hopefully resolve the early sleep issues we're possibly avoiding by bedsharing), it's heartening to see this happening. She also had a couple of good, 2-3 hour naps in her swing, but only managed 15 minutes of napping on her own on a flat surface all week.  But hey - it's something, and it was even in her crib so I was able to start my collection of slightly creepy monitor screenshots of her sleeping :)
Screenshot 2014-04-13 at 4.10.28 PM
I can't tell if she is going through the big 6-week growth spurt yet, but with her disrupted sleep, increased fussiness, and changed attitude towards nursing lately, I'm hoping this is it. I'm fine with constant nursing, but angry, screaming nursing is much harder to deal with. I happened to stumble upon a blog post that advised switching sides every 15 seconds, if needed, if baby is fussing, and this has really helped us out. Audra still erupted into hysterical crying when I tried to nurse her the other night (only calming when Ryan took her out for another walk in the carrier), but for the most part, switching sides more often than I would normally seems to be helping her calm down enough to nurse (and sleep).

Ryan was out of town Saturday, so my mom stayed over to help me with the kids. I had been worried about this weekend for a while, but figured it would also be a good opportunity to work through (and get past) some of those worries. My biggest worries seem to have boiled down to Ryan being gone, Audra not sleeping, and not having anything planned to occupy Josie on the weekends. While my brother and sister-in-law helpfully took Josie out on Saturday, Audra's first difficult napping day happened to be that day, which, of course, was also when Ryan was gone. So that was a bit of a rough day, but we obviously all survived, and hopefully I can stop worrying so much about those things :)

I also have started carrying Audra in the carrier more, which I had been avoiding until now to let myself heal more. That helped with my mental state last weekend too, since for some reason I just feel so much more capable and like I can deal with things better when it's nice out, I have a sleeping baby in the carrier, and I'm able to eat and drink and spend time with Josie - sometimes all at the same time :)

And although we had sworn that we wouldn't eat out with both kids for months (or years), we went out to eat last weekend once Ryan got back. We survived that too :) Ryan ended up walking Audra around outside for the second half of the meal, but honestly, I think he had the easier kid at that moment ;) But we also walked around the town center where the restaurant is after our meal, and enjoyed the beautiful weather while Josie played some games and I nursed and cuddled with Audra. Who also smiles and coos now :)
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[At the town center, with Ryan's Mr. T-inspired haircut ;)]
[Not the best example of her cooing, but it's all I've been able to record so far]

Miscellaneous cuteness:
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Wednesday, April 9, 2014

5 Weeks

Audra was much more alert this week, as she was awake - and perfectly content - for an hour at a time a couple of times. We brought her in to Ryan's work last Thursday, and while I ate everything I could get my hands on (giving Ryan a much-needed break from cooking), Audra sat on Ryan's lap and calmly took it all in. Then when I got her back, we nursed a couple of times and then she looked more like this:
I kept looking at Audra this week and thinking she got so much bigger and filled out so much more. Her eyes also seem more blue now, and while her baby acne is still pretty bad, it seems to be lessening a little bit. She's pushing off us more with her legs, too, so I'm having to be a bit more careful to keep both hands on her when holding her so she doesn't launch herself off me. After not smiling for a few days, Audra had big smiles (or "big happy", as Josie likes to call it) for my mom and aunt when they came to visit this weekend :) And yet I still have no pictures of her full smile, just her goofy half smiles - hopefully soon, because it's super cute. She also likes to put her face on mine when I burp her, which so far is utterly adorable, but will be decidedly less so once she actually spits up on my face ;)
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Speaking of which, Audra really doesn't spit up that much, which is really nice. I preemptively cut dairy out of my diet (for the most part, at least) right from the start, but she really doesn't seem to spit up that much anyway. She has been more fussy the last few days, so I've been on an even shorter leash than normal - she usually wants to nurse about every 30-45 minutes when she's awake, but it's been even more frequent than that lately. If this isn't her 6-week growth spurt, I can't wait to see what is ;)

Audra only slept on her own a couple of times last week (and usually after I had already stayed with her for the first hour or so), but she did do a couple of nights with a 6-hour stretch (and only one wakeup!), and has slept in her swing a couple of times now. I am probably happier about the swing than I should be, since it's still a sleep prop that we'll eventually need to wean her from, but having that hour to myself as she napped in the swing made me so delirious with freedom that I didn't care :)
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More of Audra's firsts from this week include her first trip to a sit-down restaurant, and her first illness :( Josie came down with something over the weekend, which spread among us in fairly short order. So now Audra is congested and fussy, and since Ryan and I have pretty bad sore throats and sinus pressure, I imagine she may be dealing with that too. We went to Chili's for lunch today, which was nice to get out of the house, despite feeling like my head was going to explode from the pressure. Audra did quite well, hanging out with Ryan for a few minutes, then nursing and sleeping on me and then in her car seat before she woke up from pooping (as she is wont to do).
As for me, I actually had a couple of days of no crying this week ;) I feel like I have a much better handle on things during the week now, although the weekends are still really hard, with trying to have Audra get her naps in and still spend time with Josie. I know I need to try harder to not get frustrated over the things I can't control, but I think we'll get there. Hopefully soon.

Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[Nap time on Ryan]
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[Nap time on me]

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

4 Weeks

Audra is now 4 weeks old, and it seems like she's been here forever already... and then I'm always surprised to realize it's only been a month since we became a family of four :) Things are pretty straightforward with Audra - the answer to almost any question is nursing, and she likes to stay in close contact with us. Keeping those two things in mind has served us all well, I think, since she's generally a pretty unfussy baby. I read an article recently that was pretty much in line with this, which has also helped bolster our resolve to do what Audra is indicating she needs, even if it's not all that convenient for us, which I really struggled with the first few weeks... especially her need to stay in close contact with us. Here comes a tangent on my mental state, but there are cute pictures below, at least :)

Before Audra was born, I had vowed to just take care of the baby, sleeping when she did, etc., rather than worrying about housework, and we had also said that we were fine with bedsharing. As it turns out, she called my bluff. I am sleeping as often as I can with her, but with her sometimes waking every half an hour to nurse, a lot of the times I end up just laying there contemplating life or reading. And she has made her preferences quite clear regarding sleep. Our first night in the hospital, she had a couple of hours of what seemed like poor sleep in the bassinet and then woke up inconsolable and screamed herself hoarse until 3am, when our very sweet nurse took her for an hour so we could sleep (since Audra wasn't admitted to the hospital, she couldn't go to the nursery). Then she finally slept well with us, but only after I just kept her in bed with me, while I was barely dozing so that I could pop up and pretend that I had just been nursing each time the nurse came in (since I was explicitly told bedsharing wasn't permitted in the hospital - understandable, given that hospital beds aren't really conducive to it). 

The next night was very similar, and the next night after that we were home again, where she again slept very noisily (with lots of grunting and kicking) for only a couple of hours in her crib before I left her in bed with us, where she curled right up against my side and slept quietly and contentedly. And except for a couple of experiments since then, that's where she's been every night since, waking up just to nurse and quickly falling back asleep after (for the most part so far). Just in the past week, I've come to peace with this more. While I love having her in bed, I had quite a bit of anxiety about her never sleeping alone, me not being able to get up to do other stuff, get ready for bed, etc., despite this not being all that different from the sleeping situation with Josie (she did start each night in her crib, but the rest of the night and most of her naps were in bed with us for most of her first year - and she now sleeps wonderfully on her own). But Audra has managed to stay sleeping on her own for over an hour for several naps now (which is awesome!!), and we'll probably start trying to have her at least begin the night in her crib in the next couple of weeks.

Speaking of my anxiety, I am doing so much better this time around. I'm still struggling a bit, and pretty emotional, but I feel like it's not quite as intense this time. I do worry about balancing "doing right" by Audra while trying to spend time with Josie too (especially difficult in these early days as Audra's nap time spans most of the day, but she can't sleep as easily when I hang out with Ryan and Josie rather than sequestering us in the bedroom), and I have gotten frustrated when I'm trying so desperately to sleep but Audra wakes up each time I'm about to fall asleep, but all in all, I've been able to keep it in perspective better now. I've been telling myself that everything will be ok, Audra's just a little baby and this time of our lives is so fleeting that I should just go with the flow and do whatever's needed to keep her content (and us sane, which is often the same thing), and I'm finally starting to believe these words. Things are actually going surprisingly well, with no jealousy from Josie, a decent amount of sleep each night, all things considering (usually from 10ish - 7:30am, with two usually short wakeups sometime between 2-4am and 5-6am for diaper/nursing), and a pretty darn calm baby, so hopefully I'll continue to surrender to the force that is a newborn baby and will be able to enjoy this even more soon. Ryan is just super thrilled that Audra doesn't cry through every diaper change, and indeed she doesn't - I actually found myself changing her diaper the other day just since I thought it would help calm her down, as it did, since she loves to stare at the wall there ;)
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[One of the times Audra was able to sleep amidst all the chaos]

Ryan's work also provides 10 free counseling sessions after the birth of a baby, so we've been taking advantage of that. I've been getting a couple of tidbits from each session that seem to be helping me too - not worrying about things too far in advance (since worrying about Audra's entire first year of life at once can be a bit overwhelming), and when I feel myself getting anxious, just pushing the thought off and saying that we'll deal with it tomorrow, or the next week. This has helped me stay in the moment a lot better, which is good, since we're able to get through the day just fine minute by minute, it's just when I start overthinking things and worrying about things months away that may not even happen with Audra (usually sleep related) that I struggle more. We'll get there, and I already feel like the newborn bewilderment (that I felt the first several months with Josie) is dissipating. 

Anyway, onto the more fun stuff - the firsts of Audra's firsts ;)

  • Umbilical cord stump fell off (at 8 days old)
  • First shower (at 12 days old; she appeared to love it)
  • First time rolling from her back to her side (at 12 days old)
  • First time sleeping through the night (at 2 weeks old; slept for 5 hours (a 5-hour stretch is the medical definition of sleeping through the night), nursed, then slept for another 2.5 hours - she's not too consistent with this yet, but we're taking what we can get!)
  • First tear (at 2 weeks after getting her heel pricked at the pediatrician)
  • First shopping trip (to Grand Mart at 2.5 weeks old; she just slept the whole time in the carrier)
  • First social smile (at 3 weeks and a day; she does this ridiculously cute open-mouthed half smile)
  • First time to a restaurant (to Starbucks at 3.5 weeks old; I was just going to nurse her in the car while Ryan grabbed a coffee, but then brought her in to nurse because of a massive poo blowout. Funniest moment? When Ryan held Audra up (much like Simba in The Lion King) to show her to the ladies behind us, who all promptly gasped and started cooing at her)

  • Audra had lost 15oz within the first two days, so she has actually been to the pediatrician a few times now. Audra has also had crazy neck control almost from the start, with very little of the newborn head bouncing or floppiness, no signs of jaundice, and the doctor was quite impressed by her strength. So everything checked out well, and then when we went back three days later, hoping she had gained 1.5-3oz ounces, she had gained 6oz instead :) And then at her 2-week appointment, she had gained over another pound, measuring in at 10lbs 10oz, 22" long, with a head circumference of 14.5". So now we're done with the pediatrician until her 2-month appointment, although the midwives also checked her at my 3-week post-partum visit, and will check her again at my 7-week visit. 

    Beyond that, we're just getting to know our new daughter. I thought for sure she had brown eyes and brown hair, but now her eyes look blue-ish in some light, and her hair is seemingly lightening up too. I'm learning to observe her more and try to balance the final fight she puts up when I'm nursing her to sleep (when she likes to pummel me while nursing before abruptly pulling off and falling asleep) and when she's actually upset (usually from gas, poor thing). We aren't swaddling her when she's in bed with us, so we'll see if she takes to that once we try having her sleep in her crib more. She doesn't seem to have a "witching hour" in the evenings (yet), and can go for about 10-minute stretches in her swing, bouncy seat, or playmat now (and seems to at least not hate tummy time), and of course loves being in her carrier. Between all of these options, we've actually been able to eat dinner together (all at once!) almost every night, which is so nice. Her favorite things at the moment (besides nursing and being held) appear to be us singing to her, the shower, and the wall next to her change table (which I'm pretty sure she's smiled at more than she has at us). Dislikes appear to be the car (oh, how she hates the car), cold hands, and dirty diapers.
    IMG_1150
    [Blue?]
    IMG_1018
    [Tummy time]
    IMG_1062
    [Eating dinner together]
    IMG_1028
    [Saying hello to the wall]

    Miscellaneous cuteness:
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    [Josie's first time holding Audra]
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    [Sleep grins]
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    IMG_1082
    IMG_1173
    IMG_1169
    IMG_1138 
    [My usual view]
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    [Thinking important baby thoughts]