Off to Michigan!!

We leave this afternoon for Michigan for the next 6 days!!  I'm soooooooo excited, I can't wait for my parents to see Elsa again and how she's changed and grown!  And my grandparents get to meet her, too, that will be so cute!!!  Yes, I'm so super excited!!!

Elsa also gets to take her first plane ride today!  I so hope it goes okay.  I think it will, so I hope I'm not being overly optimistic.  My hope is that since I'm so relaxed about it, she'll be so relaxed as well.  And I have Elsa's little baby passport all ready to go, it's so cute!

Oh yes - and Happy 2 Months to my little girl!!!!!!!!

Love Love Love Love Love

Dec 16 - Elsa discovered she could bat at her toys!!!

I'm so in love with this little girl!!!  I've been thinking about it the last couple days.  She's only 8 weeks old and I'm so attached already.  What will I be like when she's 4 months old, 8 months old, 2 years old?!?  It's almost scary to me because right now I can of course easily protect her and keep her close to me always, but in a couple years she'll start slowly becoming more independent and I'll be having to already let go a little.

So yes, this little girl has so captured my heart.  I love every little sound she makes.  I love every little face she makes.  I love all her different expressions, all her different moods.  I love the way she stretches huge when she's waking up.  I love the chirping sounds she makes in her sleep.  I love the way her little legs kick out when she's playing on the floor.  I love the way she rubs her eyes.  I love the way she spits out her pacifier and then immediately wants it back, and turns her head to the side opening her mouth for it.  I love the excited expression she makes when she's hungry and knows she's about to get food.  I love the way she keeps opening and closing her little mouth when she's really hungry after a very long sleep.  I love the way she smiles and laughs when she's in her little gym.  I love the silly milk-drunk face she makes after eating.  I love the way she stares at the big painting behind our couch.  I love her little face when she's laying on my chest and looking up at the painting.  I love her little grunts when she's trying to push out a fart.  I love how silly it sounds when she pushes out a big poop explosion.  I even love the smell of her poop - yes, I did say that and yes I do, it smells sweet and so her so somehow I love it.  I love the little curve of her nose.  I love how her whole eye area, from eyebrow down, turns red when she's upset or tired.  I love her expression of disgust when I give her her medicine twice a day (I understand, when I taste it on her pacifier I make the same face).  I love the sound of her half-upset cry.  I love how she calms down and stares at me when I cradle her tight, hold her hands and keep her pacifier in her mouth.  I love the loud sailor burps she has sometimes.  I love how she grasps at me with one hand while she's breastfeeding.  I love how soft the top of her head is.  I love how perfectly plump and soft her little cheeks are.  I love her excited kissy face.  I love her silly pirate face.  I love love love her stretching-back-and-to-the-side face (I still haven't captured that on camera, it's one thing I NEED to capture).  I love her little arms.  I love her little legs.  I love her little feet.  I love her little belly.  I love how she's loud in her sleep sometimes (not because it's fun for me but because it's something that's her so it's so cute to me).  I love how she laughs and smiles for me when I talk excitedly to her.  I love how she cries while I'm sucking out boogies but is immediately fine afterward.  I love her smell.  I love how she loves me doing baby bicycles on her.  I love holding her when she sleeps.  I love kissing her and her little various expressions when I do.  I love how she loves her bounces and jumps.  I love being close to her.  I love looking at her.  I love my little daughter so much.  My heart is so full.

My silly girl!!  :)  December 15 - almost 8 weeks old

Now to more deep and sad thoughts, but thoughts that come because I realize just how strong a mother's protective and unconditional love is.  I sometimes find myself thinking of all the mothers who ever existed who lost their children and how absolutely awful it must have been for them.  I don't know why I have these terrible thoughts sometimes.  When Elsa is having a bad stretch sometimes and is wailing and wailing in my arms, it's awful and stressful for me but I deal okay - but I find that when she's crying like that and I'm not holding her, it's almost painful for me and I NEED to hold her to try to soothe her.  It was during one of her first baths at home, when Jody was giving her the bath and I was taking photos and she was wailing - and I was telling her it was okay but she was just looking at me wailing away, that I suddenly thought of all the mothers whose babies were torn from their arms and the babies were wailing and the mothers were powerless to go to them - I can't imagine that pain as a mother, not being able to hold and soothe your baby and let them know they are loved and protected and safe.  My mind went to the Holocaust for some reason, and mothers with babies who got off trains, and probably had their crying babies torn from their arms before they were sent to the camps alone - and their last view of their babies was their babies looking at them wailing, begging to be rescued and held and loved and instead it was the opposite.  I started tearing up right there during her bath when these images and emotions started flashing through my mind, and I managed to bring myself back to reality but it's stuck with me and I've thought of it a number of times since.  Jody watched a documentary recently and in it, a woman and her friend were murdered in their house and her infant was in the house at the time, and that has stuck in my head, what this woman must have been thinking when she knew she was going to be killed and she couldn't get to her baby to protect it, and also knew her baby would grow up without her.  I'm certainly not thinking about these terrible scenarios and situations all the time or most of the time, but I guess it's my way of acknowledging that in some ways, it's scary to love someone so much and feel so protective of them.  My heart so goes out to all the women throughout history who have had to go through awful situations of having their children taken from them or hurt, I truly can't imagine the pain and in some cases, how they could go on.

So back to happy thoughts and reality!  Last Thursday, December 16th, Elsa first batted at a toy!!  I was so excited and proud and she did it over and over again!  They were the toys that hang down on her bouncer, and before that day I'd had the toy bar taken off so that was the first time she was sort of sitting up with toys hanging in front of her (as opposed to laying down in her gym with toys hanging above her head - I often take her little hands and show her how to bat at the toys, but she has never done it on her own before).

Elsa is also becoming such a good little sleeper now!  She usually sleeps at least 5 hours in a stretch at the start of the night, and in the last week she's had a number of nights with 6 or 7 hours in that first stretch!!  So nice for me!!!  And she's so cute when she does wake up then, cause I pick her up and she's immediately opening and closing her little mouth and rooting towards me, it's so adorable!  And if I take too long to get the pillow adjusted and get everything set, she starts fussing!  So I'm usually up with her for an hour then, I first feed her and burp her, then change her, then feed her again, and then it takes awhile to lull her back to sleep (I stay very quiet the whole time and don't talk to her, and when I have her settled in my arms afterward I put her pacifier in and then I do my own thing - reading news on my phone, etc. - while she is quiet and eventually falls back asleep.  After that, though, we don't have as long stretches.  She often wakes up two hours later, sometimes a little more but sometimes a little less, and that's painful for me cause I'm back in a deep sleep.  I don't think she's usually hungry then, she either has gas, or she just wakes up and can't fall back asleep.  I usually try giving her her paci first and half that time that gets her to fall asleep for another half hour or hour, which is good enough for me.  Then after that I'll usually pull her over next to me (she sleeps in a bed that's attached to our bed so she's the same level as me) and have her breastfeed while we're both laying down - I couldn't do it when she was littler cause it was too hard to get her in the right position, etc. but now we have it down, I just lay facing her and I turn her on her side facing me, and have her at the right level as my boob and she finds it and latches right on, it's fabulous!  And then we often fall back asleep after that for sometimes a couple more hours.  I'm so not a morning person and I think it would actually be easier for me to wake up at 5 a.m than at 7 a.m. cause I fall into a really deep sleep early in the morning and it's really hard to wake up from it, all I can think about is getting back to sleep for just a little while at least. 

Over the past week I've been finally really selecting all of my favorite photos I've taken of Elsa and uploading them to smugmug for our families and friends to be able to view anytime - and I can share many more photos that way, I like that!!  And it's been so cool to see the changes already in her!  I started with the most recent photos - December photos - and I've just finished and uploaded all the final November photos.  Next I still have to make an album and choose the photos for October, her birth and her first week and a half!  Today I looked at a few photos from when she was a week old!  I can totally tell it's Elsa, she still looks the same to me in many ways, but of course more filled out, too.  What really struck me was looking at some photos from last week of her in her gym and remembering similar photos I took when she was 2 1/2 weeks old.  I need to show what I'm talking about here:

November 9 - 2 1/2 weeks old

December 14 - 7 1/2 weeks old

Now I realize the lighting and color are different, and she's making a little more of an excited kissy-face in the first one, but look at how much her little face has filled out!!  That's amazing!!!  I love looking at this now cause on the one hand I can tell she's growing and getting bigger - her legs are a little thicker, she's grown 3 inches since she was born, I know she's filled out, etc. - but on the other hand she's still my tiny baby and doesn't seem to have changed THAT much to me!  So this is amazing to see!!!  She can still wear her Elmo PJ's, too - so because she still fits in almost all her newborn clothes I still feel like she's teensy!

Okay that's all for tonight.  Lots of sweet thoughts and depressing deep thoughts!  I've been meaning though to write about the depressing thoughts cause it's part of what this experience is for me, so I want to document it - and really it's about realizing just how deep and strong this love is.

I'll add in a couple more cute photos!!

December 14 - laughs for mommy!!!

December 14 - laughing in her gym!

December 14 - this was RIGHT before she rolled over for the first time - tipping over to her side, then tipping onto her side, then tipping and rolling back to her back!  And she did it again right afterward and then 3 hours later for daddy!

P.S. As I was just adding in these last photos, Elsa was starting to make lots of pushing and grunting noises in her sleep - she's in her bouncer right next to me.  A big loud blast of poop came out a minute ago, and now she's pushing out a bunch of farts!  :)  So cute!!  She still hasn't fully woken up, her eyes haven't opened yet, but she keeps pushing out farts.  That's good, she's been really farty all day so the more she can get out right now on her own, the better, and then I'll help her with baby bicycles and presses when she wakes up (but she'll want to eat first, then I'll change her diaper, and I want her to go back to sleep pretty quickly, and also after she eats it's tough cause the presses sometimes push out spit-up - so hence me being happy that she's pushing out a bunch right now on her own!)!

I'm back!

I haven't updated this for awhile!  I didn't mean to not write, but I think I didn't because after my last post I wrote out Elsa's birth story but was waiting to add in the photos and then post it, and somehow I felt like I had to finish that before posting anything new.  But today I decided to get back to regular posts anyway and I'll post that whenever I can.

7 weeks old

Elsa is almost 8 weeks old!  Wow, I didn't even think that tomorrow is Thursday so we're so close to 8 weeks (Fridays are the start of new weeks)!  And a week from today she'll be 2 months old!  I see her changing all the time now, learning new things and I think also growing a little bigger.  She smiles very often now and even laughs, too!!!  That's one of the coolest things ever, to get my little girl to give me so many little baby smiles!  And it's so funny to see her playing in her little gym and looking at all the hanging toys (Mr. Parrot is her favorite right now) and smiling and laughing away at them!

7 weeks old, smiling at her little lambs going around!

 She is also looking at people much more now.  She looks at me when I talk and looks at Jody when he's talking, and will turn her head to look toward our voices if we're not holding her.  And she looks at other people who are holding her, too.  She also holds her head up better every single day!  I love that I can put her on my shoulder now and walk around with her that way, and she can look out over my shoulder or off to the side - I still have my hand on her head if she's wobbly or just behind to catch it, but she's so much more sturdy than when she was brand new.  And her legs are so strong!!  She even ROLLED OVER yesterday!!!  From her tummy to her back.  The first time I'm sure it was an accident, she tipped to the side, then tipped further and was on her side, then tipped backward and was on her back.  But then she did it again right after that, and then three hours later she did it for Jody when he came home!  So she's doing well with her large motor skills!

The fine motor skills are coming a little slower.  She grasps onto my shirt or bra when I'm feeding her, and grasps my hair or shirt when I hold her upright, and she'll sometimes grasp something if I put it in her hand (usually by prying apart her little fists), but she rarely will hold something for long and often won't grasp it at all.  She's also not studying her hands yet or even batting at things.  I feel fine though, she's just a little slower in getting that part but I know some babies get that early, some right on time and some late.  And she's doing other things (like the rolling over) early, and most things she's right on schedule with so I'm so happy with all she's learning and how she's progressing!

7 weeks old

7 weeks old - I love those little legs!!

So a brief update of the last couple weeks:

"Extreme fussiness/colic" - that's the term used in the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby.  The author/doctor gave the standard definition of a colicky baby but for the first time I saw that it didn't have to be 3 consecutive hours, just 3 hours a day (of trying to soothe a very fussy baby), 3 days a week, for 3 weeks.  I had been wondering if Elsa was a little bit colicky.  From I think about Week 3 to Week 6 or so, she was really fussy especially in the evenings - usually we'd have at least 2 hours of her being overly tired and really fussy.  I wasn't sure though if I could call it colic because usually you hear about screaming babies being colicky, and granted we had a few meltdowns and often would have a short one just before she finally fell asleep, but most of the time it was just really fussy (and she would start crying if we didn't work to soothe her or change things up for her).  But as I read his discussion of colicky babies, and read some accounts of other parents in his book, I knew that Elsa had a mild case of being an extremely fussy/colicky baby.

What I like about this author is that he talks about how, for most babies, the fussiness is more the problem and not constant crying, because they can be partially soothed by their parents.  And he also terms it a sleep disorder more than anything else.  And that so fits Elsa - sometimes, especially in the evenings, she just can't go to sleep.  She'll be so tired, her eyes will try to close many times but she always pops back awake.  She's often awake for 5 hours at a time, and usually that is in the evenings.

The biggest thing that this book gave me was a sense of relief.  Yes that sounds crazy, but I finally knew that it wasn't my fault, it wasn't something I was doing wrong, it wasn't anything wrong with my milk (sometimes (before we learned about this and also started using the pacifier) she would keep telling me she wanted to eat but then not really eat or seem to fight with the boob and end up crying, or just soothe on the boob instead of eating much), and it also wasn't anything wrong with her ultimate personality.  It's just something she has now.  And this book also gave me a kind of game plan.  Not too different from what we were doing, but I know now that at the first sign of her getting sleepy, or if she's been awake for an hour and a half or two hours, I start soothing her and getting her in a calm state to try to get her to sleep.  Often she won't fall asleep for a very long time, but I get her still regardless and have her sucking on her soother and let her have her "quiet awake" time until she eventually falls asleep.  When she starts fighting it and getting fussy, I just hold the soother in her mouth, gently hold her little hands against her, and talk quietly or do the "shhh, shhh, shhh" to her until she calms back down.  It doesn't always go perfectly but I feel like I'm generally more in control now and know what's going on and what to do, so knowledge is power and confidence here!

The author also said that all babies' fussiness peeks at 6 weeks from their due date.  That was so good to know!  And really, Elsa is so much better already.  Or else we're less affected by her fussiness and more used to it.  Or we're better at controlling it - thanks to the wonderful pacifier!  Or all three!  I actually don't think she's even that fussy anymore now - well she still has some fussy times during each awake period, but they are minimal now and only occasionally do we have some serious fussiness or weeping.

We still go mostly by her schedule of when she wakes up and when she naps, but now I have a little more control of the awake times.  I feed her and change her, then we play at the beginning cause she's usually pretty happy and loves laying in her little gym or on the floor with me showing her toys, or I walk her around showing her things.  Then I'll start more soothing things, so sometimes she's happy to sit in her swing and watch her little lambs go around, or I'll hold her and read her books or sing to her, or just hold her and let her look at things and have her quiet awake time.  And then by the end I'm just holding her and being quiet and keeping the pacifier in her mouth and letting her get sleepy.  Sometimes she'll go in her swing or bouncer when she's like that and I stay by her and she'll sometimes eventually fall asleep - other times she'll nod off and pop back awake.  But having the progression from fun to calm is good and I know she needs to just stay as calm as possible and eventually sleep will come.

The book says that the biggest risk of parents with overly fussy babies is that when she's fully past it, we don't start teaching her good sleeping habits.  So by 4 months, we should be doing normal things.  For example, right now we can't put her down when she's drowsy or she'll pop back awake and just get upset - that's normal for colicky babies.  But by 4 months, we'll have to be having a schedule and getting her drowsy and then putting her down to bed so she learns then to put herself to sleep and to have a schedule.  But it wouldn't work now, which really made me feel so good cause we'd heard other sleep experts say (on audiobooks or podcasts) that you need to be putting your baby down with it's drowsy so the baby learns to put itself to sleep - but whenever we tried that it so didn't work and we were slightly worried that we were already making mistakes and training her wrong!

So anyway, she's doing much better now, we're able to deal with it better and control it better, and we'll watch for when we can start teaching her more.  I've even noticed a change in the past week - she will sometimes now sit or lay quietly by herself when she's awake, and that's amazing because before she always needed to be held!  And over the past few days she's fallen asleep in her bouncer or swing more and they were deep and long sleeps.  Oh - and she's generally sleeping about 5 hours at the start of the night!  That's great if I go to sleep right when she does, but often I don't (and the last few days she's fallen asleep really early in the evening so the 5 hours starts then).  Twice she's slept 6 and 7 hours which was fabulous and amazing (although at first I worried that a) something was wrong with her or b) I didn't wake up when she was fussing).  But then the second half of the night is not so good.  Then she's waking up every 2-2.5 hours, or sometimes even less.  So the early mornings often suck.  I think often she wakes up because of gas, not because she's hungry.  We have a constant battle with gas.

Okay I'm going to end this, this is really long.  I should have just been posting all along and then I'd have a bunch of short posts and not this super long one.  Anyway today Elsa was really pretty good.  She was awake a lot but generally calm, just a few slightly fussy periods.  She took a number of short naps during the day which was nice (that doesn't always happen), and tonight she had a bath and hated it but we cuddled a lot afterward and I LOVE that!  And then she fell asleep around 8, which is so early for her norm (although the last couple days she's fallen asleep early - I think she's going through a growth spurt).  It's 11:30 now so she'll probably wake up anytime in the next hour and a half, and then I just hope that she'll have a quick feed and change and go back to sleep nicely.

And one final thing for this post - she is so cute and sweet!!!!!!!  I love this little girl so so so much!!!!!  :)  And now I'll get back to posting regularly!  :)

6 weeks old - her excited look!

6 weeks old, big smiles!!!!!

I LOVE her little excited looks so much!!

7 weeks old - she loves to spit out her paci and then immediately start fussing cause she wants it back, silly girl!

Milestones

Prior to having Elsa 5 weeks ago, I'd always kind of secretly scoffed at the whole milestone thing and thought it was kind of silly that parents would worry about their kids and whether they were hitting milestones at the proper times and all that went with it.  In my mind, I always reasoned that "every child is different and will hit the milestones on their own time".  Which of course it true, but I didn't understand the worrying about it part.  Of course, when I thought of milestones I'd only think of the big ones - rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and walking.  I didn't realize that there are SO MANY!!

So about a week ago, when Elsa was 4 weeks old, I started worrying about whether she was developing like she should be (I just don't know what babies do and learn at different times so wanted to know that Elsa was normal).  I now completely understand the worrying part!  For me right now, we know that Elsa is in good health and physically she's doing well according to her doctor, but we can't know whether she's all normal mentally and socially and all those other measures!  So I started wondering, when should a baby be smiling?  What's the acceptable age range for that to start?  I hear of some babies smiling really early but what's too late?  Elsa makes little smiley looks sometimes but not in response to anything, it's just when she's making various faces - so I was getting worried that she wasn't developing properly maybe.  (My pediatrician, when we were discussing vaccinations and autism and such, told me that kids who are eventually diagnosed with autism usually showed signs early on, such as not smiling - hence me really really wanting Elsa to start smiling!)  So I googled milestones and found THIS SITE which I like because it gives a big long list and the target ages that things should ideally happen at.

Usually when I do one of my worrying google searches, I actually end up freaking myself out more - which Jody hates!  But this is one time that it has made me feel better.  I've gone through the list and been mentally checking off the things she's hit or partially hit and from what I see so far, my little girl is normal and pretty much on track!  Yay!!!  Of course, there are a couple things I've noted to pay more attention to - for example, grasping.  It says that between 4 and 6 weeks babies should be able to grasp an object when their fingers are pried open and they drop it quickly after.  I guess technically Elsa has done this, but maybe just about 5 times or so and usually she doesn't grasp what I try to put in her hand.  Her little fingers are really hard to pry apart too, which may partially explain that!  Anyway though, I want to work with her more on opening her fingers and putting something in them to get her practicing her grasping!  I also see some things coming up on the immediate age horizon and know to look for them, and to try to help her in developing some of these little skills.

And as for smiling, the website says that should be between 6 weeks and 3 months, so that calmed me down a little.  Of course, my pediatrician said "if she's not smiling by 2 months then let me know, there may be a problem" - that so freaks me out so I want Elsa to be smiling in the next three weeks, oh I so hope she does cause then I'll feel so much more relaxed!!  In the last two to three days, when she's in a good mood and I have her laying on her back and am doing baby bicycles with her little legs and talking excitedly to her about it, she looks like she's smiling and happy but it's not clear enough that it's a real smile, but it still makes me so excited to see it!  So here's to hoping and cheering for Elsa to smile soon for mommy!!!  :)

I will say that her neck is surprisingly strong!!  I've even noticed such a difference over the past week, it's so cool to really notice it!  And her little legs are really strong, too, both when she pushes out with them against us, or when we hold her up to "stand" and she presses her little legs down so strongly!  And over the past 3-4 days, she's a couple times followed a toy from one side of her head to the other side - turning her head to follow it (they were toys with sounds, and she definitely doesn't usually do it but the fact that a couple times she has made me so happy!)!  Anyway, it's so super cool to see that she's so far on track!!!  I honestly don't need her to do anything early - I just want her to be in the normal range of things so I don't worry, and beyond that I just want her to be a happy baby and I'll be a happy mommy!

Here's a photo from this past Monday, Elsa's 1-month birthday!!  She's so cute!!!

Pacifier/Soother Love

Elsa right after she started sucking on a pacifier for the first time - she's so cute!

I was really torn about whether to use a pacifier with Elsa or not.  On the one hand, it's said to reduce the chances of SIDS, which is a HUGE positive!  And also the Baby Whisperer said it's really good cause it teaches them how to self-soothe.  On the other hand, people say it can affect the way their teeth come in, it may cause nipple confusion, and more importantly I worried that she may get attached to it (or I may) and that could somehow affect other things - like her being verbal abilities or activity level or something.  I really hadn't looked a ton into it though, such as reading what all the various experts said, so I still didn't feel super strong either way.  BUT, because of the SIDS thing, I figured I would start introducing it somewhere between 1 and 2 months.

From my last post, you know that we started using it on her 1 month birthday.  I've been experimenting with it a little since then - in when to use it and in trying to help Elsa learn to fall asleep by using it.  It's often really hard for Elsa to fall asleep - she just won't or can't do it, so she stays awake and gets overly tired and then super fussy and anxious and unhappy with everything, and it ends up being a two-hour process (especially in the evenings), with the last hour at least with a super fussy baby.  So I'm trying to recognize her signs of getting tired, and then trying to get her calm and soothed and happy so she can let herself fall asleep.

I've had luck a couple times during the day - I'll play with her for awhile and then I see one yawn, and then two yawns, and then I lay her down and hold her, cover her with a blanket, and put the pacifier in.  I also did it once with her in her bouncer.  It worked two or three times, well it still took her over half an hour to fall asleep, but she was calm the whole time and relaxed and eventually it worked.  Last night/this morning she was awake from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and the pacifier didn't seem to help at all with her falling asleep faster, although she was super calm and relaxed the whole time instead of fussy.  And tonight she started getting fussy and tired at a little before 8 p.m., and usually (based especially on the previous two nights) we'd be in for a lot of crying and fussing for the next two hours until she could get herself to sleep, but tonight she was pretty calm - it still took her until 10 p.m. to fall asleep, but there was minimal crying and lots of a relaxed little Elsa just being awake.

Sooooo, I'm liking it so far!  It's at least very useful in helping to relax her, and that's a pretty fabulous thing when you have a fussy baby!!!  But I don't want to overuse it, and I certainly don't want to be shoving it into her little mouth too often, but to relax her when she's being fussy is very good.  And I hope it will also start to help in getting her to fall asleep - I need to work on figuring that out more.  So I'm a happy mommy right now and also feel like I'm making some good headway on figuring out how my little girl works, and how to help her at least relax, if not fall asleep yet.  And yet I'm still going to be paying close attention to only giving it to her when we need to, or to relax her so she doesn't spiral downward when she's tired, but I want to also make sure she's getting good stimulation and play during her awake times (and before she starts getting tired) - I just hope I can help her learn to fall asleep more quickly cause otherwise I so far see the pacifier as the only way to go there, otherwise she so quickly gets so super upset.  Anyway though, it's a good start and I'm very happy that I can help her soothe herself now and get relaxed, I think it's a very good thing for her emotional development!  :)

Now here are a few more photos, some from awhile go - I'm catching up!  :)

November 2 (Elsa 1 1/2 weeks old) - Daddy cuddling our little sweetie, in her little baby ball which I love!  :)

November 11 (3 weeks old) - little Elsa sleeping in her car seat, and a tiny smile-look on her face!

Little crying face!

November 11 (3 weeks old) - Daddy and Elsa

November 12 (3 weeks old) - sleeping on the pillow after some skin-to-skin time with Mommy

November 17 (almost 4 weeks) - sleeping in her little swing

November 17 (almost 4 weeks) - dancing with Daddy (I have some SUPER CUTE video of this!) - and please forgive the awful-looking mattress standing up there, we need to move that so the photos can be good there!

November 17 (almost 4 weeks) - closeup of Elsa staring at the big computer screen while Daddy makes her dance!  :)

November 19 (4 weeks) - mommy and Elsa self-portrait.  Elsa wasn't too into it but so far it's my only self-portrait I've done, and I have basically no other good photos of the two of us together so I love this!

Good Day vs. Bad Day

Elsa at the mall with me today!!  :)

Today was a very good day!  Well especially compared to yesterday, so I was soooooo thankful for today!  I don't want to go into a ton of detail about yesterday because really it wasn't anything so bad or out of the ordinary at all, but yet emotionally I hit a wall and was so stressed/frustrated/scared/tired/etc. 

Some days it seems like Elsa cries, while not all the time, much of the time or most of the time.  I've never sat down and documented a day so I know what proportion of her awake time she's happy as opposed to fussy or crying, but it sometimes seems like the proportion is really overpowered by the fussy and crying times.  I usually manage okay or well and just go with the flow, but it does worry me sometimes and somehow yesterday I suddenly felt so overwhelmed with so many emotions and it kept spiraling downward.

I felt so frustrated that she seemed to be crying 90% of the time that she was awake.  I felt sad for the image I'd had in my mind all these years of me playing with a happy and cooing baby and how far that image was from our current reality.  I felt so guilty for feeling sad and frustrated.  I felt alone.  I felt like I was going to be trapped in the house by myself because how can I go out or be with friends when I have a fussy baby all the time.  I was so worried for the future if this is indicative of her temperament.  I felt so helpless in knowing what to do to work with her temperament and better prepare her for a good life.  I felt so guilty then at the negative thoughts and worries I was having about my self-diagnosed personality issues with my one-month-old.  And it went on and on.

Like I said at the beginning, nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday and she wasn't necessarily crying more than she had been before or more than usual, but it just really stressed me out for some reason at that time.  I talked to Jody on the phone and he could hear in my voice that I was emotionally exhausted.  I kept crying, I kept worrying and feeling frustrated, and I kept feeling guilty for feeling that way.  And I really just wanted her to stop crying.

My feelings started when she woke up in the afternoon after a long sleep and I took her upstairs to quickly take some 1-month-old photos.  I'd made the room super warm and was all ready, and she was so good for a few minutes and took some very cute and funny photos that I love, but then she started crying and I wrapped her up to keep her warm and tried everything - diaper, feeding, cuddling, burping, leg bends for gas, walking, bouncing her, rocking her, distracting her, etc.  This definitely isn't the first time at all that this has happened and yesterday it didn't even last that long compared to other times, but it was just so hard all of a sudden and I so wished I could just have a happy baby for more of the time instead of a crying and sometimes wailing one.  (And yes, I feel guilty even writing all this because I feel like this makes me a bad mom to have felt so overwhelmed and unhappy with her baby - I keep feeling like I should justify it more or add in more good things so people won't negatively judge me, but I'm trying also to not do that and just be honest that I was overwhelmed and I know it happens and logically I know it's okay and doesn't say anything bad about my love for my daughter or my mothering abilities.)

Elsa eventually fell asleep, pretty quickly actually - I could tell she was tired from her eyes but yet she'd just been sleeping for a long time and it often takes her a very long time to fall asleep, so I was really happy that at that time of all times, she fell asleep quickly.  And then I had a little victory in that I finally got to take some cute sleeping baby photos of her, I'd felt like such a failure for all the times I'd tried and she wouldn't be having any of it so not having any of the sweet photos of my own little daughter seriously made me feel awful as a photographer and mother.  So now I have some cute ones and I'm so thankful for what I was able to get!

Elsa woke up again after I'd taken some photos, and again started crying, and I got her all dressed and warm while she cried, and again did all the soothing and checking things I could think of, and while she wasn't wailing anymore, she was still fussing and starting to cry frequently.  So then I tried a pacifier/soother.  Jody and I talked on the phone about it beforehand and agreed that we would try that, and I'd wanted to hold out a month and she was one month that day so I felt fine about it.  It took a little bit of holding the pacifier in her mouth gently, but then she took it and started sucking and calmed right down, and I held her while she soothed herself for a good twenty minutes - it was SO peaceful and quiet and calming and I looked at her adorable little face and felt so thankful.  I then started skimming parts of the Baby Whisperer book (I've listened to the abridged audiobook a few times but I see now that there's way more info in the actual book) and saw that the author highly recommends using pacifiers so babies learn how to self-sooth, which is a really important emotional skill and it's good to teach them that skill early on in life.  That made me so happy to read and to know that pacifiers are actually a good thing!  Of course we won't overuse it, but now I understand the benefits and that it actually wasn't good to not give it to her earlier cause our baby can definitely benefit from it (whereas I'm sure there are some babies who have no need for it as well).

Anyway, Jody came home soon after that and we shared holding her as we always do, but he held her more than I did and gave me a break which I really needed.  I was still so emotional and crying often, and so worried about how she would be as she got older and if this early fussiness was a sign of much more to come.  It was a low for me for sure.

This morning Elsa woke up crying again but somehow I was in a much better mental state, even though I didn't get much sleep at all (my doing, not anything to do with Elsa).  I got her to stop crying which made me feel really good of course, and somehow everything was looking up and Elsa was pretty happy and I was happy.  I was also happy cause we were going to be making our first mommy-baby outing alone!  And I was so happy to be getting out of the house and starting to learn to be a mom to her in the big world and not just in our house.  We were meeting my friend Tavia (and her little girl Lucy) at the mall - yay!  Elsa somehow magically fell very asleep just a little before we left, so she was asleep even as I put her in her car seat!  And she slept for the ride there and for over two hours of us walking around!  She woke up just as Tavia was about to leave and I picked her up out of her car seat and she got fussy and started crying just as I was walking us into the family area and private breastfeeding room.

I spent a whole hour in there, mostly in the little room cause after eating, Elsa was fussy for awhile but I was managing to keep it contained and not let it get too out of control - or else she was just being pretty nice to me!  :)  I talked for awhile with another mom in the room who has a 4-month-old, and she made me feel so much better that it will get easier and better.  And really I didn't feel out of control, I felt like I was doing a good job with her in there.  And I loved too that while in there I realized just how much stronger her little neck has become so it's so easy for me to hold her different ways now like on my shoulder, and I also saw her touching more things which made me happy (I'll address all this in a different post on milestones!)!  She was so calm when I changed her diaper out in the main area, and then I went back in the breastfeeding room to relax her a little more before leaving.  I gave her the pacifier when she seemed sleepy and she actually went back to sleep!  So she didn't fuss when I put her in her car seat and she slept on the ride home and even during a quick errand into a store!  Then she kept sleeping after we got home and we even went back out on another errand (I left her in her car seat cause she was sleeping).

So from this morning, her schedule was: 7:30-9:00 - awake.  9:00-12:00 - asleep.  12:00-1:00 - awake.  1:00-5:00 - asleep.  5:00-10:00 - awake.  Yes, a 5-hour block of time tonight!  She was happy and so cute and sweet for the first maybe 3 hours.  Then the last two she was increasingly fussy and super fussy for the last hour.  One of her big problems I know is that she doesn't fall asleep easily.  I read that the average baby takes at least 20 minutes to fall asleep, and some children take much longer.  She'll be so tired and we know she needs to sleep but she just won't fall asleep and gets more and more unhappy with absolutely everything.  I think the pacifier helped at times for sure, but it also was a struggle getting her to accept it which is hard.  But she definitely is soothed by it most of the time once she takes it.  It definitely takes a lot of patience though when she's in her super-tired-super-fussy stages, and it really helps too when Jody is there so we can take turns holding our fussy baby.  I feel like us using a pacifier is a good first step, but we need to work at figuring out how to get her to fall asleep better otherwise I see many hard times ahead.  We talked about a couple different things today, and I want to read a few things in a couple books to see what they recommend.

So since she fell asleep at 10, and had some snacks throughout the evening, I'm guessing she'll probably start making her noises around 12:30 or 1:00 and I'll probably get up with her between 1:00 and 2:00.  (Elsa is really loud in her sleep!  She'll sleep quietly and soundly half the time, and the other half of the time she'll suddenly make loud chirping noises or grunts or such, all in her sleep but it wakes me up!)

Anyway, this got much much much much longer than I intended!  I guess I had a lot to say.  Certainly yesterday was a very hard day for me, and then today was such a good day and such a big thing for me that our first outing and errands went so well!  It definitely gives me much more confidence to be able to go out now, either for short errands or to the mall to walk around.  So it's a big deal and big accomplishment for me!!!

Oh one more thing!  This may be TMI if there's ever a guy who actually reads all of this but since I think it will mostly be just girls, and since this is my little place to write whatever I want, I'm mentioning it!  On Sunday I stopped wearing the ugly granny panties that I'd gotten for after-baby wear and went back to my normal little panties with just a pantyliner in them - and I don't think I'll have to wear the pantyliner for much longer at all - yay!!!  I feel so good not wearing those big things anymore!  I feel more like me again!  Now I just need to start losing the 20 pounds that's still there.  I think going to the mall and walking will help a little cause at least it's better than just being here in the house.  And in two more weeks I can start exercising any way I want again - I think my best bet will be to get a workout DVD and doing it 3 or 4 times a week here, and with little weights as well.  I hope that, combined with eating well and walking at the mall, will help a large part start to come off.  And I hope it happens soon cause I can only wear my maternity pants still - my butt is too big to fit into any pre-pregnancy pants, I hate that!  Go away butt!!!!

Okay that's all for my big couple days!  To finish up, I'll say how thankful I am to have had such a good day to follow my low of days.  I felt more in control today, I felt hopeful and happy and very very in love with little Elsa all day, and I didn't even feel any real frustration at all even tonight when she was really fussy, and that makes me so happy!

Little Elsa so cute in her car seat last Friday!  She looks like such a little angel, so so so adorable!!

Happy 1 Month B-day, little Elsa!!!

Our little girl is 1 month old today!  So crazy how it seems like just a couple weeks ago that I gave birth, but it also feels like she's been with us for more like 2 or 3 months, she's so part of our lives now.

Here are a few photos from Elsa's birthday - October 22, I love all these photos SOOOOOOOOO much!!!!!  I'll repost these as well as a bunch more when I post our birth story, but for now just a few from the couple hours after Elsa was born, oh such an absolutely amazing day!!!  :) :) (And yes I see that the larger photos overlap the column on the right but I don't care, the larger photos are better and I hope to change the template soon anyway!)

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

She had some seriously long fingernails already!  And you can't tell from this photo, but her little hands and feet actually looked kind of scary the first few days - they looked kind of red and scaly almost.  Then they started to fill out and had peeling skin for a week as the old smaller and dry skin was coming off.  She has adorable and perfect little baby hands and feet now!

She had SUCH a conehead!  And the top of her poor little head was all bruised, too - all from coming out facing upwards instead of downwards, which made the labor much harder on both of us.  We don't actually have a really good photo of just how much of a conehead she had, so this one sort of shows it!  :)

I LOVE this, Jody first holding his little girl (a little over an hour after she was born), and it looks like she's looking right at Daddy!  :)

Daddy protecting his little girl from the bright lights!

And here's one quick photo of Elsa from today, at 1 month old!!

This is definitely not the greatest photo of her but I had a limited time to take photos and then she wasn't having any more of it!

I have so many cute photos to post!!!  I should be able to get to them by the end of this week (and also posting a couple each day - I'll go through just a few at a time so I can post photos more frequently!)!

My sweet little girl at 3 weeks old!

She's soooooo cute!!!!  :) :) :)

Random iPhone photos 1 - sleep

This last one makes me laugh!  Elsa often makes faces in her sleep when she's not in a deep sleep - I sometimes think she's about to wake up but then she drifts back off again.  This was one such little face!  :)

Elsa's 4-week doctor check-up

Elsa had her second doctor appointment on Friday (two days ago).  She was 4 weeks old that day!

It was going to be my first solo outing with her, but it snowed a ton the night before so Jody didn't want me to have to drive on bad roads for my first time out with her which made me very happy (even though she slept the whole time there and back, but in case she had been crying the snow would have been double the stress).  So daddy came to her second doctor appointment, too!  I love these two photos of Jody with Elsa!  We had to get her undressed down to her diaper and he was cuddling her in her blanket to keep her warm!  :)  :)

So here are Elsa's current growth stats:

Weight
Birth: 6 lb, 3 oz
Her low weight after birth: 5 lb, 7 oz
2 weeks: just under 7 lb
4 weeks: 8 lb, 4 oz


Height
Birth: 19.25 inches
2 weeks: 19.25 inches
4 weeks: 20 inches


Head Circumference
2 weeks: 34.5 cm
4 weeks: 37 cm


I knew she had grown!  She still wears newborn size but a couple of the sleepers are really snug now in length, and she fits now in a couple of the smaller 0-3 month sleepers that were too big before (most of that size are still way too big though).  And she has a little double chin sometimes and her little legs look a tiny bit thicker than before!


I talked to the doctor about possible acid reflux - I had read about other babies having it, and over the past week or two Elsa had been spitting up a lot, she got the hiccups after almost every feeding, she sometimes cries after burping, and she sometimes chokes a little when eating.  When I googled infant acid reflux all these things were listed as symptoms.  So it was bothering me so much thinking she might be in pain (and I thought maybe it could explain some of her fussiness).  The doctor gave us a prescription for baby Zantac, we give her a syrup twice a day and I immediately noticed a difference!  She hasn't spit up nearly as much, that's the biggest thing by far, and she also hasn't gotten the hiccups as much.  I hope it keeps getting better, I'm so happy we have this now!  Poor Elsa hates it though!  :(  Her expression when I give her the syrup is actually so funny, it's the face of just hating the taste (it smells very pepperminty, but of course she's only ever had sweet breastmilk so I can see why she doesn't like it).  I should video her reaction cause it's so funny!


The doctor also showed us that Elsa had diaper rash - I'd seen it being red before sometimes but didn't know that it was that.  So we've been putting diaper rash cream on her now and maybe it's helping her feel a little better.


And we also talked about gas - cause Elsa definitely gets gas.  We often wake in the morning to Elsa pushing and straining and we hear poop but also farts, and sometimes at other times during the day she strains and pushes as well and sometimes we hear little farts.  But also sometimes she seems to be straining but nothing comes out, so I attribute at least some of her fussiness to gas discomfort.  I try doing baby bicycles with her but I've never gotten a fart out from that.  The doctor said it would help the gas move and get out though, so I'll keep doing them regularly and sometimes it seems to soothe or calm her.


I think that's all!  Her next appointment is on December 29, the day after we get back from Michigan.  She's getting her first shots that day.  I'm still not totally sure about my thoughts on vaccinations, but so far I can see the benefit in these early ones.  I still may decide to put them off a little though, but right now the plan is for her to have them.  I do plan right now though to put off the MMR shot when it's time for her to get it, that one is the one that scares me the most.


On the way home we got her passport photo taken!  It took a long time and may tries cause the requirements are so strict and yes, even for a newborn.  Her head had to be straight on so both ears could be seen, she had to be looking sort of towards the camera, and her mouth couldn't be wide open.  And her head had to be centered and the right size for the image, and you couldn't see any hands holding her head.  After lots of tries I think we have a good one, although it's so weird cause it doesn't look like her to me, I mean I could pick it out as her being my baby but she just looks SO different.  Also she's wearing the sleeper that I call her prison sleeper in it cause it's just gray and white lines, so it looks like such a little mug shot!  So funny!  Our little girl is getting her very first passport!!  :)  Here's a very funny photo Jody took - we first tried putting her in the bumbo seat but she was too little so the top of the seat was way showing which wouldn't be allowed, but we couldn't stop laughing at how funny she looked sitting in it, so tiny and also her expression was hilarious - she wasn't impressed!!!  :)  So cute and funny!!!

Okay that's the report on her doctor appointment!!  And here's one more photo - a silly little Elsa photo that I love, it makes me so happy when I see it!!  :)