Mia, Month One

Stats:

Weight: At birth, Mia weighed 6 pounds and 15 ounces. When we left the hospital, she had gone down to 6 pounds 9 ounces. At her one week check up, she was 6 pounds 12 ounces, and at 2 weeks, she was 7 pounds 3 ounces. She doesn’t have another doctor’s appointment until next month, but when I stand on the scale and hold her, my weight goes up 9 pounds, so I’m going to assume she’s somewhere in that neighborhood.

Height: She was 17.5 inches long at birth and is now 22 inches long. Tall girl!

Size: Mostly 0-3 months for clothes. She can still fit into a few outfits that are newborn size, but she’s pretty quickly outgrowing them. She’s still in newborn diapers.

Appearance: Mia currently has strawberry blonde hair and still has those newborn, grayish-blue eyes. She’s so beautiful! She has two birthmarks on her face; one on her forehead and one just above her left eye. The doctor says these will probably fade as she ages. She also has the ‘stork-bite’ birthmark on the back of her head. She has a lot of Jason’s features (face shape, toes, ears, etc.) but she does have my nose!

Food:

Mia is exclusively breastfed. While we were in the hospital, I had to supplement a little bit with formula because my milk hadn’t come in yet and the colostrum that I was producing wasn’t enough for her. I have not had to use formula since I came home from the hospital. She only nurses, but I have started pumping a few times a week and freezing the breast milk.

She eats approximately every 3-4 hours for about 15-20 minutes, but this has varied greatly. Her longest stretch between feedings was 6 hours (that was a GREAT night!) and her shortest stretch was about 15 minutes. Sometimes she’ll nurse for as long as 45 minutes, but that’s only happened a handful of times.

We’re not really on a set schedule for nursing. I feed her when she’s hungry.

I’ve learned (the hard way) that I can’t eat anything chocolate or drink anything caffeinated. Bummer!

Sleep:

The first few weeks, Mia pretty much did nothing but sleep during the day. She’s started having more alert times during the day in the past week which is nice. For those first few weeks I only saw her eyes if she was eating! Even now, she still spends most of the day asleep with 20-30 minute stretches of being awake (usually right before or right after a feeding).

She sleeps pretty well at night, but getting her down is tricky. Usually, she starts getting wide-eyed around 8 or 9 pm. She won’t really go to sleep until about midnight. We have had a few bad nights where she was awake until 3 or 4 in the morning crying nonstop. We think she had bad gas those nights. As I mentioned, at night she’s usually up every 3-4 hours to eat. Guess she’s a night owl like her mom used to be!

We currently have her sleeping in our bedroom in the pack-n-play bassinet. We’ll probably keep her in our room until she’s sleeping longer stretches since her bedroom is on the other side of the house. I’m not sure how long this will take, but I don’t mind having her in our room for now J

She will not take a pacifier. At all.

Milestones:

Obviously, Mia can’t roll over from back to front yet, but she can roll from her back to her side. Half-way there, baby girl!

She has started to discover her hands. She’s been putting them in her mouth more lately.

She loves staring at lights and ceiling fans!

She’s also more vocal than she was at the beginning of the month (other than crying). She makes some pretty funny noises and has started cooing a little. She grunts a lot, and has one noise that we’ve deemed the “horse noise” because she sounds like a horse when she makes it. We generally get this sound when we pick her up.

Her umbilical cord stump fell off at 3 weeks.

Things I want to remember about this month:

-          The feeling I had after delivering her when they put her next to me for the first time. She looked right at me. Love at first sight exists, and that was it.  

-          The noises she makes when she’s breastfeeding. They’re so sweet!

-          The feeling I had when I brought her home from the hospital. I started crying (happy tears) the moment I walked in the door.

-          How content she looks in the bathtub. She never cries, but just sits there looking happy and confused all at once.

-          How mad she gets when we suction out her nose. That’s when she cries the hardest!

-          How she loves sleeping on my chest or Jason’s.

-          How she always turns her head when she hears my voice if I’m not the one holding her.

-          Seeing Jason as a daddy. I know now, more than ever, that I chose the right person to share my life with.  He’s incredible.

-          How she has this one little clump of hair on the top of her head that always seems to be standing up.

-          Seeing my parents and Jason’s become grandparents. It’s been a pretty amazing transformation.

-          How she always does at least 3 sneezes in a row. Sometimes as many as 7!

-          Her adorable hiccups. I can’t help but laugh (and then subsequently feel bad afterwards) when she has them. 

And now, some photos from her first month!

Newborn photo shoot

Headed home from the hospital

A rare moment- awake during the day!

2 week doctor's appointment

Relaxing with Daddy