Lilly – One Month Update!

Our sweet Lilly girl is ONE MONTH OLD today! Oh my goodness. I can’t believe it. It’s amazing how time flies when you’re not pregnant. And now we are at that point where I want time to slow down. Lilly is growing so much every day and I just can’t handle how much I love her and how cute she is and how much she is changing.

Here’s baby Lilly’s one month update:

Weight: 10 pounds 1 ounce – such a big girl!

Length: 21.25″ long

Head Circumference: 38 cm

Nicknames: Lilly boo. Baby boo. Beebeeboo. Lilly pad. Lilliputian. Putian. Skimption (John calls her that sometimes). Lil. #LillStill. Boo boo. Lills. Monkey.

Sleep: We’ve had her in her crib since night one home from the hospital. I know a lot of new parents have the baby sleep in their room, but honestly, our room is so small, I don’t know where we’d put her. We really have no room! Plus, we figured it would be much easier on us and her if we had her in her crib from the beginning and avoid the stress of transitioning her down the road. So, that has worked out quite well actually. When she sleeps, she likes sleeping in her crib. She does LOVE naps on mommy or daddy though… and we love them, too.

Her sleep is erratic… we’ve tried to get her down to bed earlier, and some nights it’s great and super easy and other nights it’s a 4-5 hour process to get her to go to bed. Not an exaggeration. Some nights I will put her down at 8pm and it’ll be 1am or 2am before she’ll actually go to sleep. Then, other nights, she’ll go RIGHT to sleep, but then at her 2am or 3am feeding, she REFUSES to go back to sleep. So that means I’m up for 2 hours trying to get her to go back to bed after I feed her.

Now, I’m not counting my chickens because I KNOW this won’t last, but Sunday night she slept a 6 hour stretch and Monday night she slept a 7 hour and 20 minute stretch! Granted, I only got about 4.5-5 hours of that 7:20, but dear Lord I felt like I new woman! I was actually worried at first, but her pediatrician said to let her sleep as long as she wants.

Eating: So thankful that Lilly nurses like a champ! I’d like to say she’s on a consistent every 3 hour schedule, but that’s not the case. I am feeding her on demand, and homegirl demands A LOT. Sometimes it’s every 3 hours, sometimes it’s every hour, sometimes I feel like I’m just always feeding her. It just depends. Her sessions range from 15 minutes on one side to sometimes as long as 30-40 minutes on ONE side!

I am trying to pump at least once or twice a day, too – mainly so I have a supply in case I need to be away from her and / or so John can start giving her a bottle once a day so they can have that time together.

Breastfeeding wasn’t easy at first. Since I labored for a long time and ended up with a c-section, it took a whole lot longer for my supply to come in. So, Lilly lost a full pound in the hospital (12% of her body weight) and the pediatricians were worried. I had a feeling everything would be fine, but they were pressuring me to supplement her with formula which I did NOT want to do. Thankfully, I have awesome friends who are also breastfeeding and one of them was able to give me some donor milk. Luckily we only had to supplement two feedings because my milk started coming in the night we got home from the hospital! It took a couple of days after that to really get the hang of things, but we’re on the right track now.

Those couple days in the hospital were tough though – LOTS of tears shed. It’s hard to not feel bad about yourself when you’re the sole nourishment for your baby and doctors are telling you that she isn’t getting enough. I’m so thankful that she’s doing well now though!

Diapers: Since we’re using cloth diapers it’s been a big trial of what we like and what we don’t like. She’s still wearing all the newborn sized diapers I have (Lil Joey, The Little Bee, and Bum Genius XS), she’s also fitting into her small FuzziBunz well and she’s started fitting in some of the other one-sized diapers. The older velcro / hook and loop BumGenius one-size diapers I have aren’t even close to fitting her… they are huge in the thigh. I’m so glad we’re cloth diapering though – the amount of money I know we’ve saved already is insane!

Clothing: Lilly is still fitting in mostly newborn clothes and a few 0-3 month outfits that are on the smaller side. I have only had to put a few of her newborn items away that she’s grown out of… but they are REALLY small. A lot of her 0-3 month outfits and 3 month clothes are still way too big, so she’s in kind of a weird middle area. She only has one pair of shoes that fit… homegirl has more shoes than I do!

We had purchased some gender neutral clothes before we knew she was a girl, but I swear, the second she popped out and we found out she was a girl, the amount of girl clothes we’ve gotten is insane. Homegirl has more clothes than I do (and her outfits are cuter, too!). Trust me, I’m NOT complaining though! I LOVE it.

Mood: Overall she is a SUPER content and happy baby. She smiled before she was even 2 weeks old! She certainly has her fussy moments (daily), but can be comforted most of the time. There have only been a few instances where I’ve really run out of ideas on how to comfort her. If she’s crying, you can pretty much bet she’s either wet, hungry, gassy, or tired. We’re learning what each cry means to better figure out how to comfort her or what she needs.

Loves:

• Cuddling on mommy or daddy’s chest – she pretty much snuggles right up!
• Her comfort rocker and her swing – we use the rocker primarily in the kitchen while we’re eating dinner or when I’m doing laundry. The swing I take around the house – she’ll sit in it when I’m getting ready in the bathroom or if we’re doing work in the living room and she just kinda wants to hang out.
• The Moby wrap. My sweet friend Kristin loaned me her old Moby wrap and I’ve finally gotten the hang of how to tie it / wrap it. She pretty much goes RIGHT to sleep if I put her in it. She loves being held close. It’s been helpful for when I need to calm her down and I need to get something done like fix dinner or do some work.
• Being swaddled. I’ve tried different swaddlers, but the SwaddleMe velcro blankets help A LOT at night!
• Staring at things – she’s super alert and loves to look at things very intently. Some of her favorite things to stare at are the big clock in the living room, a canvas photo from our wedding, the curtains in her room, the Zebra photo above her changing table, and the multi-colored basket hanging on her wall.

Doesn’t Love:

• The sound of a toilet flushing – it startles her every time! It makes nursing her in the nursing station in the bathroom at church difficult… lol!
• Most of the pacifiers we’ve given her. We just introduced a pacifier to her in the last week and I’ve found that there’s only ONE kind of pacifier she will take. So, we now have like 10 pacifiers that’ll never get used. Haha!
• Getting dressed / undressed. She almost always starts crying.

What I Want to Remember:

• How stinking cute she is when she coughs and sneezes. I know that sounds terrible, but the faces she makes when she does ARE SO CUTE.
• I love when she wakes up in the morning and it’s light outside so I’ll bring her in our room to feed her. I’ll lay down with her and breastfeed her that way and John is on the otherside of her and it’s just our morning family snuggle time. I love those moments.
• Sometimes when she’s super alert and feeding, she does this weird hilarious thing where she like attacks my nipple with her mouth. I know, this sounds incredibly weird and super creepy and I swear it’s not. It’s also INCREDIBLY hard to describe in words. But trust me, it’s hilarious, and I don’t want to forget it.
• I love the little noises she makes. Her little snorts, her little grunts, her little coos. They’re all the best.
• When she really cries, she does this incredibly sad lip quiver and her bottom lip comes up over her top lip and it’s the cutest saddest thing ever.
• Her smiles. All of them.
• Homegirl is STRONG. She’s been lifting her head from day one and her head control is great. But her arms and her legs are STRONG. If you hold her up, she’ll stand and push her legs up. It’s crazy!
• Her umbilical cord stump fell off August 30th – the same day she smiled for the first time!
• This is totally going to be used for blackmail later on in life – but this girl has the LOUDEST farts and poops. Gross, I’m aware. But it is hilarious that something SO LOUD and violent sounding can come out of something so cute and small.

Mommy: I’m doing well! I’m 4 and a half weeks PP (post-partum) now and I’m starting to feel human. Walking and stairs no longer hurt, but coughing and sneezing still really hurt my incision. I’ll also bend a strange way or something and that hurts. Getting out of bed still isn’t super easy – incision and hip pain. :-/

I’ve only had a few crying spells – but over small things. I mostly just cry at how much I freaking LOVE her. It’s hard to contain sometimes.

I’m officially back to work this week – I’m working from home part-time now and it’s been going well so far. I’m getting work done while Lilly naps and at night when John is home and can take care of her for a little bit.

I’ve lost about 35 pounds so far, but I’ve got at least another 30 to go to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight… and I’d like to lose another 10 beyond that. So, I’m making progress, but I’m being patient. It took 10 months to put on the weight, it’s not going to come off overnight. So, while I don’t love the way my body looks, I’m embracing it because it did a pretty awesome and miraculous thing making a human baby.

Clothing… now that’s a whole ‘nutha struggle.

Daddy: John is amazing. He loves Lilly so much and is such a good “deddy” to her. He’s in charge of bathtime and he’s loving that. He also just loves skin-to-skin with her and laying her on his chest. Seeing him hold her is pretty much the greatest and my heart explodes. He’s also a diaper changing master and handles spit up well.

I’m trying to do a better job of letting him do things and waking him up when I need help with her at 4am rather than trying to do it all myself. I know that’s a big struggle for me – letting people help – especially my husband, but we are a team and I’m working on it!

What I’m Looking Forward To: We’ve got a lot of fun trips coming up! Visiting family, visiting my college, Thanksgiving, Christmas – so much to look forward to for all of Lilly’s firsts. BUT, I’m treasuring the NOW, rather than looking forward to the future. I want to cherish every moment now because I know it won’t last long.

Lilly’s Daily Photos:

A few Lilly videos:

Happy One Month, Lilly girl!

Linked up with Shanna.