One month

I can hardly believe it.  Annabella is one month old today.  She has grown and changed so much in the past month.  

This picture was taken this past Saturday right before we took Annabella on her first walk, which she loved.  I hope we get some warmer weather so we can take her on a few more walks this fall.

Annabella's personality is showing more and more.  She loves to snuggle and sleep on my chest, but she hates to be messed with once she's asleep.  If I lean down to give her a kiss on her forehead and I disturb her sleep, she throws her head back and grunts.  She's also looking around more and smiling.  I think she might actually be starting to smile in response to my smile, which is super cool.  And now when she looks at me, I can see her actually focusing on my face and listening to my voice.  And she's beginning to coo.  

She also is growing like a weed.  I didn't realize how scrawny she was at the hospital until we got her home and she started adding some meat to her bones.  At the hospital the skin on her hands and feet was literally hanging off her bones.  There was just nothing under it.  Skin and bones.  Now she's got chubby little fingers and toes.  Her face has filled out a bunch too (especially the cheeks), and she looks so much longer to us.  Her clothes are also fitting better, and she's even outgrown her first pair of socks.  She's still smaller than some newborns, but to me she looks huge.

Also her eyes seem to be getting darker and her hair is getting lighter.  She looks like she'll be a blond baby soon.

Watching her grow so quickly is bittersweet.  I'm really looking forward to when she's more interactive, but I feel like time is slipping through my fingertips.  She already needs me less than before.  She's holding her head up more and more and can take a bottle.  Just one short month ago she was in my belly and dependent on me for everything.  So yeah, I cried when she lost her umbilicol cord, and I saved it (although this could have more to do with the fact that she lost the cord at 1 week and that I was pretty emotionally raw right then...)  And I cried when she took that first bottle.  One short month ago I wouldn't have understood why somebody would cry at these things, but now I do.  It's both exciting and hard to see your baby start to grow up.

One thing I'm really looking forward to is more sleep, which I'm hoping will come soon.  Sometimes holding her and snuggling with her is the best feeling in the world.  And sometimes I'm just so desperate for sleep that I can't even take in the moment, even if I try.  And crying in the middle of the night when I'm up yet again to breastfeed is pretty much par for the course right now.  

All in all though, being Annabella's mom is the best thing that's happened to me.  I love her so much my heart aches when I look at her.  

Delirium

I used to dream I was drinking Diet Coke.  

Now I dream that I'm feeding my baby.  Realizing in my sleep that I'm asleep and therefore probably crushing my baby, I wake up in a panic, feel that my front is wet with milk, and that I'm hugging a pillow to my chest.  I look and look for the baby, and finally remember that she's either in her bassinet or downstairs being held by someone else.  

Last night I quit waking up in a panic and instead later believed that I'd actually fed her.  Which almost led to her being put back to bed hungry.  It took several minutes of awake reasoning to figure out that I really hadn't fed her in hours.  

I don't know how single mothers do this.  I couldn't do this without Jason.

Besides almost starving my child due to exhaustion induced delirium, things are good here.  Annabella seems healthy and happy, and she's starting to sleep more and more on her back at night.  

I used to say that we were having problems because Annabella wouldn't sleep through the night unless she was being held, and people would look at me funny and say that we couldn't really expect that...  "Through" turned out to not be the right word.  "During" would have been the word of choice there.  Annabella wouldn't sleep during the night unless she was being held.  

So now that she's starting to do better and better with that, we are all managing a little better.  

Being a new mom is both awesome and hard.  Some days I can't say enough about how perfect she is.  Some days I feel like I'm going to die unless I get more sleep soon.

Today falls somewhere between those 2 extremes...

Above birth weight

Annabella passed her birth weight on Monday, weighing in at 5lbs and 15oz. This is great news because it means we can let her feed on demand instead of trying to force feed her every 3 to 4 hours. Hopefully this will help Amber and I get some longer uninterrupted sleep.

Here's Annabella's favorite sleeping position, difficult to keep up all the time, but awfully cute and adorable.




And one more cute picture of her from the hospital:

Annabella Grace

Just wanted to update everyone with her name. She also had her first pediatric appointment today and everything is going well. We are still so in love with her.