One Month Old!

My sweet girl is one month old today!  The past month has gone by so so quickly, and yet in some ways, bringing her home from the hospital seems like a lifetime ago.  We’ve spent the past 30 days getting to know our little girl, so I wanted to write down some of the things that we’ve noticed so far. 

Hadley is definitely full of personality.  The nurses in the hospital told us that from day one, the newborn photographer confirmed it, and we continue to see more and more of it each day.  She has no problem letting us know when she is not happy about something – the trick is figuring out what that is. 

Our days consist of waking up to eat (usually around 5 or 6am) – then me trying to get her to go back to sleep for a morning nap, although she usually is wanting to be awake for awhile, so sometimes we’re up until the next feeding around 8 or 9, and then we take a nap.  In between eating and napping, we play dress up, read books, have tummy time, chat (also known as grunting to Hadley) and cry.  She’s a bit of a high-maintenance girl and has some definite bouts of fussiness… I’m just praying we outgrow it eventually!  In the meantime, I don’t mind “maintaining” her .  I don’t think we’ve gotten a true smile out of her yet, but there have been some really good coincidences of one of us talking to her and a smile, so I think we’re really close.  I can’t wait for smiles every day! 

She is a great eater – I will find out tomorrow how much she weighs (maybe I will update this post after her doctor’s appointment with her weight gain), but the girl definitely likes her food.  She went through a growth spurt around 2 weeks and was wanting to eat non-stop around the clock, and I think she’s been going through another growth spurt the past day or two.  She eats for anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes about 7-10 times a day.  We’re not really on much of a schedule yet, but she will go anywhere from an hour and a half to 4 hours between feedings (from the start of one to the start of the next).  Last night was a BIG milestone – her present to all of us for her one month birthday was sleeping from midnight until 6am!!  (She woke up once around 4 and I turned on the vibration in her pack-n-play to see if she would go back to sleep, and next thing I knew it was 6!)  I’m not holding my  breath that this will happen again anytime soon, but it’s good to know she has it in her! Typically, she is up about 2 times through the night to eat -  so between the length of time that takes and a diaper change, I get about 4-5 hours of broken-up sleep.  I am thoroughly exhausted, but she is so worth it.  

UPDATE: Her stats after her doctor’s appointment are:

Weight: 10 pounds 3 ounces (I told you the girl likes to eat!)

Height: 22 3/4 inches long

She is now in size one diapers and can still fit into most of her newborn outfits, but is wearing more and more of the size 0-3 month.  I actually put on a newborn outfit today and almost couldn’t get the pants over her big diaper bottom!  I think we are about to have to retire some of the newborn clothes!

She can follow a toy with her eyes and has just started noticing the toys on the mobile in her swing.  If I had written this yesterday, I would have said she didn’t like her swing, but she is currently sleeping peacefully in it, so I will eat my words! 

She doesn’t mind tummy time if it’s on her boppy, but she really hates it just on a blanket on the floor.  She only lasts for a couple minutes, but the girl has a strong neck!  She will raise her head all the way up and look around for close to 10 seconds at a time! 

I realize these “milestones” don’t mean much to the average person, but I think it will be fun to look back on this to see where she was and how far she has come in a few years. 

I’ll leave you with some pictures I took to commemorate her one-month birthday!  You can see from the pictures that she only wanted to nap at first, and mom clicking away on the camera was NOT working for her.  We took a break and napped and then tried again.  The second try worked much better than the first.