One Month

My sweet baby girl, I can’t believe that you are already one month old. It seems unreal that time can move that fast. I want everything to slow down so that you can stay little forever, but I know that the best is yet to come. Here are some of the most amazing things about you during your first month…

You smiled for the first time. This very well could have been gas (and most probably was) but we were lucky enough to catch it on camera. This is our favorite picture of you so far and Mommy had it blown up and put onto a canvas so that we can look at it every day.

At birth you weighed 7 pounds and 13 ounces. You gained weight quickly (only losing one ounce after birth!) and at your one month check-up you were a whopping 10 pounds and 15 ounces. That puts you in the 95% percentile! You are right on track for height; measuring in at 20 inches at birth and 21 1/4 at your one month check-up.

You were in newborn diapers and clothes all the way up until about 3 weeks. The last week you transitioned into size 1 diapers and size 0-3 month clothes. We officially packed up all your newborn clothes, which was bittersweet for me. I saved one newborn onsie, your ‘going home’ outfit, and a newborn diaper to put into a shadow box for you so that someday you can see just how tiny you use to be.

You have a lot of nicknames. We like to call you Monkey, Little Lady, Pumpkin, Honey, and Baby girl. Your dad is sitting here and wants me to let you know that sometimes I call you Bubba…this is because I call Hudson, Bubba and sometimes it just slips out! Your dad is always quick to correct me though and remind me that you are the little lady. J

You don’t really have a schedule yet. We just pay attention to your cues and let you run the show. For the most part, you spend the day sleeping and are most awake at night (which makes me one tired Mommy during the day). You eat about every 2 hours and boy, do you love to eat. This is why you have been able to plump up so fast! We’ve only tried bottle feeding you a few times, which didn’t go so well…it turns out you like your milk nice and warm. We bought a bottle warmer for you, which made things go more smoothly, but you still prefer your milk from Mommy…Mommy prefers this too. J

In your first two weeks you loved to be swaddled…we would often double swaddle you, which always seemed to the do the trick and calm you right to sleep. However, in the last two weeks, you have seemed to fight the swaddle. You really love having your arms out so we swaddle you without them tucked in. However, you are still in the stage where your arms will flail around and scare you awake…so you sometimes get a little fussy and upset when you are woken up by your arms. You will start to be more aware of your arms in the next couple months though, so that will get better.

You’ve had quite a few milestones this month! You smiled for the first time and you gave a small laugh for the first time. It wasn’t a deep belly laugh, but it was enough to make us laugh with you. You have amazing neck strength and have impressed your pediatricians with being able to hold your head up like a 2 month old baby! You’ve been very good about making eye contact this past week and I love being able to look into your beautiful blue eyes. Your umbilical cord fell off in your third week and we were very happy parents because it was starting to get a little smelly.

You aren’t playing with toys yet…however, you love your wubbanubs. We make sure we have at least one of these wherever we go, because they can usually calm you right down. You love holding onto the little animal at the end, but this sometimes causes you to pull the pacifier out of your mouth…which makes you a little upset. You also seem to like your swing. We can’t tell if you love it, but you seem to sit very contently in it and watch Mommy get ready for the day. You also love looking at the patterns on your little book that you got from the hospital in New York, and on the back of Jacques the Peacock. These only hold your attention for a minute or two though. More than anything, right now you seem to just love looking around. If you start getting a little fussy, Mommy and Daddy will just walk you around the room and show you different things. Sometimes you just like to lie on your changing table and look out the window. You are a very curious baby so far.

We have introduced you to Hudson, but you both don’t seem to have any interest in each other yet. You just like looking around you and have a hard time focusing on the speedy little fur-ball; while Hudson is only interested in treats and Daddy (he really loves Dad). We’ll try again in a few weeks and see how you two adjust to each other.

You’ve been in great health so far. You had a case of milia when you were born…we like to call them ‘pearls’…apparently these little pearls will be with you for a few months. You sneeze a lot, but the doctors assured us that this is normal for infants, since you are still trying to get fluid out of your nose from when you were inside my tummy.

We did have one scary incident with you when you were almost 3 weeks old. We had to take you to New York because your great-grandma was very sick. When we got to New York, you stopped breathing and gave me and your Grammy a heart attack! We rushed you to the hospital, where they transferred you by ambulance to another hospital and admitted you into the NICU. It was heart breaking for me to see your tiny little body on the stretcher in the ambulance, and to see you in pain when they had to draw blood. You spent 48 hours in the NICU hooked up to monitors while Mommy never left your side. Even though you were only 2 weeks old and had no idea what was going on, I couldn’t bear the thought of you being upset and I wanted to make sure you knew you weren’t alone. Your nurses were very nice and let me sleep in a rocking chair next to you; they even brought me all my meals so that I didn’t ever have to leave you. All the nurses in the NICU absolutely loved you. They always came over and wanted to play with you and hold you. Everything turned out okay…nothing came up on the monitors, so we think you just had a choking episode. You seemed to love your stay at the NICU though…the nurses all joked that we’d have to go home and buy you an incubator because you seemed to enjoy just basking in the heat lamp. J

You’ve had a lot of firsts this month (pretty much everything!) but some significant ones are: your first overnight hospital stay, first airplane ride (you did amazing and slept through all our flights), first car trip, first outing with just Mommy, first visit to another state, first bath (you did not love these at first, but have since warmed up to them), first walk in the stroller, and first tummy time (which you only tolerate for at most 5 minutes at a time).

 First Bath

 Second Bath

We’ve had a lot of great times with you so far, but I think my favorite has been seeing you meet your great-grandma. She fell in love with you the minute she saw you and kept talking about you for the rest of our visit. We could only bring you in for a few minutes, because I was worried about you getting sick from hospital germs…but we got a picture of you meeting her and a picture of four generations of us. I know this will be a picture we frame and put up around the house.

Those are all our updates for your first month. Like I said, I can’t believe you are already one month old! Watching you observe and take in the things around you is absolutely amazing and makes my job as your Mom that much more rewarding. I loved you the second I found out that you were growing in my tummy and the moment I saw you, my love grew times a million. Each day I think that there is no way I could love you more than I already do, but each day I continue to love you more and more. You are truly the missing piece to our lives and I can’t imagine not having you here. It feels like you have always been a part of our little family. I love you so much little monkey and I can’t wait to see what month 2 has in store for us!

Love,

Mommy