Three Weeks Old

Julie is three weeks old today. I can hardly believe how fast the time has gone. She's already grown and changed so much just in these first 21 days of her life. She's already developing a little personality and it's hard to remember how life was before she was born. I'm already in the fourth week of my twelve week maternity leave, and we've settled into a little routine. :o)

So far, Julie has been a pretty good sleeper and an extremely good eater. She was 7 lbs, 8 ounces when she was born, and by the the time we went to the doctor on Monday, when she was 5 days old, she was already 8 lbs, 1 ounce. The next week, she was up to 8 lbs, 6 ounces. She only eats about every 4 hours, though, which is longer between meals than they told me she'd go...but when she eats, she has about 4 ounces, which is more than they said she'd eat too. I asked the doctor about it, and he said to let her eat however much she wanted whenever she wanted, so all is good. The breastfeeding hasn't gone as well as I would have hoped, and the first two weeks, I mostly just pumped and bottle-fed her (both breastmilk and formula). The last week, though, we've tried the breastfeeding again, and Julie has actually taken to it better than I would have thought. We're still supplementing with formula, but at least she's getting some of the health benefits from the breastmilk. I'm probably not going to keep up with it once I go back to work, though, because it's just going to be too much work to try and pump at work and refrigerate/freeze the milk and get it to Jake's mom to feed to her etc etc etc.

Speaking of breastfeeding benefits, though, I think it's really helping with my weight loss. As of last Friday, I weighed 184.5! I was 212 when I delivered Julie, so that means that I'm down the 21 lbs that I gained with the pregnancy, plus 6.5 more lbs! That puts me on a good track to hit my 30 lb weight loss goal for the year.

Julie's such a good baby. She's had a couple of nights already where she's slept through the entire night, meaning that she didn't wake up before our alarm went off at 4 am. :o) Overall, though, she does sleep well. We've just got to figure out how to get her to sleep in the bassinet each night. Some nights, she does it with no problem, but most of the time, she ends up sleeping in our bed in my arms. It's hard to let her sleep in the bassinet when she's constantly fussing and I keep having to sit up to tend to her. I try to keep her pretty quiet because I want to let Jake get as much sleep as possible since he has to go to work each day.

We've already had a few instances of exploding diapers. That was definitely an adventure. :o) Jake hasn't changed any diapers yet, but he's a great helper when the accidents happen. He's done all but the first baths at home. So when Julie needs to be bathed, I strip her off (and wipe her rear if needed) and then he does the bath. She does really well with him bathing her.

She's also getting more and more alert. She can hold her head up really well, though she's still working on neck control. She loves to look around, though I don't know how far her vision goes yet. She also likes to nuzzle up to our faces and lick us on the nose. It's the cutest thing. Oh, and we also call her our chicken baby, because she always makes this chicken noise when she gets upset. She also occasionally makes pig noises. She sounds like she lives on the farm, which I guess is appropriate considering her nursery has a farm theme.

That's pretty much the update on life with Julie thus far. Hopefully I'll start updating more frequently, and can keep everyone up-to-date on her life better than I've done so far. :o) I make no guarantees, but I'll do my best. Such is the life of a busy mommy!