Molly - 1 month old

So, my freshly baked newborn babe?  Turned 1-month-old nearly a week ago now.

I can't believe how quickly that first month went!

But, then again.  Jack turned 3-years-old just today and WOW!  Did 3 years go by quickly!  I've definitely found that time seems to go by a lot faster now that I have kids.

Miss Molly has been very, very kind to us.  I don't think we could have asked for a better transition to a family of four and I owe that ease to both of my kids.  First, Molly is a dream baby.  I thought Jack was an easy to average baby, but Molly is definitely in the easy category.

First bath - 2 weeks

Tummy time!

Most importantly to any newborn parent - she sleeps!  She never seemed to have her days and nights confused (surprising!) so has always slept for decent stretches at night.  She's getting up 1 to 2 times overnight and has since she arrived home from the hospital, but she has always just wanted to eat and go back to sleep.  I don't think it gets much better than that starting out!

 Overall she just has a very sweet, content disposition and I can't wait to see how her little personality develops over time.

Jack is doing wonderfully as a big brother.  For the first few days he was certain that Molly was actually his 3-month-old cousin Rilynn.  Then he realized that no, this was a different baby and that she was staying at our house permanently, but thankfully he took it in stride.  90% of the time he completely ignores her, which I don't blame him for.  It's not like a weeks old baby has much to offer a 3-year-old little boy!  But the other times, when he does acknowledge her as a person, he's pretty sweet with her.  Obviously we're still undergoing this whole transition, but so far it has gone very smoothly.  He hasn't seemed jealous, or really effected by it too much overall.  I think it really helps having Mark home.  Although there are times when he wants to sit with me or something when he'll say, "please put Molly down".  It's pretty cute, and at least he asks nicely!

First social smiles - 5 weeks

Of course it's still very early, but I have to say I feel like, for me, the transition from 1 to 2 kids was easier than going from no kids to 1.  Not that the first one was especially hard, but it certainly turned my world on its head!  I feel like we've eased right in to having 2 little ones.  Obviously we're still exploring our new normal, but overall I just think it's been easier because I'm already a mom.  We still have a long road ahead of us though so we'll see how it all shakes out! 

For now, I'm very much enjoying all the baby snuggles.  I'm all too aware of how quickly this sweet little baby stage flies by!  


1 month stats:

     Weight: 9lbs 1oz (50th percentile)
     Length:  21 inches (50th percentile)
     Head Circumference: 15 inches (75th percentile)


Of note this month:

Molly lost her umbilical cord 1 day shy of 2-weeks-old and had her first real bath soon after.  She cried during her first bath, but didn't cry for her 2nd!  She also stopped crying during diaper changes a week or so ago.

We did have some trouble with her belly button healing.  As I said, she lost her cord around 2 weeks, which is totally normal.  We put her into cloth diapers once she lost her cord (which come up over her belly button unlike the disposable diapers we were using) and we noticed that her belly button just seemed to not have healed all the way.  It was oozing a little bit of liquid and was poking out quite a bit, kind of like an outie, but it didn't look like a healed outie belly button would.  Because it didn't seem infected or anything we decided to put her back in disposables for a little bit to see what her belly button would do in case the cloth diapers covering it were irritating the situation, and it definitely wasn't allowing it to stay dry. 

Over about a week's time her belly button healed up on its own.  I don't know why it didn't heal in the first place, but the cloth diapers rubbing it and keeping the area damp definitely didn't help anything.  It was totally healed up by her 4th week and the pediatrician checked it out at her 1 month appointment and says it looks just fine, thank goodness!  And she's back in cloth :) 

Breastfeeding is totally done now.  We were trucking along doing both breast- and formula-feeding, but when Molly hit 3 weeks she just stopped latching.  I assume drinking from a bottle so often just undermined her natural instinct to latch.  I had mixed feelings about it.  I was sad that it was over, but at the same time I expected it. 

I was also kind of glad to just move on because even though I was glad to give her breastmilk while I could (and to the extent that I could) it was pretty stressful because every time she latched it was like, is there milk there?  Is this the last time we'll nurse?  When she didn't latch (because even while things were going well with her going back and forth between breast and bottle there would be an occasional feeding when I just couldn't get her to latch for whatever reason.  I assume to a certain extent she already knew that the bottle was coming if she bypassed the breast.) it was really sad because I didn't know if it was just over at that point or if it would work the next time we tried.  Plus it's just hard knowing that I couldn't provide what I needed for her and every short nursing session we had that had to be followed up with formula was a stark reminder that I wasn't able to get the job done.  I really wish that we had been able to continue nursing for longer, but I am at least glad that we were able to do it for 3 weeks.  Now we start down the very long path of exclusive formula-feeding :/