The Laubster Tale: May 2013

As you all know, Nora was a big ol' baby from the get go...but since her birth, while she's still BIG, she's not AS big as one would expect. By that, I mean that she hasn't been gaining as much weight as her Dr would like her to have, and that's been the case for the past several weeks.

I wrote at one point that her initial weight check, 2 days after being released from the hospital, was excellent, but since then her progress has slowed. She isn't LOSING weight by any means, and has actually been gaining a consistent 1oz per day (At her last appointment she actually gained a little MORE than 1 oz per day, gaining a total of 17 ounces in 13 days). Babies all lose weight after they're first born; anywhere up to 10% of their total body weight is considered normal. By their 2 week check up, Dr's expect the baby to have gained enough weight to be back at their birth weight. Nora did not do that. She did it by week 3, but by being slow to that first weight check, she's basically been 1 week behind in her gaining. Because of this, we've had to supplement 2 bottles a day with formula. So that means I've been breastfeeding her on demand as she needs it, but then twice a day I give her 4oz of formula when she's not asking for it (One in the afternoon and then one at night before bed). Even with all of that, she hasn't gained enough to satisfy the dr. This week I took Nora in for her third weight check and the dr still wasn't happy with her progress, so we are now on a new kind of crazy plan. I'm still nursing her during the day every 2-3 hours and then after every other feeding I give her a bottle (however much she will take - I always offer her a 4oz bottle) and then I also do the 2 additional formula bottles as we were doing before. It is a LOT of food to be giving her. Holy cow...I feel like all I've done all day is feed, feed and FEED her. It's kind of crazy. But, if this will get her up to where the Dr wants her to be then we'll continue to do it.

I decided to take a picture of her today and I'm going to try to do this every day until Thursday so I can see if there are any obvious physical changes in my chunk-o-munk.

Is that the face, and are those the thighs, of someone who isn't getting enough? The jury is still out...

Just wanted to keep you all updated on her!

I can't believe it's been 1 month since our chunky nugget entered this world! It's flown by but we've really loved (almost) every minute of it!

Just like I did with Logan, I will be taking photos of our little lady each month with an adorable onesie one that pronounces her age (Though this time around I ordered stickers from etsy instead of doing iron ons).

1 Month; smiles, "laughter" and good times with Belle the Bunny

There are a few things I've begun to learn about our lady:

1. She does not like a lot of people around. I've noticed on a few occasions (Our first attempt at newborn photos, a few playdates we've had with multiple people) that she gets VERY fussy when there is a lot of noise, commotion and people about...the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, eh?)

2. She likes to sleep...a LOT. The first night home she slept 6.5 hours and scared the CRAP out of Jason and I...we were worried she would lose too much weight by doing that, but I had a weight check appointment the next day and it turned out she was ahead of the curve. But, cut to her 2 week appointment and she was 4.5oz away from her birth weight (which was 9lbs 6oz) which the Dr wasn't too excited about. The Dr wasn't CONCERNED, but wanted me to start feeding her extra times throughout the day to try to chunk her up. So I've had 2 more weight check appointments since then and have at each one she's gained a great amount of weight; 1 oz/day each time which is phenomenal, however, she's still about 1 week behind on her weight gain. So basically, I somehow have to get her to gain a full POUND in 1 week...I'm seriously not sure how that is going to happen. She's an amazing eater, and always wakes up to eat it just happens to be every FOUR or FIVE hours instead of every TWO or THREE. In my heart of hearts, I know that she is 100% healthy. I honestly believe that her birth weight may have been off a bit. I was pumped full of fuilds the WHOLE time I was in labor and I've read reports that say that can directly effect the baby and their size. So while I'm taking my doctor's orders seriously, I'm not stressing about her "lack" of weight gain becaues HULLO, she's gaining an OUNCE A DAY!!

3. She's pretty impressive...I feel like she'd already doing things she should NOT be doing at this point. For example; she has managed to place her hand in front of her binky to keep it from falling out on several occasions, she can stop the flow of a bottle with her tongue (the dr suggested I supplement with a bottle because she won't be able to refuse it at this age...apparently she hasn't met Nora very well) and while yes at this point smiling is perfectly normal, she started doing it a week ago which is a little ahead of "Schedule" so I'm bragging about it!

4. The skin around her eyes gets red when she's tired

5. She'll make you believe she doesn't like to be swaddled, but it works on her EVERY-SINGLE-TIME.

6. She's a sucker for a swaddle, some white noise and a dark room...we use our powder room for this purpose every night...I like to call this space "The Bath-Womb" because it's basically just like the womb when we rock her in there

As the days and weeks go on she seems to be getting more and more settled into life with our family. I can KIND of start to plan things around her schedule now; she eats when she wakes up between 5 and 6 and takes about an hour to finish, then by 8:30 or 9 she is "DESPERATE" for more food but only wants a little. Then she's up until about 11 and then sleeps until about 2. Eats again, is up for a bit and then down for another nap. We feed her again around 5 and then again around 7 or 8. Then she's down until about 1 or 2 then up again at 5 or 6. It's been maneageble but having 4 weeks of interrupted sleep, even if it's in longer stretches than most Mom's get at this point, is ROUGH on the body. Jason gave me a HUGE gift the other night by offering to take on the Nora duties all night so I could get some sleep. I went to bed at 8:30 and woke up at 5:30 - it was AMAZING. I haven't gotten that much sleep in YEARS...literally.

I would say all in all, we're adjusting really well as a family. Better than when we added Logan. Speaking of the worlds best big brother, Logan LOVES his baby sister. He is always kissing her and telling her how cute she is. It's pretty awesome. So while he's loving his sister, he's not loving life at home with Mommy and Baby. There's a lot more "Don't go over ther with that Logan" and "Please be quiet right now Logan" and definitely a lot of "I can't play right now, I need to feed the baby" which is starting to take it's toll on him and it breaks my heart. He's fighting back with attitude and sass-mouth which I cannot tolerate.

He insisted on taking a photo with HIS stuffed animal too

Tonight, for example, homeboy was sent to bed at 7am (a good hour, hour and a half BEFORE his usual bed time) for giving me some pretty ridiculous 'tude while I was telling him to head upstairs for a bath. It'd been going on all day and none of my "talks" with him work working so my final step was to give him a real consequence - he was upset about it for sure, but I just checked the monitor and 90 minutes after being sent upstairs, he is finally asleep. Surprisingly, he only attempted to "escape" once - and the rest of the time he stayed in his room talking with his stuffed animals. I know life at home wll get more exciting for him as we venture out more and more to do things, so right now it's a transition period that hopefully he will forget in the coming months.