The Mayes Family: October 2012

Holy moly, one month already?! I obviously never got around to updating about our hospital stay or the first week at home - I suppose I will update about Charlotte's first month instead. It might be easier to highlight her first month versus going in order. So, here it is - Charlotte's first month in a nutshell:

She is a rockstar eater. At her first doctor's appointment (the day after we got home from the hospital) she had already started to regain weight she lost while in the hospital. By the next week she was already over her birth weight. At her one month appointment (which we actually weren't supposed to have one as she was gaining weight so well, it was an unplanned trip to be highlighted in another point) she was 10 pounds exactly and 22.25 inches long. She is a growing girl!
She is also a rockstar sleep - most of the time. She lets us put her to bed between 7:00 and 8:00. She'll wake up to eat once before midnight, once during the night, then wakes up anywhere between 6 and 9 in the morning depending on when she woke up during the night. So really she is only waking me up once during the night to eat technically. Granted she is waking me up in the morning too, but I count that as the morning not night time.
She is sleeping in our room still, but she does not sleep in bed with us. From the start we opted to try and have her always sleep in her rock-n-play. Over time we will transition her to her crib, but for now this is working out great. That's not to say there haven't been times after a feeding her and I don't snuggle - most often it happens after a morning feeding when Bryan has left for work. Mommy and daughter snuggle time. :)
We have already started working on a bedtime routine. If it's not a bath night, we put her in her pjs, I feed her, then I work on getting her to fall asleep. When it is a bath night, her bath comes first. She also has several things she likes in order to fall asleep (this holds true for naps as well): either her lamb that plays ocean sounds or soft music, the fan on, and the humidifier on. She also prefers to be walked around and patted on the butt while falling asleep. Lately, sucking on her pacifier has become part of the routine as well. It sounds like a lot, but it is an easy routine and most of the time she sleeps really well following it.
Speaking of bath nights - she absolutely HATES baths. Really the issue is she hates being naked. This is even the case when changing her clothes. However, she LOVES having her hair washed. She calms down when we do this. Hopefully over time she will learn to love bathtime.
We introduced a pacifier to her between 3 and 4 weeks. She likes it, but she gets really frustrated when it falls out. This is sometimes a pain when she wants one to sleep and it keeps falling out - usually resulting in me sleeping in ten minute spurts to wake up to help her with her pacifier.
When she gets really upset she usually calms down as soon as I hold her. Bryan can try all of the things I do to calm her down, but sometimes she just wants to be in my arms. I love this, but also don't want Bryan to feel left out.
We have learned in the past week she has extremely sensitive skin. Her skin went from a perfect complexion to a few red spots here and there to full blown red, dry, bumpy skin all over her face. Add that with bad cradle cap and we just feel bad for her. She seems unphased by it, but, as parents, we hate how bad it looks. It is definitely harder on us than it is her. I just want her pretty skin back (Does that make me a bad mom to admit that? I hope not.). This has lead to trying to decrease any sensitivities around her: changing her shampoo/body wash and lotion, avoiding any perfumes or colognes on us, washing her clothes as soon as they get dirty or smell like something I think could bug her skin. The suddenly sensitive skin is what prompted the one month checkup as I was concerned about it.
She does not like it when I eat beans. Beans just mean a gassy, fussy, pukey baby. Given that, I am avoiding all beans right now and broccoli (it can cause gas in babies, too). I also try to avoid a lot of garlic. I don't really have a reason other than I feel like it could upset her tummy.
We think she might have acid reflux. There is a lot of spitting up and hiccuping with her. We try to keep her upright after feedings as long as possible to help eliminate any reflux symptoms.
She has managed to throw up on me (not just spit up) multiple times (one time being during her newborn pictures), pee on me, and poop on me - yet she has not done a single one of those to Bryan.
She randomly smiles at us and it's amazing. I did get a real smile after I said her name the other day (on her one month birthday actually). I can't wait for constant real smiles.

Just to add a few things Bryan and I have learned about ourselves as parents in the first month:

I call her doctor weekly. Her doctor is my doctor, as well, so she knows me well - so does the nurse. That makes it easy when I call with first-time mom questions. I have taken care of a ton of kiddos, but I am learning when it is your own sometimes you just have questions for the doctor.
I am sleeping better now than I did during my entire pregnancy. I think I am even getting more sleep than I did during the third trimester. Bryan, however, is still struggling with waking up with a baby sometimes. I try to let him sleep during the night, but sometimes missed naps cause some grumpiness on everyone's part.
We have worked out a system when we need to go somewhere: wait for her to wake up from a nap, feed her, then go. That allows us to have an hour to an hour and a half to accomplish things. This has also brought a change to our just randomly running to Target for something or running to get food - we now have to plan ahead.
I am working on figuring out how to get ready in the morning with a baby. This tends to take a similar routine as leaving the house: wait until she is hungry, feed her, try to get her to take a nap, then I get in the shower. Usually I stick her in her bouncy seat and we have a sing-a-long/dance party in the bathroom.
We monitor our spending a lot more now. We have always tried to be good about our spending, but now instead of ordering dinner just because we don't feel like cooking we sit and think about if we need to buy a bunch of baby things during our next grocery trip.

And now for some - okay, SEVERAL - photos: