Family: Lizzy’s first week

Happy one week “birthday” my dear little Lizzy. It seems surreal that she’s in my arms while one week ago I was so immersed in pregnancy discomfort. It seems so irrelevant now that I have her here with us. I think the extra 8 days in my belly made her stronger and ready for the world.

We came home on Wednesday 4/20, she looks so tiny in the carseat

She settled well immediately to her bed

Sofia brought her a doll and was so excited that her little sister was at home finally

the bond formed right away

I’m so proud of having these two sweet girls, specially Sofia who is not jealous at all but all about loving and wanting to take care of the little sister.

So far she’s been an angel baby too. Eating and sleeping well, and doesn’t cry too much. The two days in the hospital she slept all the time and waking up only to eat, which gave me plenty of time to rest. Only the second night she didn’t seem to be able to settle, so I put the white noise and she fell asleep quickly.

Awake time: I’ve kept her awake time within an hour. That includes eating, changing and time for her to fall asleep by her own. So basically the real awake time when her eyes are opened might be less than 10 min if any. I usually put her down to the crib 30-40 min after she wakes up. At this age, that’s all the awake time they need. Obviously, this doesn’t happen everyday all the time, there were days (1 or 2) that she didn’t want to go back to sleep or had difficulty falling asleep alone. I knew she was overtired and urgently needed to sleep… so the swing was the rescue.

 

Sleeping: I’ve read over 7 books about baby sleep when Sofia was born, so I know how important it is for babies to learn how to fall into sleep alone. With Sofia it was a learning process, but with Lizzy it was much easier. Overall she’s sleeping well… between 13-16 hrs a day. She takes naps between 45-1.5 hrs, wakes up, eats for 20-30 min, and then go back to sleep without too much fuss. Because I put her down before one hour since she wakes up, she usually spends 10-15 min to fall into sleep by her own. This skill is so valuable and I’m so happy that she’s learning it early own. At night, she sleeps between 1.5-3 hrs. Between 4-5pm and 9pm it’s the usual fussy time, which means she has problem falling into sleep by herself. Sometimes she’d be awake for 2-3 hrs which ends up being overtired and even harder to fall into sleep. If that is the case, we put her in the swing, let her fall into sleep and then stay asleep for 10-15 min before turning the swing off.

Eating: nursing is going really well. She is a natural nurser. We didn’t need to practice the latch. She did it all alone. The second day at the hospital she wanted to nurse every 1-2 hrs, so that we did. That day helped the milk coming in, which was Wednesday, the third day. Once the milk came nursing is a charm. I don’t have any nipple problems and both breasts produce milk. She eats every 2-3 hrs, sometimes every hour when it’s the fussy time. As all newborns, she tend to fall asleep while eating, so we change her diaper in between breasts. Overall she is a fast eater, we spend 20-30 min in average each session. Because I nurse her at night too and she sleeps in her room, in order for me to sleep well, Tony sleeps in her room at night and brings her to me when she wakes up. This is because I’m super light sleeper and babies make noise when they sleep. Tony doesn’t mind too much so he sleeps in her room. I know it’s not comfortable for him to sleep in the lounge, but he doesn’t complain because he loves me so much. 😉

I am starting to burp her after feeding and it’s going well. But sometimes when I observe her eating slowly, then I don’t do it.

We love seeing her face after eating… so satisfied and happy.

she looks so fragile and so tiny.. all I want to do is to hug her and look at her and never get bored.

we use a monitor to check on her too

Every morning when Sofia wakes up and if I’m nursing Lizzy, she’d come and make me company, and touches baby parts.

Look how funny she looks with the head in her eyes…

Weight: in her first pediatrician check up she weighted 6 lb 5 oz. By Monday, 3 days later, she was almost 7 lbs. No doubt she’s eating well.

Crying: she doesn’t cry too much. Only when she wakes up, and because it’s so distinctive that she’s crying to be picked up, we go to her within 5 min, and she stops immediately. She also cries when she’s overtired. One evening, she had trouble falling into sleep, and I really needed to sleep, so I asked Tony to hold her for at least an hour, and she cried 30 min of it. But overall, she rarely cries for more than 5 min because her needs are met quickly.

During that time that she is meditating to fall into sleep, we catch up laughing and those smiles melt my heart.

Tony is truly in love with his girl and so proud of her. It’s so touching to see him as the father of my child.. how patient he is with her and how he takes care of us. For instance, because he doesn’t sleep well in the couch, when he brings Lizzy to me at night to feed her, he’d crush in the bed within 1 min. But if I tell him I need water, or Lizzy needs to be changed, he jumps up right away. I love him so much before we were parents, and I love him even more as the father of my children.