Six-week growth spurt?

This has been an interesting week for us. Zoey has been sleeping pretty well at night, going 5-6 hours between feedings (even went a record 7 hours last night!). She's often in a great mood in the morning hours, smiling and cooing and making us laugh. Then in the afternoon and evening, she starts fussing and can't seem to sleep well between feedings unless she is carried in the frontpak and we are walking around with her. As you might imagine, this makes it difficult to get much of anything else done! She nurses more often in the daytime, every two to two and a half hours, which probably helps her to go longer at night. After a feeding, she is often awake for 1-2 hours, much of which we spend soothing her! We know that it's just a phase that she's going through and will come out of it soon. We're just really grateful that she's sleeping so well at night! (Somebody knock on wood!)

So we weighed her this morning, as we have been every Saturday, and I almost can't believe the scale anymore. It said 11 lbs 7 oz this morning, which would mean that she has gained 12 oz this week, and basically 3 lbs over her birth weight. (She'll be 7 weeks old tomorrow.) To be fair, the upper end of my scale is 12 lbs, so it's possible that it's less accurate at the extremes? We also measured her and she's at 23-3/4 inches, which is nearly 3 inches longer than her length at birth. She does feel heavier all the time, and she's noticeably longer and growing out of her clothes... it's just so amazing that it's happening so fast! Our little superchunk!

It's hot here today -- mid-90s. We have a little window AC unit in our 2nd-level apartment, and it pretty much just runs all day to keep the bedroom manageable. The bedroom has windows all along the south-facing wall, so the poor AC unit fights a hard battle with that sun pouring in all day. The little mini-blinds aren't much help. We pretty much cocoon in the bedroom on days like this...

Tomorrow we are driving down to Eugene in the morning, which is about two hours south of Portland. I have a workshop from 10am - 5pm to renew my certification in the drugs I can administer as a midwife, as well as my skills in starting IVs, giving shots, suturing and managing shock. I have to go through this continuing education every three years as part of my license, so although the timing is difficult for an all-day workshop with a 7-week-old baby, I have to do it or I will lose the ability to do these things. Fortunately, I'll be with a group of midwives -- who better to understand and empathize with the needs of a new baby? And Jason is coming with us, wonderful Daddy that he is, so that if Zoey gets fussy, he can take her for a walk.

Jason has started his Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) class this week. Summer classes are more intense because they cram 12 weeks worth of material into 8 weeks, and A&P is already a difficult course. Fortunately, he has a great instructor, which makes all the difference. And Jason studies all the time, so there's no doubt that he's going to do very well. :-) He is also going to be assisting in the EMT labs for a couple of his old instructors, and he's been applying for all kinds of EMT jobs. There aren't a lot of jobs out there right now, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that he's going to get something exciting. I've got 5 weeks left of my maternity leave, and we'll see what things look like at that time for going back to work.

Stay cool, everyone!

Growing like crazy...

We weighed Zoey on Saturday, and she is up to 10lbs 11oz. That's a 9 oz gain from last week, which is a couple ounces ahead of the curve. Woo hoo! We had to back off from the one-bottle-a-day plan because we had a bit of a setback in nursing; her latch shifted a bit during breastfeeding and it became painful for me again, so we've gone to every other day for the last few days. She's back on track with the latch, so I'm hoping she'll stick with it and then we can go back to Jason giving her a bottle of breastmilk every night.

We had our first outing without Zoey on Saturday night! Jason and I went to see one of our favorite movies, Serenity, on the big screen. A guy here in Portland has managed to get a local theater to play this movie every year at this time for the last three years, and the ticket proceeds go to a global women's rights group called Equality Now. It has been so successful that the screenings have expanded to a few dozen cities around the world, which is very cool. Anyway, our amazing postpartum doula, Vicky, insisted on babysitting for us, which is great because she is probably the only person that we would feel comfortable leaving Zoey with at this tender age! We figured that she would be her normal angelic self for Vicky, but to our dismay, we learned that not only did she pretty much cry the whole time we were gone, she had a giant poop blowout too! Waa! Vicky was very gracious about it, thankfully.

We're interviewing pediatric providers this week. There are three naturopathic doctors that we're interested in talking to, although one of them charges $60 for an interview, so we may hold off on that one for now. (Not sure why he would charge for an interview when it's supposed to help generate business... I don't think I get that strategy.)

We're also going to learn how to do infant massage on Friday, which should be fun for everyone! I'll try to get some pictures to post. Stay tuned!

Happy Father's Day!

To my dear husband on your first Father's Day:

I know I've said this a thousand times, but I feel so lucky to be with you! It's been two years since we met, and you're still my favorite person in the whole world. (Although you've got some tough competition now!) I'm still amazed every day at the beautiful little girl that we have created, and I just know that you're going to be an incredible father to Zoey. I love the father that you already are to her -- the way that you've boldly stepped into the role of Daddy, the songs you sing to her and the wonderful sense of humor with which you take on each day. I can hardly wait to see the person that she becomes with you as her papa. You are the love of my life, and I'm so grateful to you for creating this amazing life together with me. Happy Father's Day, baby!

Double digits, and introducing... the bottle

Zoey hit the 10 pound mark today -- 10 lbs, 2 oz! I weighed her on my little newborn scale, which only goes up to 12 lbs, so she's going to outgrow it soon. She literally feels heavier some days, which is encouraging for this new mom. It's exciting to see her grow.

We introduced a bottle of breastmilk a couple of nights ago, which is important if I ever want to be able to leave her alone with Jason or anyone else for more than 3 hours at a time. There is a magic window right around 3-4 weeks of age where a lot of babies will accept a bottle and easily go back and forth between the breast and the bottle without too much confusion or fuss. We're giving her one bottle per day, ideally for the bedtime feeding so that I can get a head start on sleeping before the 3am wakeup call. It took us a while to get good at breastfeeding, so I was a bit nervous about introducing a bottle, but she did great. In fact, she did better than Jason or I did! It was a bit nerve-wracking for Jason to feed her for the first time, because she flails her arms quite a bit and it takes some wrangling to get her in a good position, and she will often yell quite a bit while the wrangling is taking place. As for me, well, I just cried, like a new mama will do when she has to let go of something so intimate as feeding her baby. But hey, it's only one feeding per day that Daddy gets to do with the bottle -- I still get all of the rest of them! :-)

She is on the verge of smiling... stay tuned...