Two Weeks Old

Well, week two wasn’t perfect but it went much better than week one! Sarah has been consistently sleeping 3 to 4 hours at a stretch during the night, which has allowed us to get some much needed rest. She usually takes her final feeding between 10:30 and 11:30 and then sleeps until around 2 am. Matt has usually just come home from work so he takes that feeding and then she usually sleeps until around 6 am when I get up to feed her. All in all we can’t complain, as we are both able to get about 6 hours of sleep in row. We just hope she sticks to this nighttime schedule!

At her doctor’s appointment last Thursday she weighed 7 lbs 3 oz so she was almost back to her birth weight. They kind of measured her but since she was still curled up so they just assumed she was still 20 inches long. The doctor said she was very healthy and was really impressed by her upper body strength. I guess I forgot to mention in the last post that she was lifting her head off my shoulder on her own only a few days after she was born. She now can hold it up by herself for over a minute at a time when she is alert. At the doctor’s office last week she even held herself up on her arms for a few seconds, which we hadn’t seen her do at home yet. Also, last week she rolled over from her tummy to her back all by herself. I’m sure it was a fluke as she hasn’t done it since but I was quite surprised when I saw what she had done!

My greatest challenge right now is dealing with her in the evenings. Starting at about 4 pm she wants to eat every single hour (I can almost set my clock by her!). I feed her, rock her, put her down, clean her bottle, get 15 to 20 minutes to rest and then start all over again. This goes on until her final feeding so by 10 pm I’m worn out and if she wants to eat at 11 I’m rocking myself to sleep!

She had another doctor’s appointment today and received another diagnosis of healthy baby. In fact, except for going back to get weighed next week, the doctor said she is doing so well that she won’t have to be seen again until her two-month check up. She weighed 7 lbs 4 ox this week, which surprised me because with her eating every hour in the evenings I was worried about her gaining too much weight. The doctor said that most babies have a growth spurt at 2 weeks and 6 weeks, which is why she wants to eat so often. She said over the next couple of weeks she should start to eat more at each feeding and go longer between feedings. Right now we are just grateful that she wants to eat every hour in the evening rather than in the middle of the night!

She has started stretching her legs out the last couple of days and we had to put her into a newborn sleep and play yesterday because she couldn’t straighten her legs in the preemie ones. The body is a little large on her and we have to roll the sleeves up but her legs almost reach the bottom of the newborn sizes now. When they measured her at the doctor’s office today she was still right at 20 inches so she hasn’t really grown any but with her legs stretching out she should start fitting into more of her newborn outfits.

We have started to take her out with us when we go shopping and run errands but the doctor said to wait a few more weeks before letting a lot of people handle her so visits to the workplace won’t be for a while yet. She did make her first trip to Mamaw & Papaw’s house (where she got to see her Aunt Kari again too) and Grandpa and Grandma C.’s house on Sunday. She really seems to like riding in the car but she does get fussy in her infant carrier if we have her out for too long. I’d better try to get this posted before she wakes up again. Until next week…