Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Nine Weeks

What a difficult, heart-breaking, joyous, blessed nine weeks it has been! I think I am finally getting the hang of this mother of an infant thing. Jayla and I have great days together and I love spending time with her. It doesn’t wear me out like it did in the beginning. It’s just a part of my life now – a big part of my life.

Jayla had her 2-month checkup last Friday and weighed in at 9 lbs, 13 oz. and 22 ¼ inches long. So, she is officially the same size I was when I was born!!

Everyday we see new, exciting things from her. She smiles more often, she has awesome head control (even though she hates to be on her tummy), she “talks” with us more often…most importantly, she has learned to entertain herself over the past week! This was big for me because previously, her only source of entertainment was me carrying her around all the time. That got old – especially since I’m working part-time from home and obviously need to get some things done during the day. But, in the past week, she has learned to play in her activity gym and be content for 30 minutes at a time. I keep the gym in the office so, I can work and she can play. It’s been awesome.

Jayla in the activity gym:



She also loves to go outside, which is great because I love the weather we’re having right now. It just really cooled off here this week so; we’re seeing highs in the 70’s and perfectly blue skies. So, Jayla and I get out for a walk daily. She loves to taste the wind by sticking her tongue out whenever it blows. It’s really cute.

We’ve got Jayla on a pretty decent schedule. She basically eats every 3 hours starting at 9am. We’re still playing around with her bedtime routine. I can’t really decide when the best time to bathe her is. For the past 3 weeks, we’ve been bathing her after her 9pm feed and then letting her nurse to sleep. Last night, we tried bathing her before her 9pm and so she went to sleep with her 9pm feed. That put us into bed about 2 hours earlier than what we had been doing! It was awesome. But, I had to get up with Jayla at 2:45am instead of 4:00am-ish, as she seems to be stuck on a 4-5 hour pattern at night. I don’t have a problem with that but, I’ve just got to figure out how to get her straight back to sleep after she nurses at night. Too many nights lately she’s been bright-eyed after her overnight feeding, which is extremely annoying because if you put her in her crib to go back to sleep yourself, she screams bloody murder because she doesn’t know how to put herself to sleep yet. Usually, I just lay down with her on the day bed in her room. It keeps her quiet and I can sleep. Once she falls asleep, I can put her back in her crib and she’ll sleep until I wake her for the 9am feeding. But, surely, there’s got to be a trick to getting her straight back to sleep in the middle of the night. That is my only issue right now, really – any ideas?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like she's doing pretty well at sleeping through the night for the most part. My son is 3 weeks old and goes right to sleep for the most part after his feedings in the middle of the night. He's suppose to sit up for 1/2 an hour after he eats, but he normally falls right back to sleep during that 1/2 hour. He's actually cried himself to sleep some during the day when I couldn't get right to him. He screams bloody murder for a couple minutes and then he's sound asleep. Any tips on how to soothe him while he gets his bath?? He absolutely HATES it! Good luck, Jayla is so adorable.

Anonymous said...

Jayla is gorgeous! Enjoy every second of her, I'm sure everyone tells you how fast they grow, and it is so true! I've skimmed your last few entries and wow, you have had quite a journey since August. I'm glad she is home and doing so well.