Madelyn - one month

Madelyn Amia is one month old already. Time has absolutely flown. I can never quite believe how quickly the first month of a baby's life goes by. It always goes faster than the last month of pregnancy. Funny how that works...

I always wonder, before my babies have been born, what they will be like. Will they sleep? Will they be content? Will they eat quickly or slowly? (when you're nursing, this can be a huge one!) Will they have a sensitive stomach and react to everything I eat? Will they smile easily or be more on the serious side? Then they're born and we get to start out on the road of slowly learning who this new person in our family is!

So who is Madelyn (Maddie)? Maddie is so sweet. Her face is quite expressive. My favourite expression of hers comes when she suddenly notices someone's face. She opens her eyes really wide, her eyebrows go up, she pushes her chin back (making the most adorable double chin) and her lips go into a little "o." It is the cutest thing! She also has what we call her "worried look." She truly looks like she is quite concerned about what is going on!

Maddie is quite content, most of the time. She does seem to be my gassiest baby, so that makes her less content when she is awake. But she is a far cry from being colicky so I really can't complain. I haven't been able to figure out yet if her gassiness is due to what I eat or if it has more to do with a funny nursing habit she picked up in her soother days (I banned the soother when I noticed it was affecting her nursing). She swallows a lot of air while nursing which I can only imagine would bother her tummy and produce a LOT of burps, some of which just don't seem to want to come out. But she sleeps well when she's well-burped so that makes me think it has less to do with what I eat and more to do with nursing. Here's hoping we can get this little habit out of the way sooner rather than later. She is a baby who loves to suck so it would be nice to get nursing well-established (aka: beyond the point of picking up bad habits) and be able to introduce the soother again. She is a fairly loud baby in that she grunts and snorts and makes all sorts of noises. The noise I find the funniest is one that sounds like a horse. You know the sound when a horse blows air out of their nose/mouth? Maddie sounds exactly like that sometimes. I think it's usually when she's a little disgruntled, which makes it even funnier! She is starting to hold her head up pretty well on her own, but we still need to be ready for when she gets tired (and faceplants into our shoulder).

Sleep has been as good as I could have hoped for the first month. From the first night home from the hospital, Maddie has been giving me 3-4 hour stretches at night. She goes to bed for the night around 8-9pm and is up to eat at roughly 1am, 4am, and 7am. Her day usually starts around 8-9am, except for one morning when she had me up for the day at 5:45am. Let's not make a habit of that, ok Sweetie? When she wakes during the night, she eats for about 10 minutes and is back in bed asleep 90% of the time. The other 10% she either fills her diaper while eating which requires a change (diaper, pj's, blanket) and more nursing OR she just makes noise for a while after nursing which keeps me awake and sometimes requires a few more burping sessions before she settles again. But overall, night time sleep is good. She also naps pretty well during the day. She sometimes needs to be walked or rocked to sleep but other times she will just closer her eyes and sleep as she lays there or while I hold her. She loves to sleep on her tummy (naps) or propped on her side with rolled blankets (night) and will wake up as soon as we put her down on her back. I sometimes joke that if we need her to be awake, we just need to put her on her back because she will almost inevitably wake up the moment she is put down on her back. Despite what everyone says these days about putting baby BACK to bed (never let them sleep any other way than on their back), this is working for us (and worked for Kayden too) so shh! I watch her like a hawk and enjoy my good sleeper. sidenote: I was just thinking this morning how normal it becomes, in the first few months of a baby's life especially, to check to see if someone is still breathing. What other time in your life do you check multiple times a day to see if someone is breathing? And yet...you have a new baby and suddenly this is quite routine!

Maddie eats well and eats a lot. She is a fast nurser, usually only taking 10-15 minutes for a feed. She eats every two hours during the day, unless she is having a good, long nap in which case she might stretch to 3 hours before waking for a feed. But like I said, at night she goes longer stretches without food, her longest stretch being 6-7 hours. Of course that comes at the beginning of the night and I don't go to bed when she does so I haven't had a stretch of sleep that long since before I was pregnant. BUT...it's amazing how good you feel even with 3-4 hour stretches at a time!

Madelyn has grown a LOT this month. When she was born, she weighed 6lbs 10oz. At her one week checkup (which was actually when she was two weeks old), she weighed 7lbs 4oz. And today (5 weeks or 1 month and 4 days), I did the unofficial step-on-the-scale-with-baby-and-subtract-my-weight weighing and she was 9lbs 7oz. She's starting to put on some chub...her cheeks are filling out and she's starting to get little rolls on her arms and legs. Love it! I'm sure she's stretching longer too because she is already wearing 0-3m or 3 month clothing. The newborn clothes were put away last week. It feels like I just got them out in preparation for her birth and now they're already packed away. I know they grow quickly, but I never really remember just HOW quickly! Slow down and be my newborn a bit longer, Maddie!

Maddie was born with a small amount of dark hair, longer and thicker at the base of her neck and less on top. Throughout this month, she has kept all of the longer, thicker hair at the back and has been balding on top from the front back! Levi did the exact thing when he was her age! But he had his first haircut at 10-11 months old so I'm hoping that this balding means that her hair will come in quickly once it starts! Maddie has had beautifully clear skin this month. No funny baby rashes or anything like that. She still has that soft baby "fuzz" on her arms and back, and those teeny white spots on her nose that say "yup, I'm a newborn!" are still faintly there. Her eyes are still that deep, dark baby blue but I suspect they will be dark brown before too long. Madelyn's look reminds me more of Levi than Kayden. Face shape, eye colour, facial features...they're all just a little more similar to Levi than Kayden.  That said, you can tell that our three are related!

Speaking of Levi and Kayden, they both absolutely love her. They don't spend a whole lot of time with her, partly because she doesn't do much yet and partly because a lot of this month has been full of company to keep them entertained. Levi refused to hold Maddie in the hospital, saying that he would hold her when we got home, on the couch. When we got home, we asked if he wanted to hold her and he said he did but he needed to be on the couch. Well, I wasn't moving much yet so finally we convinced him to try holding her on our bed, which he did. And then he said that he needed to hold her every day, once in the morning and once before bed. We had a fun routine going the first couple weeks of Maddie's life where the kids would get all ready for bed and then bring books to our bed where I was with Maddie and the 5 of us would read bedtime stories while Levi held Maddie (and whispered to her, explaining the pictures and what was happening in the story). SO CUTE. Kayden also likes to hold Maddie. They both talk about how soft and small she is when they hold her. Kayden calls her "baby Maddie" and her little voice is just so precious saying her sister's name. Levi is in a phase right now where he doesn't say anyone's name (for example, his grandparents are "Daddy's dad" or "Mommy's mom" and his Auntie Ia is "Mommy's sister") so he has yet to actually say Maddie's name. I'm sure it'll come. I'm excited to see their sibling relationships grow in the coming months and years. I pray that these three get along well and enjoy spending time together for the rest of their lives.

It's always interesting to hear people's comments when they're meeting your new baby. It's especially interesting to hear which comments come most often. We have heard that Maddie "definitely belongs in the family" on numerous occasions. We've been told she's beautiful and so pretty (of course, because she is!). We've had comments about her long fingers too.

We started using cloth diapers during her third week. She was leaking out of newborn disposable diapers so we sized up, hoping for diapers with more soaking capability. Didn't work. She was still leaking out basically every time...which required diaper and clothing and blanket changes about every 2-4 hours, day and night. Finally I was just sick of it and figured if I was doing so much laundry anyway, I may as well do diaper laundry instead. We switched her to cloth and the leaks stopped! This just reinforces my love for cloth diapers. Sure, they're a little bulkier, especially on a newborn. BUT, they're super cute and if we have fewer messes using them? I'm in. I even use cloth covers over disposables when I'm out for a day. I would totally recommend Flip covers by bumGenius! Even if you're not cloth diapering and know you never will, pick up one or two Flip covers and use them when you really can't deal with a leak (like if you're traveling or at a wedding, etc). I had Maddie at a wedding on Saturday and took along disposable diapers for the day and had a cover on top. She filled her diaper during the ceremony and I was a little worried that she'd leaked through her dress - and mine - but when I checked her, the disposable had leaked but the cloth cover had saved us! Worth it. Anyway, enough about diapers.

For our family, this month has been full of holidays, family visiting, and continued house renos. Maddie has been able to sleep through the noise of air compressors, nail guns, saws, and sanders. We have had my sister Alicia (3 weeks), Carrie (4 days), and my parents (2 weeks) here this month. Nathan was home for two and a half weeks after we got home from the hospital. I haven't had to cook, clean, garden, or do yardwork all month. It has been the perfect time to heal and get to know Maddie. I have seen everyone working around me and have felt like I need to do more but as I do more, I feel more and am reminded that c-sections are major surgery and I still need to take it easy, even if I'm feeling good.

Firsts this month...
- first wedding: My cousin got married and Maddie chose to cry through the ceremony. It was an outdoor wedding in a park so I really had no choice but to take her to the other side of the park (very much still within earshot of the ceremony) and try to calm her down. The poor bride had to walk down the aisle to the tune of "screaming infant." (Sorry, Chantelle!) Afterward, people were asking me if it was my baby who was crying during the ceremony and, because I had the only newborn at the wedding, I couldn't deny it. But she was absolutely adorable so nobody minded. After all, what can you do? For the record, she was mostly happy for the rest of the day. Good timing with the tears, Maddie, good timing.

- first smiles! And no, they aren't just gas smiles...not all of them anyway. She doesn't smile every time she looks at you, but she has definitely looked us right in the eyes and given some pretty great smiles in the past week! Love.it.

- first introductions: Maddie has met her parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, and all but one of her uncles and aunts! She has also met much the Reimer side of my extended family as well as some friends and people from church.

- first doctor's appointment: in true Niki fashion, I didn't bring enough diapers to the appointment and had to wrap her in one of those papers that they use to cover the bed in the examining room. Not my finest moment. How does this happen every time I take my newborn in for their first doctor's appointment?!

- first gripe water:  not a fan. Jury's still out on whether or not it works...