WEIGHT: 11 pounds 2 ounces (33rd percentile)
HEIGHT: 22.5 inches (37th percentile)
LIKES:
- Baths
- Drinking so much milk
- Lip and nose tickles
- High pitched baby talk to her
- Happy faces
DISLIKES:
- The carseat when not in a moving car
- Sleeping on flat surfaces
- The nebulizer
- Pacifier
- Swaddles
FIRSTS/SKILLS:
- New Year
- RSV/Cold :(
- Cooing and talking
- Sometimes puts herself to sleep in her bassinet
RANDOM NOTES:
- Clothes size: Newborn
- Diaper Size: One
- Very tolerant of tummy time for fairly long periods of time and regularly rolls from tummy to back (though I don't think she has any ideas how she does it--her heavy head just tips her right over).
- We tried fairly regularly for the first six weeks to get Finley to take a pacifier and we finally gave up this month because she has no interest at all and doesn't really try to suck on it at all.
- Got some fuzzy hair coming in :) It looks lighter than her newborn hair!
- Eyes are definitely looking blue!
- Dustan is the master burper, as always!
- Dustan gave her a wonderful baby blessing while my family was in town over Christmastime :)
Ah we just love this girl! Finley is always just so happy and content, even when she is hungry or tired. She is so easy to please and easy to smile.
While some of my family was in town over Christmas, Dustan gave Finley a baby blessing at church. I love that our church encourages these baby blessings, and the sweet moment they bring for our gamily, especially between Dustan and our babies. I loved that my dad was also able to participate in the blessing.
The week that Dustan went back to work, all of us came down with a cold. After a few days, I noticed that Finley's cough sounded really yucky and occasionally her breathing a little rattly in her chest, so we took her in to see her pediatrician. She confirmed my worry that poor little Finn had RSV :( Thankfully, it was a fairly mild case for a baby that was only 6 weeks old, so she didn't need to be put on oxygen or monitored by medical personnel at all. But they did send us home with this nebulizer that we used every four to six hours that helped clear up her tiny little airways and made it easier for her to breath and made her cough less.
The breastfeeding journey has continued! Read here to get up to speed first. I met with a second lactation consultant who was so helpful. She checked and confirmed that the tongue tie we got snipped hadn't grown back (is that the right word? haha) and that the exercises we did were successful. But she informed me that even though the tongue tie had been fixed when Finn was a few weeks old, it seemed she had incorrectly learned how to use her tongue when she was nursing so that it caused a lot of pain, even though she was still getting enough milk. This lactation consultant help me work on her latch, but more importantly gave me some mouth exercises to go that would help her use tongue better. These included rubbing her bottom gums on the sides and watching her tongue track to our finger, drawing "M"s on her tongue, having her suck on our finger and slowly pulling it out while pressing on the tongue, and rubbing her cheeks in "C" motion from top to bottom. I did each of these exercises four to six times a day. I noticed a difference within a week! It became less painful. A week after this appointment, I started slowing adding in nursing in sessions during the day. I continued the exercises for a couple more weeks. And before Finley was up to a full two months old, there was only a little pain after cluster feeding in the evenings and Finn was finally nursing full time! I was so grateful that everything was finally figured out and I could just nurse my baby and not worry about pumping or bottles. If the difficulties had continued much longer, then I think we would have switched over to formula soon after. Now, hopefully I can keep my supply up and nurse Finn for a full year :) (My milk supply dropped drastically with Lou around five months and we switched over to formula full time around six months.)
We have continued to have a loose schedule for Finn this month, but I noticed that when we stopped doing bottles that Finley wanted to eat more often (with bottles, she was eating more like every three-ish hours). Generally though, we had Finn wake up around 7 am, then followed an eat, wake, sleep schedule every 2.5 to 3 hours throughout the day. We continued this until about 11 pm, where we then laid Finn down to bed. She would usually wake up once around 4 am for a feeding, then continue sleeping until about 7 am. It has been working well so far! The hardest part has actually been the naps, it has been really difficult to get Finley to sleep longer than about 30 minutes on her own without being held--and I can't hold her all the time with Lou running around!
So grateful for these beautiful girls that are all mine!! This next month, we'll be trying to get a more solid schedule for Finny and myself so the days feel less hectic--right now I feel like I'm constantly running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Once things are more established, things will calm down better.
