Ella's First Week (12.27.13)

I couldn't resist making a week 1 post but I won't be doing these weekly.

Here are a few somewhat random thoughts.

• I can't believe how quickly I went from having to pee every few minutes to going back to my old self after giving birth. 
• I'm surprised how little she is. I've probably only held one baby younger than a couple months old before. 
• I expected to look pregnant afterwards but didn't really expect how squishy my belly would be. I think I thought I'd look about 20 weeks pregnant but I never really analyzed what looking like 20 weeks pregnant would be. I feel bigger than I was expecting.
• I'm surprised at how fast I'm dropping weight this first week. I'm not doing anything exercise wise since I'm still recovering. I just walk around the house doing things. 
• I took measurements a few days postpartum and I had a one set of measurements from a few days before birth and going around at my belly button was shockingly similar.
• I can only lift things as heavy as the baby. This means no lifting Poly. But if my baby was a big baby, then my weight limit would be higher. Sigh. 
• People told me about sleep deprivation. I figured I'd be dead tired and sleeping very little. I was sleeping very little. I had 13:30 hours total the first 5 days. But I didn't feel that tired. I was too excited.
• I can't believe I'm actually a mom and actually have a baby.
• Nursing was so much easier for me than I was expecting. Granted I always expect the worst but even at the hospital the nurses talked about how well she latched. I would overhear nurse shift change and they'd be talking about it. I was even expecting nursing to be worse than normal because I read sometimes after a c-section it is a little more difficult.  Right now my difficulty is just so much milk. I have a duct under my right armpit bulging out full of milk.  I have considered pumping since I am so full but that didn't seem to be recommended yet based on what I read and what the nurses said. 
• Poly was mostly unaware we even brought someone else in the house. She was peeping her the day after when she was in her carrier and Ella moved her arm and Poly jumped back. It was interesting to see Ella scare Poly.
• So far I am waking Ella every 3 hours or so throughout the night (and day) mostly. She is supposed to eat every 2-3 hours and we are supposed to wake her up. This makes getting sleep for me more difficult but she has been excellent so far with this so I haven't tried to alter the doctors and videos recommendations. 
• We've only given her a pacifier twice. One time was at the hospital when a nurse was suggesting it and gave us one. I forget why at that point. Then there was another time in the car. 
• Ella screams when getting into the car but then falls asleep. 
• Her hats always seem to come off when she's sleeping.
• Her length at birth was 19.5 but 4 days later at the doctor she was 20. I saw the 20 measurement so know that one is accurate. 
• She was born 6 lb 15 oz. Then weighed 6 lb 11 oz, 6 lb 8.2 oz, and 6 lb 8.3 oz  on the following days at the hospital. She only lost 5% of her body weight and was increasing. The following day at the hospital she was 6 lb 11.9 oz. Granted this was a measurement around noon right before eating which is not consistent with the midnight to 1 am weights the previous 3 days.
• I cannot believe how much Dave has taken to her. He never said babies were cute before and he's talking about how cute she is now. He will kiss her forehead and it just melts my heart. I have a few pictures of him and he's smiling more than I've ever seen him smile. It's crazy. He can't wait until we pump and introduce a bottle so he can feed her. (So he can bond with her not so he gets an additional task.)
• We have a ton of Huggies newborn diapers but hate them. She was always leaking onto the crib with them. We bought a small package of pampers and no leaks. Now we are almost out of those pampers and need to buy more.  We have a ton of size 1 diapers and before we bought the pampers newborn we were using those. At the hospital they supplied us with pampers size 1 so that's why we used those. I'm not sure how long she'll still be wearing newborn size. 

I'm amazed at how much Ella has changed over the past week.

• She is more aware of her hands and now hates them to be swaddled. 
• She's lifting up her head.  
• She likes to sleep on her side.
• She is really good at getting her arms out of a swaddle now. She's even better at it each time Dave swaddles her.

I meant to focus this post on Ella but I talked about me a bit.

I took these pictures specifically for hitting a week old. I just didn't plan ahead so I'm not wearing any makeup.