It's been one whole month since our sweet Anna made her arrival! I simply can't believe we have a little baby girl in our family and let me tell you, she has taught us a lot in this last month! She is the boss of this house and everyone who comes in contact with her. So let me tell you about her first month of life and my first month of being a mom!
Parenthood, the final frontier. These are the voyages of Anna Banana. Her 18 year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no kid has gone before.
Ahhh...the joy of pregnancy! The hopes, the dreams, the wonderful ideas you have about being a parent and how your baby will be perfect...
Then comes the poop squirting out of their butt all over the changing table and floor! Hello. Welcome to being a parent of a newborn!
Anna's first month of life has been quite eventful. I wrote about her birth in my last blog. You can check that one out here if you haven't read it.
In my last blog I mentioned that our heating/air system went out while I was in labor on Monday and our well quit working. TJ fixed the well, but we had to replace the whole heating/air system in our house while I was in the hospital. If only it had stopped there! The following all quit working at some point during our first week at home:
- The stove wouldn't come on when my mom went to make us dinner! TJ flipped some breaker switches and got it working again.
- Our new air conditioner quit working. The guys were super nice and came back out on a Saturday morning to fix it. They ended up having to cut a hole in our floor for a drain or something.
- We didn't have hot water one day. TJ had to figure that one out.
- The sink in our front bathroom started randomly leaking. The seal had broken and was leaking water underneath our sink. TJ had to fix that one!
- The ceiling fan in our living room stopped working. I told TJ to just let that one go right now.
- The toilet in my bathroom started running and wouldn't flush. TJ had to fix that one too!
While TJ was fixing our house, Mom was helping me with Anna! The first few days of her life we accidentally starved her. I was off to a great start as a mom! I was breastfeeding her and supplementing a tiny amount with formula. At the hospital the lactation consultants kept saying your milk will come in. So I kept feeding her and she kept screaming and screaming and screaming!!!! Nothing we would do would calm her down. The Monday after we brought her home (we came home on a Thursday) we got see the lactation consultant and we discover my milk sucks! I have a little, but not enough and poor Anna was starving! OMG! I start crying and feed her a whole bottle immediately! Then we go see her doctor and he says she is perfect, we just need to get her back up to birth weight. So we can feed her as much as she wants for a whole week! Done and Done!
We went to have her newborn pics made when she was just a week old! Callie Black Photography did them and she was SO patient with our little girl! Anna peed all over her studio and on me for that matter! We were there for 3 or 4 hours! I love the pictures though so I guess torturing my newborn for a few hours was worth it! :)
My mom has become Anna's official photographer! She has managed to chronicle her first month with so many super cute pictures! So of course I will share them!
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| This picture makes me laugh because she looks terrified of that giraffe! |
My mom left on Sunday and I cried and cried. I like being a mom, as long as my mom was there to help me take care of Anna!
The next day we took Anna back to the doctor to check her weight. I had been pumping as much as possible and taking some herbal stuff to help the milk, plus we were giving her bottles of formula. She had gained over a pound and we were good to go! So we were just getting this week going great and my baby starts screaming when she has a wet/dirty diaper and when I change her diaper. She has a diaper rash. What the heck?!?! I just quit starving her and now I have given her diaper rash! I am on a roll! So we have a whole week of a screaming baby and trying to get her little butt healed! I bought every diaper rash cream on the market! I have settled on butt paste! But we have a bottle of every other kind so I am going to use all that before I go buy more butt paste.
The next week Anna really broke me in! She has a great way of timing when I am changing her diaper and then pooping or peeing after I get her diaper off of her. Well without fail take the diaper off and she pee's. I pick my naked baby up to get her out of it and she starts squirting poop every where! I start laughing and she starts crying and I yell for TJ. I get her cleaned up and he cleans the mess up. Later that week Anna woke up congested and we couldn't get her calmed down. I called the doctor they gave us some things to try. We had to do a saline drop and a nose thing and we needed to change her formula. She cried all night and we stayed up with her. When we put her flat she couldn't breathe. I take her to the doctor the next day and he thinks she has acid reflux and we need to see if the new formula will help. I can take steam showers with her to help break up the congestion and make sure she sleeps propped up. Okay, I can do that!
The last week of this month long journey Anna has learned to cry all evening for no reason. Yay. We are winning! So let's recap:
- Week 1- Starved my baby
- Week 2- Gave baby diaper rash
- Week 3-Baby's congested because her formula upsets her tummy and she can't breathe
- Week 4- Starts crying every evening around 7 and continues until 10:30
Here are things this new mom has learned in the last month:
- When you think Anna is done pottying her pants, wait 10 more minutes, she is faking you out
- Under no circumstance change your baby's diaper on your bed
- ALWAYS use butt paste
- Get that baby her bottle before she gets to awake! You may get lucky and she will fall back asleep easily.
- For the love of pete DO NOT lose the pacifier! She only likes the one from the hospital. Loss of the paci may result in the couch cushions being tossed across the living room and a couch being turned upside down!
- Anna DOES NOT like to be cold. Keep her swaddled, with mitts on, and socks on at all times! DO NOT remove her clothes! Baby does not like to be naked!
- Due to above issue, wrap baby in blanket while she takes a bath. It makes for more laundry, but a more enjoyable experience.
- Oh you like sleep...DO NOT under any circumstance have a baby!
- DO NOT even bother trying to watch TV or your favorite show. Baby will interrupt.
- Hours in the day and night have no meaning. You only operate off of Anna's schedule. There is no breakfast, lunch, and dinner there are only meal times for Anna.
- You just rocked Anna and think she is asleep. You get up to put her in her bed and she opens her eyes! You only thought you were going to get other things done! Nice try.
Anna got to meet her Great Papa Leon and new cousin Everly this month as well! It was really special. Papa Leon is my last surviving grandparent so it was really important that they meet sooner than later. Everly was born one day after Anna! It's so crazy that she has a little cousin that is very nearly exactly the same age. I am sure we will have lots of fun dressing these babies up in matching outfits as they get older. That is what my Mema did to me, Kaytie, and Brandy!
As you have figured out by now, my mom is great at taking photos of Anna! At least she has been for the first month of her life! In between all the crying she has managed to dress her up and take tons of photos! :) We attempted to take one month photos...she wasn't overly in the mood to be our dress up doll! :)
I mean really! What is the fun of having a little girl and being on maternity leave if you can't dress them up? She won't be able to say we didn't chronicle her first month very well!
All in all we have survived so far! TJ is going out of town for two weeks during month two. Thankfully, mom is staying nights with me so I won't be totally on my own!
As for me, recovery has been really easy! It may be that I read so many horrible awful things before she was born that reality was actually not so horrible! The only thing I am struggling with is the fact that I gained so much weight. I need to get it off. My body is not like it was a year ago and I need to fix it. I know that my weight gain was not just the pregnancy, but more likely some depression which led to overeating. But, I don't have an excuse anymore and I need to get back on track! So watch out Weight Watchers Leigha is on her way!
As for me, recovery has been really easy! It may be that I read so many horrible awful things before she was born that reality was actually not so horrible! The only thing I am struggling with is the fact that I gained so much weight. I need to get it off. My body is not like it was a year ago and I need to fix it. I know that my weight gain was not just the pregnancy, but more likely some depression which led to overeating. But, I don't have an excuse anymore and I need to get back on track! So watch out Weight Watchers Leigha is on her way!
So far being a mom is awesome, exhausting, comical, and overwhelming. I have a feeling that won't ever change!
One month down...17 years 11 months to go! Just Kidding! :)
See ya in a month!
Leigha Denee
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