Look at this little face. I am so in love.
Áine is doing great. She had her four week pediatrician appointment this week and is growing like a little weed. After losing some weight after birth (totally normal) she is now up to eight pounds! It took her a little longer than normal to get back up to her birthweight because we’ve had some issues with breastfeeding, but now all is well and she is getting lots of “deelicious meelks” as she and I refer to it here at home. We’ve even started giving her a bottle of pumped milk right before bedtime so that Papa can get in on the fun.
I love watching her with Hawk. I love hearing him talk to her and tickle her little face with his beard. I love seeing her asleep on his shoulder. I love watching him sit with her in the evenings and explain to her the finer points of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd while we listen to records on his new turntable. He gets up in the middle of the night after I’ve fed her to swaddle her back up and settle her back to sleep.
Her first four weeks were a dream. There weren’t a lot of times where she was inconsolable and screaming, and when she was upset she was pretty easy to calm down (Thank You, Dr. Harvey Karp – for any of you new or expectant moms out there, “The Happiest Baby On the Block” is a must read/see. I’m not joking.) She’s been a great sleeper – several naps during the day with a nice long stretch of 4-5 hours at night. Believe us, we know how lucky we are (knock on wood) to get that much sleep at once. Sleep is not something we take for granted in this house.
As she’s rounded the four week mark, though, this seems to be changing a bit. The daytime naps are starting to diminish. Instead of an hour and a half to two hours, we’re lucky to get forty five minutes. In the past few days she’s had a harder time settling down. It will look like she’s asleep when you’re holding her, but about two minutes (tops) after setting her in her crib she starts to scream. She needs to be swaddled up (These are the best swaddling blankets we have found. The. Best. Soft and stretchy, but not too stretchy. This is key.) in the baby sling (godsend) around your neck and wants you to be moving – either walking around the house or bouncing on the exercise ball. If you stop, she screams. Hawk stopped on his way home last night and bought a baby swing, which I think will be a lifesaver when it comes to the fidgety late afternoons when she usually doesn’t want to be put down.
And once she really gets going, she can have a full on red-faced tantrum and the only thing that quiets her down is… the hairdryer. Again, not kidding. We took her on an outing to Hawk’s office yesterday afternoon and when I tried to nurse her she had a full-on unstoppable shrieking fit and the only thing that could quiet her down was Hawk holding his laptop up to her ear and playing an MP3 of a hairdryer. And let me tell you, a red-faced infant screaming into your boob as you’re leaking milk all over the place – not good for the blood pressure.
Those times are hard, but the good moments, like after she’s had a good meal and she’s wide-eyed and alert and wiggly, are the absolute best. She gives big smiles that melt my heart. If she’s sleepy and falls asleep on my shoulder, her fuzzy little head curled into my neck – it’s the best feeling in the world.
