One month.

It’s been a month since our little one made her grand appearance into our lives. In some ways, it feels like just yesterday that Eugene was driving me to the hospital and we were praying for a safe delivery, but in most ways it seems like she’s been a part of us for far more than a month. I know most moms say how “time flies” when you have kids, and I agree, it’s flown, but it’s also crawled {but not necessarily in a bad way, just in a slow way.}

{I absolutely love when the little one raises both hands above her head to stretch like this…she does it every time she wakes up. Cutest thing.}

{Her hands always have to be by her face when she’s sleeping. She looks so peaceful.}

I try to keep things real here, so to be honest, this has been an incredibly hard and challenging month. I think the one reason it seems like it’s crawled rather than flown is because I haven’t had clearly defined days & nights. When you wake up the little one every 2-3 hours to feed her, your days and nights blur completely. I’ve been surprisingly impressed with my  body/brain’s ability to deal with little sleep the past month, but my hormones are a completely different story. Sheesh, I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster with some seriously low dips. I know it’s normal for many women to have postpartum depression, and I fully expected to experience it a bit more severely just because of my past experiences, but it’s been rough. To be fair though, I had a few other contributing factors to the severity of my rollercoaster ride:

• The little one went 8 days early on without a bowel movement {super scary} – we found out eventually it was because she wasn’t getting enough milk
• I was a diagnosed with condition that prohibits me from making enough breast milk for the little one {this was heartbreaking because breastfeeding was super important to me}
• I tried numerous methods of supplementation and different {exhausting} ways to increase my supply to no avail
• A few days after we finally got the little one’s feeding improved through bottle supplementation, she began to have awful diarrhea {again, scary & sad}
• Three or four days later, we found out it’s because she has an allergy to milk protein. Many babies develop this, and most outgrow it by 2 or 3 years of age, but in the mean time, they need special hypoallergenic formula, and if you’re breastfeeding it requires a strict diet of nothing with milk in it {that’s way more food than you’d imagine – butter on a baked potato, cream in your coffee, dehydrated milk in ranch Doritos, cheese in just about every casserole, etc!}

All these things caused me to struggle with anxiety and sadness as I worried about my little one’s health and mourned the loss of my breastfeeding ability. I’ve recently decided to quit breastfeeding all together {I was breastfeeding first and following it up with formula.} It was/is a hard thing for me to decide, but some times she would have breast milk and then get sick again. It breaks my heart to feel like I may be causing her stomach pain, and constantly worrying if I ate something wrong is just not healthy for either of us. So we’re sticking with formula and lots of cuddling instead. :) I’m happier with what feels like a ton of pressure lifted off of me, and she’s happier with a happier momma & hypoallergenic formula.

Okay, now to the lighter stuff. Here’s my growing sweet pea at a month old…

Yes, we’re keeping the chalkboard theme. ;)

Amazingly, despite all the feeding challenges, her weight gain is wonderful – right where it’s supposed to be. She is a fantastic sleeper between night feedings {knock on wood}, and I think part of this is because she loves to be swaddled at night. You probably already know this from my list of sanity-saving items, but the little one loves water sounds too. She’s just under 9 lbs, and still looks like a miniature version of her daddy {only cuter, ha!} She has delicate small features, and still looks tiny to me…my long & lean beauty. Even with her tummy aches, she’s been a happy baby, and we’re beyond thankful to have our perfect family of 3 together for a month now. What a blessing!