Happy New Year!

Can't believe tomorrow is 2008! Not too much news to report here...Lucy is doing fairly well, although we're still having difficulty at times with her being either really fussy or really sleepy when we're trying to feed her. Neither one is very good when we're trying to get her to eat! The fussiness may be related to gas issues, we're not really sure. We'll see her pediatrician this Thursday and Lucy & I are also going to a Mommy/baby group this Thursday afternoon. I have heard from several people that the Mom's groups are great...especially for first time moms like me not knowing what's normal newborn behavior vs. what I should really be concerned about. This mom stuff is hard work!

We're excited that Lucy's Grandpa Andy is coming to visit this Friday. She's looking forward to meeting him.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year.

Lucy's First Christmas

Lucy's first Christmas was very special. It was our first Christmas in Portland and in our new home and although we missed the rest of our family, it felt good to be here in Portland in our home with our new baby girl! We were even more excited and surprised that Lucy's first Christmas was a white one! We had quite a bit of snow (for Portland, OR) on Christmas day...it reminded us a little bit of Christmas in Connecticut. We enjoyed spending Christmas day at Chris' aunt & uncle's house here in Portland...one of the pictures above is of a hungry squirrel on their back deck eating out of the feeder in the snow! We spent several hours over at Ken & Helen's house and Lucy did wonderfully...slept most of the day, ate pretty well and wasn't at all fussy. It made for a great day. And, she looked super cute in her Christmas dress!

Mom & Dad did realize though how tired they were later that day after not getting much rest the past two days because of everything going on with the holidays...we definitely need naptime!

Chris is back to work today, hopefully he's not too tired. He's been helping so so much with Lucy, staying up late with her so Mom can catch some z's.

Lucy also wanted to thank friends & family for the sweet & thoughtful Christmas gifts...she received many new clothes, some nice keepsake gifts and some money to invest in her college fund. Thanks so much! Daisy also was spoiled this Christmas with peanut butter treats and rawhide bones...not to mention all the treats (ham, cheese, etc.) that she received on Christmas day over at Ken & Helen's house!

Today is supposed to be another snowy day here in Portland. Mom & Lucy are just going to snuggle up and rest today. We miss everyone, hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Oh...and be on the look-out for Lucy's birth announcements...they're going out in the mail later today.

Lucy sleeps through church :)

Chris & I were really happy today that we got to go to church. It takes a lot of work to go somewhere and coordinate her feedings and bring all of her things that we may need while we're out, but we were successful today, and it was great to see friends at church this morning. It was a great service with lots of great Christmas music. We fed Lucy right before we left and she managed to nap through the entire service. We enjoyed introducing her to friends at church. She looked adorable in the Christmas outfit given to her by her Grandma Emily and her little black Mary Jane shoes.

She is doing really well, but her feedings continue to be hard and bring us some frustration. She's nursing really well now (or at least much improved), but now she really fusses when we try to give her the bottle after (we're still supplementing with pumped breast milk as our pediatrician has told us to do). So I feel like she's getting good feeds from the nursing but she pretty much refuses to take much of the bottle afterwards. Hopefully this does mean that she's breastfeeding better and maybe we'll be able to get rid of the bottle altogether for awhile if her weight continues to be good at her next check-up which is on Thurs. Jan. 3rd.

She is our little doll and has brought us so much joy. We're really excited for her first Christmas with us and our first Christmas at our new home in Portland. It's been a very blessed year for us, and we have so much to be thankful for. Wishing all of our family & friends who are far away from us a wonderful Christmas. We love you!

Back to her birth weight :)

Today was a good day, busy but goood. Lucy & I both had doctor's appointments this morning. Dr. Hoffman (my OBGYN) said the incision from my C-section looks great and that I'm a really quick healer, which is good to hear. He said I'm all cleared now to drive and can carry Lucy in her car carrier which is good news since Chris is back to work now. I'd like to look into going with Lucy to a mommy's group through St. Vincent Hospital. We've heard they're really fun and helpful!

At Lucy's appointment, she was back to her birth weight, weighing today 8 lb. 15.5 ou. which was a relief to me. As most of you know, we've had some struggles with her eating, and the last couple days, she's been pretty fussy at feeding times, but it looks like she's gaining weight appropriately which is great. We'll just try to keep doing what we're doing, and we'll see Dr. Ericksen in 2 more weeks to check her weight and see how things are going.

We enjoyed getting her dressed up in a pretty pink hand-knit sweater, cap & booties outfit that Grandpa Andy sent her last week. We got lots of compliments from people at the doctors' offices which of course her proud parents love to hear :)

Other than that, everyone here is doing well. Dad is napping right now, and I caught a nap before her last feeding. We realized that last night was our first night alone in our house since November 18th! We've had lots of family visiting up until yesterday and we loved the help but we're doing OK on our own too. Friends from our church brought us some yummy meals the last couple of nights that also will make great left-overs for the next few days.

We're excited that our friends who live here in Portland, Dianna & Aaron, are returning home tonight from a week long trip away; we will probably spend part of Christmas Eve with them, and may go to Chris' Aunt Helen's house for a little bit on Christmas day. Unfortunately, my mom came down with a bad cold the day she headed back to Salt Lake City, so she won't be here as planned for the holidays. But we're excited that both of Lucy's grandpas will be visiting in January...we can't wait for them to meet her!

10 days old

A friend of mine from dental school, Rob Taylor, who recently had his second baby (also a little girl born only a couple of weeks before Lucy) told me about doing a blogspot to update friends & relatives with baby news & baby pics. I thought that was a great idea, considering there's not enough time to talk to everyone or e-mail everyone individually...friends & family can just check this site at their leisure and get updates from us!

Wow! I can hardly believe that precious little Lucy has been in our lives for 10 whole days now. I can't imagine life without her. True, she's a lot of work with never-ending feedings & diaper changes, but she's so much more joy than work with all of her adorable expressions from curious face to mad face to so content. I must kiss her cheeks hundreds of times each day. It's so weird to think that 10 days ago, she was in my tummy, and now she's here! Chris & I are truly blessed with this beautiful baby girl.

After a 5 day stay in the hospital after her delivery via C-section, we got to go home last Tuesday and try to figure things out on our own which was tough at first, but getting easier each day.

Our routine is to feed her about every 3 hours. Because we got off to a rocky start and weren't able to breastfeed right away, we're still playing catch up and trying to figure out the whole breastfeeding thing. We're doing much better now, but her pediatrician is having us supplement her feedings with bottle feeding her pumped breastmilk and formula if needed to make sure she gets enough to eat. The whole feeding routine takes quite a bit of time because first we breastfeed for about 20 minutes, then bottle feed for 10-15 min, then pump for 15 min., then clean up and diaper change so generally it takes over an hour to do all of this and then we only have about 2 hours before it's time to do it all over again! So that has been fairly tiring to say the least, but Dad has been helping a lot with the bottle feeding, diapering, cleaning up which makes it a lot easier on me! He'll be going back to work this week though which means that he won't be able to help as much with our nighttime feedings.

Her next pediatrician appt. is this thursday, her 2-week check-up. We're hoping she's back to her birth weight of 8 lb. 15 ou. She was 8 lb. 11 ou. at her last check-up this past Friday.

She's mostly a happy baby and when she's not sleeping, she can sit content just looking around. She does have her fussy moments...she usually screams when we change her diaper or when we're dressing or undressing her, but I think that's pretty typical. Last night she just wanted to be held and so Chris was up with her from about 1am until 5am when she finally went to sleep in her co-sleeper bassinet. This is unusual though...the couple of nights before that, she slept well in between her feedings. We usually try to catch a nap or two during the day as well.

Daisy so far has been a very good big sister to Lucy, sniffing her when she's crying and overall very curious about baby Lucy, but very sweet & gentle with her too. I think they're going to be great friends.

Thanks to everyone for all of your support these past couple of weeks...we definitely feel very loved by our family & friends. We hope all of you will get a chance to meet Lucy very soon!