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!