Baby Dedication

We had a wonderful time yesterday at Lucy's baby dedication at our church. Several people have asked me if this is the same as baptism, so I thought I'd explain it a little. Our church believes that baptism is something that the person decides to do once they are old enough to make that decision. The baby dedication is an expression by the parents and the church to try to teach and model for Lucy what it means to be a follower of Jesus as best we can. Then the pastor prays for Lucy and prays for us as Lucy's parents. It's pretty simple, but was very meaningful to us. Above is a picture of Chris & I with Lucy at church yesterday. Our friends Dianna & Aaron came to church with us and my mom and Bob were up for the weekend. We had a really nice time. After church, we went to lunch at BJ's (a really yummy pizzeria/brew pub). It was only our second time out to eat with Lucy and it went pretty well. Bethany and her son joined us too which was fun.

Today, we woke up to snow actually stuck to the ground, and kids were home from school and there were snowmen in people's yards. People make a big deal about any little amount of snow here in Portland. I guess I would probably be one of those people had I not lived on the East Coast for 6 years...now it's just kind of funny to me. I worked at the office in the afternoon to cover for one of the doctors. It was actually pretty fun to be back at work for a few hours!

Chris & I booked our tickets to SF yesterday. We'll be there from Wed April 9th to Sun April 13th. Hope we get to see many of you then.

Lucy loves her baths!

The pictures above are of course of Lucy enjoying her evening bath. She can be super fussy and we just stick her in the warm water and start washing her and she quiets right down. She loves it! The bath we received at a baby shower is perfect. She just lies on her little chair and the bath even has a little water sprayer that rinses her off. It's actually really fun to give her a bath because we know how much she enjoys it!

Things have been going pretty well around here. Lucys reflux medication seems to be working really well to be able to get her to eat better and not be fussy after feedings. We're really happy that we were able to figure that part out so she can feel better! She is gaining weight steadily and we finally feel that we don't have to worry as much about that now. She's almost exclusively breastfeeding now and only getting a bottle when Bethany is here or in the middle of the night if Chris is giving me a break to rest. We have had a couple very sleepless nights this week which was very rough on us, but Lucy bounced back and slept really well last night in between feedings, so we hope that continues!

Bethany is here today, so I get to go get my hair done (first time since September!). I'm excited about that. And tonight is our first infant massage class.

We are excited that my mom and Bob are coming this weekend for her baby dedication...she has definitely changed so much since she was first born!

Also, we are planning a trip to the Bay Area in April so that I can go to Lisa's baby shower, so hopefully we'll get to see many of you then.

Smiles :)

Above is a picture of Lucy smiling (and looking a little cross-eyed!). She's been smiling a lot for the past couple of weeks, but we haven't been able to capture it on camera yet! This shows her smiling, although not as big as a lot of her smiles have been.

Lucy is 6 weeks old today and doing great, although the never-ending saga of trying to get Lucy to gain weight continues. She woke up Tuesday morning with her right eye swollen shut & goopy. I took her to the pediatrician and he said she has a blocked tear duct in that eye which got infected. So he prescribed an antibiotic ointment to put in her eye. We did that twice and it looks so much better already! While we were there, we checked her weight and she had only gained a few ounces since her last weight check about a week prior to that, so she's only averaging about half an ounce of weight gain per day which is the very lower end of what is considered OK. So that continues to be very nerve wracking for us. She now weighs just over 10 lb. Dr. Ericksen thinks she may have reflux because of the fussiness during feedings, so he put her on medication for reflux. So far it does seem to be helping with the fussiness a little bit, but it doesn't really seem like she's eating a lot more than she was. She is sleeping really well at night in between feedings so we're feeling a little more rested. We have another visit to the lactation clinic for a weight check Sunday, so we'll see how that goes! Next week we start an infant massage class through the hospital which is supposed to be great to help babies with gas and is also supposed to help with sleep.

This week, I brought Lucy into work at lunch time so everybody could meet her. That was a lot of fun! And the Mom/baby group we go to on Thursdays continues to be great. I never thought I'd talk so much about breastfeeding & poop & lack of sleep, but it's great to have that time with other moms. Bethany came again this Wednesday...I was able to go grocery shopping, get some stuff done around the house and go get my brows waxed. Having that time makes me feel a little more normal being able to get out of the house for a few hours on my own. That's about all for this week...hope everyone's doing well.

Gaining weight :)

This second picture is a picture of Lucy at our Mom/baby group this past Thursday. We like it a lot!

Thursday, Lucy & I went to the lactation clinic for a quick weight check and were so happy that she had gained over 4 ounces in 3 days. Hopefully she'll continue like that. We're seeing the pediatrician for a weight check Thursday...She now weighs 9 lb 15 ou., she's almost 10 lb!!

Things are getting much easier with the feeding routine now that we're breastfeeding almost exclusively and rarely supplementing with the bottle.

Chris & I are getting more & more comfortable taking Lucy out, and today we went and ate Vietnamese food after church (it was our first time taking Lucy to a restaurant!!). We were nervous, but she did really well and we enjoyed our lunch.

Another exciting event in Lucy's life is her upcoming baby dedication at our church on Sunday January 27th.

Other than that, Lucy just keeps getting cuter & cuter. I know I'm biased, but she is so adorable. Every day seems to be getting a little easier and we're enjoying parenthood so much.

One month old

We were excited to celebrate Lucy's one month birthday yesterday. We started the day by going to an appointment with our lactation consultant Doris who has been a tremendous help with the breastfeeding. Unfortunately, when we weighed Lucy, her weight was exactly the same as it was last Thursday at the pediatrician, so she hadn't gained any weight in 4 days. This of course left me feeling a little discouraged because we have been doing much more breastfeeding and much less bottle feeding and I felt like she was doing well with it. But Doris gave us some good ideas, and I'm going to bring Lucy back there this Thursday after the Mom's group for another weight check. I never thought it would be so hard to just feed a baby!!

Some exciting news is that we found a great nanny for Lucy. We met her at our church. Her name is Bethany, and she is 28 years old, married and has a son Freddie who turned one year old the day before Lucy was born. She has a lot of childcare experience and Chris & I find her to be very genuine and trustworthy. We hope this will work out! Her first day is actually tomorrow (yes, tomorrow :). She will work some shorter 6 hour days about one or two days per week from now until I go back to work just to get acquainted with Lucy and to give Mom a little break to rest, study or do some errands. I'm really looking forward to having her.

That's all for now!

Good check-up!

Lucy & I had a very good day yesterday, busy but good. First we saw her pediatrician for a weight check and she now weighs 9 lb. 10.5 ou, which is up 11 ounces in 14 days. Generally at her age, they like to see approximately an ounce per day, so she's not quite there, but not too far off, and her doctor was happy with how she was doing. His main concern was that she doesn't seem to have much of a drive to eat (much different than her mom!!)...we almost always wake her up to eat rather than her crying to let us know she's hungry. We are still feeding her every 3 hours. If we go 4 hours at night, she will almost always wake up before 4 hours hungry, but during the day, we generally are waking her to eat. But on the flip side, she is eating well when we wake her up, so that's a really good thing. The breastfeeding is going much better to the point that her doctor said we could start trying to use the bottle less and less to supplement her. Hopefully we'll get to the point where she doesn't need a bottle at all after breastfeeding. It seems like we're almost there, because lately she shows very little interest in the bottle after I'm done nursing her.

The other fun thing we did yesterday was go to a Mom/baby group. It was really fun. There were about 30 moms & babies there, and the format was really laid back. Once a month, they have a speaker come and talk to the group about various topics. Otherwise, it's just a chance for moms & babies to get to know each other, and when the babies graduate at 6 months old, they usually join a play group that has come out of the relationships formed in this group which is great. The moms take turns asking questions and other moms in the group can give advice and feedback. I really enjoyed talking to two women next to me and it's very comforting to share our experience and feel reassured from other moms about similar experiences they've had.

As I write this, Lucy is snoozing in her warm cozy pink sling that I'm wearing. That thing is a god sent! Hope everyone is doing well. Love, Andrea, Chris, Lucy & Daisy