Month in Review

Our first month with Kaitlyn flew by so quickly! I want to try to document everything about her first few weeks before I forget, so here are some highlights.

Week 1:

As expected Kaitlyn spent most of her first week sleeping. We spent the first few nights adjusting to her 3-hour feeding schedule, which wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Most times she would sleep, wake up to eat, and go back to sleep again. However by day 4, she decided she no longer liked being swaddled. It seemed to get her more worked up than calm her down. And without the swaddle, she couldn't fall asleep on her own. The only way she seemed content was in the kangaroo position, skin-to-skin on my chest. I ended up spending most of my nights during the first week propped up against my pillows, with Kaitlyn in this position. I could barely sleep because I couldn't lie flat and was always scared that she would fall off.

Week 2:

More sleepless nights. Kaitlyn had her days and nights mixed up and would sleep all day long but stay up all night. We tried everything to get her to fall asleep on her own - the 5 S's, white noise machine, Mozart cd's, and the vibration of her Pack n' Play - nothing worked. At most she would sleep 30 minutes on her own before waking up crying/screaming. I just didn't understand why she only had these sleeping problems at night and not during the day. The pediatrician told us to keep the room quieter and darker at night so she can distinguish between night and day, but it really didn't help.

Week 3:

We had some good nights and some bad nights. On the good nights, she slept some good four hour blocks, waking up just for feedings and going straight back to sleep. On the bad nights though, she would stay awake for hours (like from 11pm to 3am) fussing and crying, and when she finally did fall asleep, would still wake up every hour to eat. We didn't even know if she was actually hungry - seemed like she just wanted to be at the breast to soothe herself. One night Prentice even spent three hours doing the pick-up-put-down method he read about in The Baby Whisperer book (only to find out that it shouldn't be used until the baby is four months old).

Week 4:

Our problems seemed to be getting worse and worse. Gas, reflux, colic, whatever it was, our poor little girl seemed to have it. She would spend each evening starting around dinner time crying inconsolably for hours. She would scrunch up her face and grimace, arch her back, seem hungry and frantically search for a nipple only to reject it once she latched on. At times she would feed for a few minutes and doze off, only to wake up suddenly screaming. And this would go on for hours. We felt so helpless. During the week Prentice discovered Colic Calm gripe water, and we couldn't have received it in the mail at a better time. What a lifesaver!

Of course most of the stuff I can remember during the first month was the negative stuff, but there were some small milestones as well. By week 4 Kaitlyn finally started to keep her eyes open for longer periods of time. Before, it was very rare to see her with her eyes open for longer than 5 minutes at a time, even during the day. She also grew noticeably bigger, especially her head - it's huge now! We seemed to discover something new with her every day and I wish I could remember it all. But I'm looking forward to watching her develop in the many many months to come.