First Month With A Newborn.
Honestly, I don’t remember the first two weeks. The first night we brought her home I slept 10 minutes. She would start crying as soon as I laid her down. It was so frustrating. I needed to make sure I was waking Lyla up every 3 hours to eat. Again, that’s from the time when she starts eating, NOT finished. This makes the time in-between feedings pretty short. When you are trying to figure out breastfeeding, your baby is having a hard time latching, pumping, bathroom trips (lol), you could be left with 30 minutes before you have to do it all over again.
Lyla was and has been an easy baby. She would sleep right up to her next feeding. PRAISE! She actually let me sleep about 5-6 hours at night (not all at once, just between feedings)
Feeding her was tough. Breastfeeding was hard. At first we had trouble latching and realized she wasn’t actually a fussy baby, she was starving. Poor thing. She wasn’t getting much to eat at all. I had no idea of knowing how much she was eating, we assumed she was getting enough. We quickly realized she wasn’t because she continued to lose weight. We saw a lactation specialist. If you’re having any trouble breastfeeding or even if you don’t think you do, please see a lactation consultant. They are a God send and amazing humans! Their tips and tricks can save you so much hurt, pain, and frustration. Once I hit the one month mark, I stopped breastfeeding and we switched over to formula. You can read about that journey in my breastfeeding post.
Since the beginning Lyla seemed to be struggling. She would grunt most of the day and all night. She seemed uncomfortable. Maybe she needed to burp, but couldn’t get it out. I called the doctor and she recommended a daily probiotic and as needed mylecon. I also started using DisgestZen essential oil by DoTerra. All of them combined seemed to help her a ton! Her grunts lessened and lessened.
She is one noisy baby. She makes little noises all night long, but not a sound during the day. She sounded super congested so we could hear her breathing and sounds all night. I talked to the doctor and she said it was super normal because babies airways are so tiny. As long as she could still eat full feedings there was nothing to worry about. It definitely bugged us more than it did her.
During the first two weeks I slept on the couch with her in the Doc-A-Tot right next to me. I was able to set up a changing and feeding station on the coffee table. This made the nightly routine a little easier, especially with the 3 hour cycles. Around the month mark we ended up renting the SNOO by Happiest Baby. It’s a crazy expensive bassinet that detects motion/sound. It can tell when a baby is crying and will rock her back and forth until she falls back asleep. The happiest baby bassinet connects to my phone where I can track her sleep through out the night. Thankfully, they have a rental program! It still could be a steep upfront payment, but let me tell you, it’s worth it! We had her in our room for about two more weeks. She was only waking once a night for a little midnight snack. At the 6 week mark we moved the bassinet into another room. We couldn’t hear her little noises so we started sleeping much better! And actually she started sleeping even better. By 7 weeks she started sleeping through the night!
I’ve become a tiny bit obsessed with baby technology…anything that could make our lives easier I’m all for! I’ve used the owlet sock and camera. The 4moms mamaroo. The hatch baby changing pad. The Fridababy thermometer. There’s a few others, but I’ll share about them in another post! But the technology they have for babies these days is absolutely amazing!
Let’s talk diapers! I remember hearing that newborns will dirty 7-10 diapers a day and thinking that was ton! Now I don’t think that’s much at all…Lyla could easily go through 16 diapers a day!! I may be changing her a lot, but she has yet to get diaper rash.
Lyla didn’t do much during that first month. We would get random little smiles in her sleep, but that was pretty much it. I would find myself wanting her to grow up a tad so I can interact with her and play with her. But I always reminded myself that she’s never going to be this little again. It’s special to have such a little human depend on you completely. It’s special that we were picked to be the ones to take care of her.
One my biggest take aways from the first month with little Lyla was to trust her. Trust your baby. Yes they are babies, but they are so capable. Don’t always assume they can’t do something because they are babies. Always try different things and let them explore and figure themselves out. They might even surprise you.
