2 Months Old!

Bailey had her 2 month check up. Drum roll please....she weighs 12 lbs 14 ounces and is 22 inches long! She is in the 30% for height and 75% for weight. She is one healthy girl. The doctor was impressed with how well she holds her head up and by her alertness. Everything looks great! She also had to get 2 shots which was so sad to watch. She was all smiles right up until that needle went in and then let out the loudest saddest scream. So far Bailey is really a great baby. She isn’t ever fussy or irritable. She is very sweet and content most of the time. As long as she is fed I can pretty much do anything or go anywhere with her. I have even been able to start putting her in her swing and letting her play on her mat for longer periods of time. I think she is really noticing bright colors and her toys. She has this little butterfly that hangs above her play mat that she smiles and talks to every time I lay her under it. She also loves to watch the little birdies above her swing and loves to look at herself in the mirror. It is soooo cute! She now notices Coby as well. The other day she was smiling and laughing at him. I'm sure they will be buddies as she grows up. Bailey absolutely loves her bath time now. She splashes and smiles during the entire bath. If she is upset or crying I can turn on the bath and she calms down. She knows its almost bath time. The only thing that I'm having trouble with is that she still likes to eat about every 2 hours. She wakes up that much at night too. She doesn’t wake up crying, I can hear her moving around and she just sort of whimpers until I get her up to eat. As soon as she's done she goes right back to bed. So its not horrible but I'm not getting very long stretches of sleep so its making it hard to wake up in the mornings. My favorite time of day is the morning. She is so happy right when she wakes up. I love to take off her pjs and just watch her smile and stretch. I have been pretty lazy in the mornings and will just lie around and cuddle with her. I know I wont get to do that much when I'm back at work. The last 2 months with my baby girl has been so amazing. She just gets cuter every day.

Maternity and New Born Pictures

We finally have some new born pictures available of Miss Bailey. I have also included a few of our Maternity photos. I actually got those back the day that I went into labor so I never was able to do anything with them.

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Vacation in Destin

Our vacation to Destin was a lot of fun! I was so worried about how Bailey would do on the car ride. It was a very long drive and she did great. Ok part of the reason is that I got her out of her car seat a few times to feed her. I know it's not safe to do that but we never would have made it otherwise. I sat in the back seat with her so that I could keep her company. We sang lots of Disney songs and watched Baby Einstein! The only issue that we had was that she got pretty hot sitting in her car seat. She ended up getting all these little red dots all over her. When I researched it, it seemed like she was breaking out in heat rash. We decided to take a nice long lunch break at a rest stop and took her clothes off so she could lay out on her play mat and cool down. Then we bought a box of oatmeal bath. When we got to the hotel that night we bathed her in it in the sink. We ended up giving her 2 baths in the oatmeal and by the next day she was pretty well cleared up. The oatmeal bath worked like a charm. I was really worried about how she would do on the beach. I got her a rash guard shirt (swim shirt) and sun hat and a sun tent to keep her out of the sun. I was more worried about the heat. We brought a battery operated fan to set up under the tent. She did so well! There was only 1 day that was way too hot for her to be outside. There was absolutely no breeze in the air which made her really sticky. It was so nice to travel with my parents because they were more than willing to watch her for us so that we could go out to the beach. Even when we were on the beach they would take turns sitting by her so that we could go play in the water. We put her little feet in the sand and even put her waist deep in the ocean. She did like the water for the most part. She slept so good outside with the breeze and sound of the waves I'm going to do my best to make her room feel like that. We realized that she likes a fan blowing her hair and sleeps so much better. The entire week she slept for 4 hours at a time at night. The best time at the beach to me is walking along in the evenings. Its so nice and relaxing at that time of day. We would walk all the way down to the jetty and by the time we were walking back Bailey was asleep in her Daddy's arms. It was so great getting to spend a week with my family. Bailey really got spoiled by her aunts, uncles and Nana and Papa. She even got lots of attention from her little cousin Barrett. He was so cute with her. Anytime she would cry he would say "oh no!" and run over to her and pat her arm. He played peek a boo with her and made sure she had her pacifier in her mouth. I'm so glad that she is going to have cousins to grow up with. Her first time we put her feet in the sand and then in the ocean, she wasnt so sure what to think. She cried pretty good for awhile but then got used to it. I know she will be a little water bug eventually. All in all it was a really fun relaxing vacation. Ok so at times it didn’t feel relaxing when you think about all the crap we hulled back and forth to the beach but it was worth it!

6 Weeks

By 6 weeks old Bailey has been getting more and more vocal. She likes to coo and gurgle and smile at us all the time. She really loves her Daddy too! Whenever she sees him she just lights up. It's so cute. There has been one thing though that has been really worrying us. She has been making this high pitched gasping sound. It’s almost like she can't breathe. I have really noticed it since she was born I had been asking the pediatrician about it and they keep saying that it’s very normal and it’s just her breathing patterns. Well finally I decided to record it. I made another appointment with my pedi and they said it's a condition called laryngamalacia. It means that her vocal cords are soft and floppy. It’s just like cartilage that hasn’t hardened yet. The gasping sound is made because the vocal cord falls into her airway making it hard for her to breathe. They said that she should grow out of it but it helps to elevate her bed and to feed her in a more upright position to help keep her from chocking. It has been very scary for me because in the middle of the night she wakes up coughing and chocking a lot. It’s also a combination of reflux. I ended up taking her to a specialist who had to put a tiny camera up through her nose and down her throat. I felt like such a bad mom because I couldn’t stand to be in the room when they did it. She screamed so badly but they said it doesn’t hurt them it’s just uncomfortable. Well I guess they would tell me that. Anyways, they said it is in fact Laryngamalacia and that it’s mild. The only thing I need to do is watch for her having reflux issues too often because that could enflame her cords even more and then we may need to get her on medicine. So I’m praying that she outgrows this very soon. I don’t think that I will be able to sleep soundly while she makes these noises in her sleep like that. On a positive note, we are getting ready for our family vacation to Florida! I have been making my lists and so far I'm not sure how in the world we are going to fit everything we need to take with us. It's no wonder people get mini vans.

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1 Month Old

One month flew by so fast it was unbelievable. Part of the reason that it’s gone by so fast is that my days and nights have really seemed to blend together. She is such a good little baby and hasn’t been fussy or anything. As long as she is fed then she is pretty happy. The only issue is that she really likes to eat very often. I was getting really worried that I wasn’t producing enough milk or something. I even pumped a few times and added a half ounce of formula to try and tie her over for longer periods of time. I talked to the pediatrician about it and they said that its very normal for a baby to want to eat every 2 hours. The thing that no one told me was that when you say every 2 hours it’s not a 2 hour time in between each feeding its actually 2 hours from the time they start eating to the next time they want to eat again. So in reality that gives me about 1 hour to a 1 hour 15 by the time I fed and changed her. I literally felt like there was no need to put a shirt on some days. Well when we went to her 1 month check up I was both shocked and happy by her weight gain. I was so shocked that I had them weigh her twice just to be sure that I heard them correctly. Two weeks earlier she had weighed in at 7 lbs exactly. Then at her 1 month apt. she was 9 lbs and 9 ounces! All of those feeding times had paid off and she was getting plenty to eat. Now I just need to figure out how to get her to go longer periods at night without needing to eat. It would be really nice to get more than an hour sleep at a time. Within in her first month Bailey celebrated her 1st 4th of July and her 1st time in a pool. We actually took her down to the fireworks in Granite City. She was such a trooper and slept through the entire show. I was a little worried about her ears so I put my fingers over them during the grand finale :) Her first time in the pool was great too. She loved the water. I knew she would because she loves her bath time. Every time we turn on the water to give her a bath she calms down immediately if she is fussy. She just lies in her little tub and coos at us. Little Bailey has also been smiling at us! Her first time to smile was on July 7th early in the morning. Andy and I had her on our bed playing with her and she looked at us and smiled and laughed. I wasn’t really sure if it was a real smile and laugh at first but she did it 3 times that morning. It has been so much fun getting to know our little girl. It’s going to be really hard to go back to work in September.

2 weeks

So in the first 2 weeks of being a mommy I have learned so much already. I was worried that I wouldn’t know when to feed her or change her and what her different cries meant. It’s amazing how fast you learn these things. I can already tell the difference between a cry that means she's hungry versus a cry where she is just annoyed and wants to change positions. I'll tell you what though; she has got me wrapped around her finger! All she has to do is this little whimper cry and I give in so quickly. It’s pretty funny too because sometimes she even yells at us. It’s a short loud yell. As soon as you give her your attention after she does that, she does a sweet little whimper. It’s so pathetic but she already knows how to work us. Anyways, she isn’t sleeping very well through the night yet. It’s killing me. I just try to tell myself that I just get to spend more time with her when were awake together. If she wasn’t so cute I wouldn’t be able to do it. I love just holding her and staring at her when she is eating. It’s such a sweet time together. I know she won’t need me like this forever. So I wish that someone would have told me that little girls can sometimes pee just like a boy. Well I had no idea! I was changing Bailey at 3 am when all of a sudden she peed straight up in the air and across the room! I was so shocked that I screamed! I was not expecting it at all. She has done this 2 other times since and its actually pretty funny. Another thing that almost never fails is that as soon as I get her swaddled back up for bed she decided that make another big pooh! I really think they know what they are doing. It’s so frustrating but sort of funny. I'm trying really hard to get her on a schedule so that I can get her to sleep longer through the nights. We start the morning (11 am) with mat time where we do leg exercises and sing songs along with some tummy time. Then we move to the swing for a little bit. It’s funny because we bought this really nice big swing but she prefers her smaller less expensive swing. We can hardly get her to sit in the big swing for 5 min. Anyways, I just try to rotate her with activities and then we go back to eating and sleeping until Daddy gets home. We try to give her a bath by 8:30 every night and then a book, eat and bed time. It has really been helping but she still isn’t sleeping more than 1 1/2 hours at a time.