3.49 Kilos / 7.69 pounds

She's pumped up!

3.49 Kilos / 7.69 lbs. That's her weight when Sarah went in and had her weighed today. That's a full 480 grams / 1.06 lbs more than when she was born. Our little Margaret is growing!

One pound may not seem like much, but we've been noticing it. We've also been noticing the increasing strength in her legs and her body as every day, her wiggling and kicking seems stronger than the last.

This makes bath time increasingly precarious and so we may move her to the tub sooner rather than later.

The increased strength also reflects in her ability to get out of her swaddling.


Practicing her feminine charms

Her weight and her strength aren't the only things changing, however. We're finding increased difficulty, now, with her settling at times. She seems to like to be awake in the late evenings now and frequently will want to be on the breast though she seems not to be hungry. However, once taken off, she stays awake and will frequently demand attention either in the form of snuggling or feeding / snacking.

I can't say that we have a solution to this at this time other than waiting for her to get tired. Our literature seems to indicate that it is still early to be putting her on a feeding schedule and that "training" the baby should wait until two months. Of course, it was suggested to Sarah in her mother and baby group today that she might want to start training Margaret now. All the competing wisdom is sometimes difficult to make sense of.


Making eyes at Mommy

Breast feeding is also now quite painful for SAM and we're not sure what to do about that either. All the advice, professional and otherwise, seems to indicate that SAM's technique is fine. There's no elongation of her nipple upon Margaret releasing and the latch seems secure. It's just that Sarah's breasts seem to hurt her quite a lot for the first six or seven sucks and then upon let-down. They even hurt her when she has the let down from when she hears Margaret crying.

For us, this is the greatest challenge. I think that we can handle the difficulty settling, but persistent pain is something that, after awhile, just eats away at your consciousness. She's trying lanolin for the surface pain, but we're going to have to figure out something for the let-down pain.


Sharing a laugh between women

Bathing is increasingly a joy for us (and hopefully for her). The only issue is that it's much harder than we thought to get at all the neck cheese. For the past couple of nights now, we've had to go back with a wet wipe after her bath in order to get some of the stinky stuff that we missed in the first go round. we're going to have to work on this as well.


Slightly anxious about her bath today

Now that we've settled down a bit after the first two weeks, we really are facing new challenges. I'm not sure what we would have expected, but it's time for us to buckle down and tackle these new issues.

We've had it lucky so far and I think it only fair that we run into some challenges now as the beginning seemed too good to be true. SAM said it tonight after taking stock of these new challenges. "We're really parents of a newborn now."


Getting nice and clean!