One Month Old - Izzie B

Today Izzie B is one month old!  It's certainly been an adjustment going from one kid to two (the hardest they say, after that you're so used to splitting your time for more kids).  I can't even begin to count the number of times Brady has woken her up after she's only been asleep a few minutes.  She's not as easy a baby as Brady and once she's been woken up, it could be another two hours or more before she goes down again and she spends a majority of it crying because she's so tired.

She's quite the eater as well.  She's almost completely breastfed (with one bottle of formula a week or less), whereas Brady had every other feeding breast and formula.  That means I'm on call day or night, instead of being able to pass her off to Andy for a bottle feed.  If she stays awake (which she often does), she sometimes wants to eat every hour and a half.  Since you count from the start of one feed to the start of the next, with 30 minutes spent feeding, that's only an hour break for me.  If we can get her to take a nap, so can go 3-4 if she's sleeping (which doesn't happen very often, maybe every other day if I'm lucky).  

She likes constant attention and hates to be put down.  This is quite problematic for me with Brady also to take care of during the day.  Until today, I've had a second adult with me every day since she was born, so I was able to pass her off in order to eat, shower, or go to the bathroom.  She's quite feisty, so when she gets put down and not held, she screams like crazy.  She won't tire out either.  She turns purple and almost stops breathing.  I'm seriously thinking about investing in a Moby wrap which will allow me to keep her close to me and also have my hands free to do other things.

She's a good sleeper (at night at least).  For a while, we were getting a little frustrated that she wouldn't sleep in her pack n play and would only sleep in bed with us.  Andy wanted to let her scream it out in the crib (which I've mentioned before doesn't quite work), but I wanted to be considerate of other people who were sleeping in the house.  We pulled out the tried and true seahorse that Brady loved (although hers is pink).  The first night we tried that she went through two cycles of the music and whimpered for a while but fell asleep in her own bed.  Andy laughed at me the next morning when I asked how many cycles it took because I fell asleep with her crying and the music still on.  I wasn't getting much sleep with her in my arms every night (she's a very noisy and mobile sleeper).  If we managed to put her down when we went to bed (between 11PM and midnight), she would sleep a six hour stretch starting at two weeks old (Brady was six weeks by the time he would sleep that long).  Most nights we've been able to get her to sleep in her bed for the first six hours, then she feeds, and both of us fall asleep while she's eating and before you know it, another three hours have gone by.  Once she's at eight hours in a row, we will move her to her own room.

Today was also her one month doctors appointment and we were very curious to see how much she's grown.  She started filling out more quickly than Brady and was holding up pants at two weeks old that he couldn't hold up until about six weeks old.  We also knew that breastfed babies tend to put on weight faster because there's a higher fat content in breast milk vs. formula, combined with the fact that breastfed babies eat about two more feedings per day than formula fed babies.  Like with guessing Izzie's birth weight, Andy and I decided to again guess her one month weight with Price is Right rules (closest without going over).  My guess was 9lbs 10oz (which was Brady's one month weight) and Andy guessed 10lbs 11oz.  

I put pics of both kids in only their diapers at exactly four weeks old to compare.  Looking at them side by side Brady has quite the belly compared to Izzie, so I started to think that neither of us would win with our weight guesses.  It's so interesting to put them side by side like this because their colorings are so opposite, even if they do have some (not all) similar features.  Izzie is definitely more feminine looking, which is funny because so many people thought Brady was a baby girl.

Here are her one month stats:

Weight - 9lbs 9oz (65th percentile)
Height - 21.5 inches (60th percentile)



I was right when it came to guessing that both Andy and I would lose, but I was only over by one tiny ounce!  She's definitely gaining faster than Brady did as she was born about a half a pound less than him and he was back at his birth weight by one week and she was still down 6oz from hers.  That means she's gained 2lbs 3oz in the last three weeks.  It will be interesting to see where she is at two months (Brady was 11lbs 12oz). She has outgrown all of her newborn clothes, but is still in newborn diapers.

The last update I did about Izzie was at one week old and she's grown so much since then, so here's a look back at what's happened in the last month:

At two weeks old, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day.  We know the kids are part Scottish (which explains the red hair), but we also suspect they are part Irish from Andy's maternal grandfather's side.  We will be looking into that in the next few months so that the kids know their full heritage.

We are the lucky ones to have her!

Along with the monthly stickers she will be wearing (seen in the top pic of the post), I got her first holiday stickers to wear on each of her first holidays.  I became a little obsessed with owls while I was pregnant with her, so both the monthly and holiday stickers have owls on them.

We've had quite the revolving door of visitors around here since Izzie was born (and even before).  When she was one week old, we had Andy's older brother and dad visit, along with Dunny.  At two weeks old, my dad came for his second visit.  And at three weeks old, Andy's younger brother, Patrick, and his girlfriend, Chaleece (known to the kids as Aunt Leecie), drove from Pittsburgh to come see their first niece.

They, along with Dunny, will be Izzie's godparents, so she's officially met them all.  We are waiting on her birth certificate so we can set a date to have her baptized back home in Pittsburgh where Brady was baptized.

Uncle Pat with his first niece.  The joke has been that the Trap men can only have boys, especially after Brady was born.  We then went on to joke with Pat that he would have all girls, to which he protested that they can only have boys.  Now, Andy really gets on him because we've proven that girls can happen.

Izzie at three weeks old.  We put her in this adorable little outfit that had tutu pants and my mom suggested trying a headband on her as well.  This is probably my favorite picture of her so far.

Turning her head so you can see her pretty headband.

At four weeks old, hanging with daddy.  I call them Big Red and Little Red.

I hardly ever let my kids go without clothes because I love the clothes so much and want to get as much use out of them as possible.  I was changing Izzie for some reason or another over the past weekend and had to set her down to wash my hands before I got clothes on her.  I thought she looked particularly cute, so I snapped a few pics.

 

Wearing her First Easter owl sticker.

My mom arrived on March 1 and left on March 31.  She was here for a full month and almost every single day of Izzie's first month.  It was so great having her here to help with the kids and I know she loved it too as we both hate living apart.  It was very hard watching them leave on Easter morning and there were tears from at least three of us (me, my mom, and Brady).  It hit me all over again how hard it is living away.  Brady was five months old when we first moved away and I came home every 10-14 days the first three months.  That's impossible to do this time as Izzie is so young and Brady has things going on, so we can't just leave whenever we feel like it.  It's twice as hard not having help now that there are two kids and I'm outnumbered.  Brady adored having her here as she was the one who got up with him every single morning.  He was not happy to go back to his old routine from before Nana came to visit.

Today was my first day really flying solo (as Andy worked from home yesterday).  Of course, I had a 10:30AM doctors appointment to get to.  The only reason I got a shower every day before now was because my mom would hold the baby.  I could just see her turning purple if I tried to take a shower once she left and I was on my own.  Luckily, she was still asleep when my alarm went off, so I jumped in the shower.  She was just starting to stir when I got out, but I was so nervous that she'd wake up and I'd turn off the water to hear screaming.  She also liked the hairdryer, so I got to dry my hair too.  I didn't quite get to eat breakfast in peace though.  She screamed through the whole thing and I had to hold her while eating with my other hand.

We got to the doctors on time, but had to wait in the exam room for an hour to see the doctor.  Brady was fine playing for the first half an hour then decided he had to use the potty.  That was a nightmare as I had nowhere to put the baby down to help him and I could just see the doctor coming into the room and us not being there and having to wait even longer after that.  His bedtime stall tactic lately has been to say that he has to poop and then he sits on the potty for a half an hour or more with nothing happening.  Of course, that's what he tried to pull at the doctors.  After ten minutes, I made him get off and we still had to wait another half an hour for the doctor.  She finally came in and Izzie checked out perfectly.  She also got her second round of her Hep B vaccine, so she was not happy.  

Brady was screaming that he was hungry (it was almost noon at this point) and I decided to head to the nearest fast food.  We decided to go in instead of hit the drive thru since the baby was asleep and I noticed a text from Andy asking if we wanted to meet up.  He came to us since we'd already ordered food by the time I saw the text and Brady was very happy to see him.  He was not happy when Andy had to go back to work.  I then picked up a few things at the nearest Kroger.  I normally shop at Walmart, but there's no way I could do that with both kids unless I let Brady walk which is a disaster waiting to happen.  Kroger has the carts with the car on the front of the cart, so Brady can ride in that and Izzie's car seat can go in the main cart.  When I looked at the cart, I realized there was space for two kids in the car and then the main cart had space for two kids.  Can you imagine needing four kids restrained?

We got home around 1PM and Brady played around for a while before nap.  Izzie was still asleep in her car seat, so I decided not to wake her to eat until he was down for his nap.  Of course, she must sense that I'm on my own today because she had a blow out that was so bad it required an emergency bath.  I can at least be grateful that Brady was asleep when that happened.  Thus begins our life with two kids away from family.