The Wee One

Here I sit at my dinner table at 2:56pm on a Friday afternoon.  It feels strange and yet somehow perfect to be sitting without any deadlines, uploading pictures from my camera and waiting until my ticking time bomb awakens to be fed.  The last three weeks have been a blur as Nathan and I have been learning how to be parents and playing hostess to the multitude of family that has come to help, visit for the holidays, and come for the baby blessing.  Although, I must admit that my playing hostess consists of my company making dinner and getting up with said child during the night.  A pretty sweet deal if I do say so myself.


Eden is such a little angel and has stolen Nathan and my hearts completely.  She hasn't done too bad with the rest of the family either.  Her dark blue eyes, hysterical facial expressions, and long, thick, black hair are enough to melt anyone's heart.  She makes the greatests faces when she is waking up or thinking about crying and it just makes me giggle while I'm holding her to imagine what she's thinking.  Sometimes when I'm talking to her, she makes a face that goes so perfectly with what I'm saying and I laugh out loud because it's almost as if she understands what I'm saying.  Almost.

For the first week and a half of her life, she was a sweet and quiet as anyone can imagine, hardly making a peep and only really crying about three times.  Suddenly, this changed and she was crying...hard, after each feeding with a pained look on her face.  We couldn't calm her down and I would cry along with her because it hurt me so badly to see my baby in so much pain.  We would finally get her calmed down and asleep and then it would be feeding time again.  So for the last few weeks, my wee one has either been crying, feeding, or sleeping.  Literally.  I must admit that I looked at babies that were awake and interacting happily with whoever was holding them with a bit of jealousy as I never got to see my baby's eyes without her crying.  It absolutely broke my heart and I was drained emotionally.  She wouldn't sleep if I set her down so I hadn't had any sleep night or day, unless my blessed help was holding her for me. 

Nathan helps out so much, but he is so busy with work and school, I don't have the heart to wake him up unless I am literally at the end of my rope.  Finally, I turned to other sources, what was happening with her, was she okay?  After doing some research, I believe that she has GER which means that she gets severe stomach pain after eating.  There are however, things we can do to help with this.  I noticed that she had less of a problem at night and realized that she isn't as frantic for her feedings because she is so relaxed.  I assumed that she probably swallowed less air when she wasn't so worried about trying to get food.  It's not like I hold her off in the day time, as soon as she awakens, I feed her.  But she's hungry by then.  So I've started waking her up and feeding her about every 2 hours so she doesn't get to the point that she is starving.  The two days I've been doing this have brought about great results. 

I am also very careful to keep her upright for at least 30 minutes after each feeding.  This is much more time consuming than burping the baby and being done with it, but it is totally worth the happiness that is on her face instead of the pain.  She still cries a bit, but it isn't the crazy stuff that was happening before.  It could just be a coinsidence seeing as it's only been two days, but I sure hope that it's helping.  The other thing we've been doing is putting her to bed earlier in the day.  We have a routine that we start every day at 9pm.  We'll move this up, but she has been up until midnight each night.  Hopefully having a schedule and helping her stick with that will help her to feel more secure and understand when it is time to sleep and when it is time to be awake.

 Grandma Doutre with E.  I realized after my mom left that I never got a picture of her with the little one, but I'm so grateful to both of them for their help.

 Classic.  Not much needs to be said here once you know that she doesn't sleep without being held. 

        Yes, she did fall asleep WHILE I was washing her hair.  She loves her some warm water bath time.

This is her version of the spa.  Look how relaxed she is-I love it.  I discovered that bathing at bed time gets me an extra hour between feedings that first shift and I've been milking that one for all it's worth.  No pun intended there.


All in all, we love our Little E and are so excited to keep watching her grow.