Peyton turns 1 month old!

Happy birthday to my beautiful daughter Peyton! We have had quite the adventure over the past month. It has been challenging, trying on the patience, and exhausting, but also such a wonderful learning experience and so much fun all at the same time.


The first couple of weeks home were really tough. As new parents, John and I were clueless when it came to dealing with a sleep schedule (or lack there of) for a newborn. In fact, there was one night really early on where we all 3 were crying trying to figure out what to do at 3:00am (the same night we figured out Peyton loves to be bounced on the exercise ball). Peyton was crying non-stop and we could not figure out why. Turns out she was very hungry as my milk had not yet come in. We finally decided to call John's mom at 5:00am when Peyton had made herself hoarse from crying so hard. Molly advised us to feed her some water out of a bottle just to help her dry mouth and throat. She drank that right down and was fast asleep. Since that night, we have learned a TON and are still of course learning new things every day. Here is our take on events that have occurred in Peyton's 1st month of life:



Sleep:
Peyton has turned out to be a great sleeper for a 4 week old baby (at least for now. We don't want to jinx ourselves too soon). Currently, she sleeps anywhere between 5 and 7 hours for her first stretch of sleep at night. She wakes up and eats, then returns to sleep for another 2-3 hours, eats again, and usually goes down for a 3rd stretch of sleep lasting another 2-3 hours. It took us about 3 weeks to get her to this point. The first 3 weeks were pretty much a blur as far as sleep goes. We now have established a bedtime routine for her, which we are hoping sticks and helps her to continue to sleep well. Her routine consists of a diaper change, pajama's on, swaddle blanket on, and a bottle. This happens around 10:00pm. Most of the time after her bottle, she goes down into her cosleeper, which is now in her own room right away. Sometimes it takes some bouncing on the exercise ball to help her go down. We initially thought we would start her off right away in her big crib...yeah right!! She was NOT having that. We quickly went out and bought a bassinet-type bed for her called an Arms Reach Cosleeper. For about the first week or 2, we had the cosleeper in our bedroom right next to our bed. It has since been moved into her nursery where she has been sleeping in ever since. Thanks to and idea from Molly's friend Donna, we elevated her mattress just a bit so its on a little of an incline and she has slept in it ever since we did that. Thanks Donna! Before we were able to figure that out, Peyton would only sleep on our chest's or stomach's. As you can imagine, we weren't exactly getting that great of sleep this way, so we were desperate for a solution. As far as napping during the day goes, she does NOT nap usually in her cosleeper. Instead she naps either in her front carrier (Lascal), or in her car seat in the car. From my understanding, this is typical of newborns.



Clothes:

Peyton was certainly no small baby as you already know. Thankfully, however she still fits into all of her 0-3 month clothes and is still wearing those. Most of her newborn-sized clothes even fit her, although they are getting too small now that she is 4 weeks old.



Eating:

Peyton started off nursing, however after a week she lost interest in latching on. We decided that is worked best for us for me to pump breast milk and feed it to her in a bottle. That proved to be a wonderful decision, and she has been eating great since. She is up to eating 4oz at each feeding.

Doctor:
Peyton has been in the 90th percentile for height and weight since she was born and remains there today. At her 7 day check-up (which is the last check-up she will have had until her 2 month), she weighed just over her birth weight and her height was 21 inches. Dr. Steven's (her pediatrician) says that she is a beautiful, thriving, healthy baby.