Arms Embargo

So how about some updates?? :o) First off, we're all doing well, and Mia is adorable. Here is Exhibit A, in which she makes cute baby noises, looks at the camera, gets the hiccups, and pats her own hair: So here's some info on Mia's progress since birth... We left the hospital on Wednesday 9/20 at around 7pm after her final blood test came back showing that her jaundice was no longer at a troubling range. Our pediatrician's primary concern was that we get nursing off to a good enough start that we keep her post-birth weight-loss to a minimum. Well, that turned out not to be a problem... The following Friday we took Mia in for her first official visit to the pediatrician's office, and she was already back to her birth weight of 8 pounds, 1 ounce. We were pretty impressed w/o ourselves b/c the goal is to get baby back to birth weight by 10 - 14 days of age. (Babies can lose up to 8 - 10% of their birth weight in the first 4 days of life). On our way out of the office, we scheduled our next appt for the following Friday, which meant that we were going to be on our own w/ this little person for the next entire week!! The major challenge she provided us with in the week that followed is that she became a very prolific spitter upper… This translates to much laundry…and much fretting if you are the parents of a baby who is supposed to be eating enough to continue gaining weight. I was sure that she couldn’t possibly be keeping enough down to actually gain weight when I looked at the sheer volume of what came back up. Well, that fear was put to rest the next Friday when she weighed in at a full pound heavier than the week before -- 9 pounds, 1.5 ounces! :o) The funny development in that week was that she began making this weird guttural noise that sounded sort of like she was trying to communicate with pigeons… Jeff was pretty convinced that this was not a normal sound for humans to be making. He polled Mia’s grandparents, and even their reassurance didn’t settle him much until the pediatrician chuckled at Mia’s generous performance of said noise during our visit. She said Mia was just trying to communicate and that it was a perfectly normal sound. I’ll try to post a clip of it if I can catch it on video. And last but not least, you’re probably wondering about the arms embargo, eh? Well, people Mia’s age are entirely too small and immature to bear arms. And I mean the sort that grow out of your shoulders… Mia will wake herself out of a sound sleep by smacking herself in the face with arms she has no control over, and then she starts screaming as she looks around as if wondering, “Who did it??” Then, of course, she continues flailing and hitting herself in the face…all with no clue that she’s the culprit. So we’ve been keeping her in a snug swaddle when she sleeps or when she gets herself worked up, and it’s like turning on a calming switch on the baby. It’s amazing. (I can’t recommend highly enough the $14 paperback The Happiest Baby on the Block, which I read in my last trimester. So far, Mia hasn’t once proved inconsolable, which is worth way more than the cost of the book!!)