A Thousand Reasons to Smile.: One Month

Holy cow this month has flown by! Ellie is such a joyful addition to our family. I don't want to jinx anything, but it seems we have ourselves another super easy baby.

Our first days home were pretty smooth. My pain level from the c-section was minimal. I think it's because I was walking around so much at the hospital. This was such an improvement over last time because I was much more active in taking care of Ellie.

I decided a long time ago that come hell or high water I was going to nurse this child. Right after she was born, she was rooting away. This was very encouraging. She had a little trouble latching (I think she was just adjusting) so the nurse decided to give us nipple shield to help her train. She right away latched on with it and was able to get things going that way. Once we were home, I ditched the shield so that we wouldn't get attached to it. No problem. My milk came in pretty much right away too. It has been so great. As a mother who has both bottle fed and nursed babies, I'm here to say that there are pluses and minuses to each. I definitely completely totally do not believe that I'm more attached to Ellie than Sophia because I'm nursing...even though I am literally attached for several hours a day :) Pretty awesome not to have to buy formula, pretty painful in the beginning, pretty convenient to not need to pack up formula and bottles when we go out, pretty sad that Ken doesn't get to have as much involvement (I think he misses it, so we have given her some expressed milk from a bottle a few times just to let him have that time).

After the first few days home she settled into her routine. She eats around 10, then 2:30, then 5:30 - give or take an hour on each one. She doesn't wake up crying, just making a little noise (JUST LIKE SOPHIA!!), she eats and goes right back to sleep. During the day she eats every 3 hours or so, then cluster feeds at night. I've also managed to start a pretty good frozen supply for if/when the time comes that I'm back and work and it's no longer working for us. We'll see how it goes in August.

A few days after her homecoming we headed back to the doctor for her check-up. She had been released from the hospital at about 7 lb 3 oz. It was a pretty big drop from her birth weight but the doctor wasn't worried. At her check-up she was back up to 7.8. We had another weight check the following week and she was up again to 7.12. I haven't weighed her at home but it's obvious she's eating enough and gaining weight. She's completely and totally healthy! Praise God!

Some other things about our Ellie:

She loves to be on her tummy.
She is full of sleep smiles and this past week has started smiling for real! I've never seen such a smiley baby at such a young age.
When she cries (more than Sophia did but still not very often) she WAILS!! Big lungs!
When she fusses, she sounds like she's snorting. Hence the nickname - Snort Snort. :) Sorry, Elle.
Other nicknames - Ellie Belly, Elle Belle, Bright Eyes, Smiley, Ellies (by Ken) and Ellie Baby (by Sophia)
She'll take a binky but doesn't totally love it. She really wants to such on her hands. I know it's way to early for her to develop a finger sucking habit, but I'm trying to avoid that. I'm a big fan of the binkie as a self soothing tool. I can take away a binkie next year, can't take away a finger. Sophia is the official binkie-giver. She took it upon herself to make that her job. If Ellie starts to fuss, Sophia yells Binkie-Bink! and runs over to give it to her. She loves to see Ellie looking so happy once she's got it.
Sophia is totally in love with her. I couldn't have wished for their relationship to be any better. She is curious of feeding, changing, and bathing. She drags her stairs all over the place to help me out. She will let us know right away if she hears Ellie crying "Mooooommmmy! Ellie is cryyyyyyying!" If we're in the car and I can't get to Ellie, Sophia gets so upset until we are able to make her happy. She says "Mommy has two beautiful babies." She is now and will be the bestest big sister ever :)
Her eyes are still gray/blue.
Several people have told me that she looks like my dad. I don't know, but I think that would be so cool.
A lot of her hair on top fell out. She's rockin' the old man hair just like Soph did. Hopefully that means she'll have awesome hair just like Sophia does.
She does not love bath time.
Her umbilical cord fell off at day 10 and we couldn't find it for hours. We were terrified that Chuck ate it! Finally we found it on the ground near him. Yuck.